Former Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) passed away at the age of 90 on Sunday.
The Detroit police confirmed that Conyers had died of natural causes.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1258430
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1258430
From John’s statement when he was essentially ejected:
“I’ve been a champion of justice for the oppressed and the disenfranchised. I never wavered in my commitment to justice and democracy. I am proud to have been part of that rich history.”
Worth remembering.
But the allegations against him were not anonymous or vague and, like Minority Leader at the time, Nancy Pelosi, I found the allegations serious and credible.
We all have to take the exit at some point. I remember the good things John Conyers did so I wish his exit could have been cleaner.
And I hope the women he mistreated are doing well in spite of it.
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I agree with your statement. Representative Conyers did many good things in his life and during his tenure. But in the end the accusations did seem valid. I think your comment was very well phrased and I will not try to add to it further.
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Everyone has a mix of good and bad in them. Even if we end up deciding a person isn’t fit for a particular job and/or deserves censure, that doesn’t necessarily devalue the things they accomplished. (Yeah, that treads perilously close to the Cyrus argument, but I think there’s still a big difference.)
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As a parent of two wonderful daughters, I co-sign.
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I look at a sexual harassment story like Jon Conyers’ and it’s becoming more and more believable to me that Al Franken was railroaded by allegations that were either flimsy or flat out lies. Conyers’ allegations are a clear example of sexual harassment where a person in power was trying to abuse his authority over his subordinates and did things that were surely wrong like coming out of a shower with his employee nearby. None of Franken’s staff ever accused him of anything and Franken’s allegations have too many things that don’t add up such as details not passing scrutiny, accusers that were talking to each other before talking to reporters, and reporters not trying to find more sources before publishing their stories. All 9 of the allegations were published individually with the accuser and a few friends or family members claiming they were told about the incident afterwards, but never witnessed it.
After her CNN accusation went public where she claimed Franken cupped her breast, Stephanie Kemplin subsequently claimed that she thought she smelled alcohol on Franken’s breath when it happened. That’s complete BS for a few reasons.
- Franken’s wife Franni had alcohol dependency problems for years and finally got completely clean in 2008. Franken supported her a lot during that time and is unlikely to betray that trust. He even co-wrote a movie based on that in 1994 called “When a Man Loves a Woman”.
- The incident took place in Kuwait which has a total ban on alcohol. You can get arrested if they see you with a bottle. Another 2003 USO show group got cancelled because they brought in alcohol.
- Kemplin was Military Police, she knew about the ban and would have confiscated any alcohol.
The reporters also failed to follow up with people who witnessed the incidents and just believed the accusers. Zack Roth at Huff Post stated his accuser was a friend that he’s known for years which shows a possible confirmation bias and he never stated he corroborated the account with the two friends of the accuser who were there at the time.
I just wish other journalists would actually look over all of the claims to give them proper scrutiny instead of just assuming Franken is guilty because he had 9 accusations. 9 allegations doesn’t mean they are 9 credible allegations.
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Actually, I think they did, but the fact is EIGHT women did, and as you recall, Franken never denied their accusations other to say, “I didn’t see it like that”. Wow. Do you really think there wasn’t a conversation where Chuck Schumer said to him, “If we have an investigation are more women going to come forth?”, and obviously Franken said yes, and he cut and ran rather than face them, as he said he was ready to do.
Nobody gives up a Senate seat if they don’t have to. The majority of these women were fellow Democrats. You either believe women or you don’t, and I do. Al “Handsy” Franken had no one to blame but himself. I wish Dems would stop trying to have it both ways. The fact is, Franken picked the wrong time to be a grabber and a groper.
I was sad to hear of the credible allegations of sexual misconduct against John Conyers.
This does not diminish the service this man provided for the city of Detroit and the people of this country. He was a reasoned, articulate and effective congressman for his entire career up until his resignation, that I agree, regrettably, was necessary. There is such a thing as forgiveness but often it only appropriately comes after doing the right thing, like resigning as he did.
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Here “I didn’t see it like that” means “I don’t remember it that way” which was, in fact, a denial of the charges. Franken was being accused of grabbing a woman’s ass while her husband took a photo of the two of them. Sorry, but that’s just hard to imagine actually happening.
Franken didn’t make a “spirited defense” because he was planning on doing so when the Ethics Committee gave him due process to do so. And then Schumer just came out and told him he had to resign, that the party leadership had decided he was going to be cast out. He wasn’t given any proper chance to defend himself.
Sorry, but I’m not going to throw away anybody’s right to due process based solely on the gender of the accuser.
I never looked into the Conyers’ allegations, but I do know that he did a lot of good work over the years. And we shouldn’t be surprised when it comes out that men of a certain generation or older tended to be abusive towards women. I doubt Conyers did anything that guys like Kennedy and King didn’t do, often, when they were charismatic young leaders back in the '60s.
