I Was Wrong About Al Franken by Michelle Goldberg [View all]

[PatSeg]

During the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017, a woman named Leeann Tweeden accused Al Franken of sexually harassing her during his comedian days and produced a photo of him pretending to grope her breasts. I called on Franken to resign from the Senate, not because I thought his alleged actions were irredeemable, but because I thought Democrats should free themselves of the burden of defending him.

My first instinct, I wrote at the time, “is to say that Franken deserves a chance to go through an ethics investigation but remain in the Senate, where he should redouble his efforts on behalf of abuse and harassment victims.” But if that happened, I feared Republicans would be able to use the photo of Franken to deflect from the more serious charges against Donald Trump and Roy Moore, then running for Senate in Alabama while dogged by accusations of sexually assaulting teenagers. “It’s not worth it,” I wrote then. “The question isn’t about what’s fair to Franken, but what’s fair to the rest of us.”

In the years since, I’ve argued with many people who believe that Franken was the victim of a serious injustice. Often, they’d point to Jane Mayer’s New Yorker reporting exposing inconsistencies in Tweeden’s story and describing Franken’s regret and devastation. I feel awful for Franken, and I’m not sure he deserved to lose his job, but I don’t think he was innocent either. Before the Tweeden photo surfaced, I’d heard secondhand about Franken grabbing a woman’s butt at a political event. At the time I didn’t know what to make of it, but when Tweeden came forward, I braced myself for others to follow, and they did.

By the time Franken resigned, eight women had accused him of either groping or trying to forcibly kiss them. Even if you dismiss Tweeden’s account, it seems to me overwhelmingly likely that he acted in a way that left women who’d admired him confused and humiliated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/michelle-goldberg-al-franken.html

The New York Times invited their Opinion columnists "to reflect on when they have misjudged, predicted incorrectly, let their preconceived ideas blind them to the facts. Eight of them weighed in." Interesting series of articles. I haven't read them all yet.

At first I was impressed that after all this time Goldberg was willing to admit she was wrong, but her response was rather disappointing, as if it was really difficult for her to admit she was wrong. Sounds like she is saying "I was wrong, well sort of, maybe, but, but it wasn't my fault".