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You’re dead wrong about Franken’s staffers. Virtually all of Franken’s female staffers supported him and none made accusations. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/female-former-staffers-of-al-franken-come-to-his-defense/
Franken didn’t deny the alleged butt gropes from photo ops and it makes sense why. He legitimately couldn’t remember them happening because he took tens of thousands of photos with other people and couldn’t pick out the few people who claimed he grabbed their butts. Franken DID deny two of the most outrageous allegations saying he tried to proposition a woman to go to the bathroom with him and the 7th accuser claiming he said “It’s my right as an entertainer.”
The 7th accuser was described as a former congressional aide in Politico when the incident happened in 2006 (3 years before Franken formally became a Senator) and Jane Mayer revealed the aide was actually a Senator’s aide. Believe it or not, I actually know the aide’s identity. I wont say her name, but she worked for Patty Murray. That raises the question why Franken would intentionally harass the aide of a powerful female Senator (which would have a high chance of pissing her off if she knew about it) when he was seriously considering running for the Senate himself? Also, that aide described there was no physical touching at all, just what she thought Franken’s intentions were. That is weird to state if you’re making a high profile allegation regarding sexual assault.
Franken wanted an investigation to clear his name, but Schumer didn’t want that and told Franken that if he didn’t quit, he’d be censured. He’d have no committee assignments and would be as worthless at his job as Steve King currently is. Being abandoned by the people he thought were his friends, Franken threw in the towel.
And the idea you either believe all women or don’t is a false choice. If you believed all women regarding their stories of sexual assault, there would be nothing preventing women from lying. False allegations that were being propped up as the truth bring down the #metoo movement because nobody will take real allegations seriously. But that doesn’t mean you should dismiss the idea of an allegation being potentially fake or else you’re showing you’re willing to let an innocent person take the fall if it means propping up your movement. There needs to be a system to help verify all of the claims.
Again, you either believe the EIGHT+ women (not counting others we don’t know about), or you don’t. You don’t. I guess they’re just “confused” or a bunch of Jezebels looking for a payout, huh? You only believe assaulted women when Republicans do the groping. Got it!
Franken threw away his own “due process” (this was not a criminal investigation, but I get the jist). There is no mechanism to remove a sitting Senator. Fact. He quit.
If anyone falsely accused me of groping/assaulting them, my denial would look like this, “I DID NO SUCH THING! That is a FALSE accusation. I am INNOCENT!”. See the difference?
As a lawyer I hear that denial mostly from people who are guilty. I guess you can see into Franken’s mind as to why he chose to respond in another way. Way too many straw men in your approach to justice to deal with. Perhaps perceptions and memories can be subjective.
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Wait - so the accused has rights unless the number of accusers passes a certain threshold? Is that how it works?
I think their accusations were never properly vetted in a setting where the accused was given an opportunity to defend himself.
I guess you really don’t care about due process, as long as the accusers come forward with a sufficiently emotionally charged accusation.
Oh, please. Schumer told Franken he no longer had the support of the Party. He was told he wouldn’t get a hearing to defend himself. He was told to quit.
Clearly you’re not a team player, then. Putting your own interests ahead of the party. Why do you want Doug Jones to lose to Roy Moore? And let’s be clear, there are already a dozen people accusing you, and more may come forward.
“Oh, but you insist you’re innocent. And that should be enough? How charming. How quaint. Let’s have a long talk about how little that matters in the big picture. Resign now and retain some of your reputation, or we’ll bring the full force of the party leadership down on your head. You don’t think we can do much worse to you than has already been done?”
Al Franken wasn’t a player. He wasn’t an insider. So the insiders chewed him up and spat him out. And you’re Just Fine with that, because clearly nobody has ever been wrongly accused of anything. So once the threshold of accusers is reached, we can just toss due process out the window.
The fact that the primary accuser was a friend of Roger Stone, and that not a single one of Franken’s co-workers from his years at SNL (where sexism was pretty rampant at the time) supported the accusations apparently means nothing to you.
People who want to carve out the need for due process for special cases don’t actually care about due process at all. Due process isn’t a gift or a privilege, it’s a right and it’s a necessity for the controlling body (be it a nation-state, a corporation, or a political party) to get to the bottom of an issue and determine as well as it can what actually happened.
“Franken threw away his own “due process” (this was not a criminal investigation, but I get the jist).”
Bully for you! Then you understand without due process the accusations were never properly judged and all you are left with are character attacks on anybody who dares question the result.
Case in point. Now you’re just making shit up. Boy that makes your argument stronger!!
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One thing about Franken is that he is from the entertainment industry, a place that makes politicians look like celibate choirboys.
I sent Franken donations for both of his Senate campaigns, so no one was more disappointed than I was.
This huge wave of sentiment blaming the women who were mauled and groped is appalling. My mom who was in her 50s at the time, had a groper at her school where she taught, and it caused her no end of trauma until my dad visited and grabbed the male teacher in a stairwell and physically shook him promising much more if it continued. This rarely happens to popular sitting Senators.
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