Enter one Al Franken.
Earlier this week, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota joined Vice President Joe Biden for a campaign event in Minnesota.
"Biden got plenty of support from Minnesota Democrats," PostBulletin.com reports. "Sen. Al Franken praised Obama for pushing the health care law, saying it will help more seniors get help paying for prescriptions and will ensure Medicare's solvency for an additional eight years."
But before Franken was a senator he was a writer on the TV show Saturday Night Live. Then, he famously joked about raping CBS reporter Lesley Stahl.
As New York magazine reported in 1995, from a writing session that the reporter sat in on:
Franken: “And, ‘I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.’ Or, ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.’ Or, ‘When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her.’”With the national conversation now turning to women's issues as a result of the bizarre and offensive comments by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin over the weekend, it seems a bit odd that Vice President Biden would take the stage with Franken, considering his own lack of sensitivity to the horrors of rape.
Here's a picture of Franken on stage with Biden:
2 comments:
Your commentary starts in a good spot, and goes awry. You are absolutely right--Franken is not funny, rape isn't funny, and never will be. It is completely appropriate to hold him to this standard. And he should have been held to it seventeen years ago when he made those comments You nailed it.
But then you go horribly, horribly awry.
You see, you cannot just minimize the comments of Senator Akin as a "faux pas" or "stupid." They weren't an "oops." They were made deliberately. They were made by a man whose world-view is that women cannot be trusted to tell the truth about rape. They were made by a man who believes that pregnancy is proof that a woman "really wanted it" and was simply publicly claiming she was a victim of sexual violence.
Now, to be perfectly clear, there is absolutely not one shred of science to back him up. So where is he getting this stuff? Mr. Akin's statement is a statement made from faith--faith that all women are liars, all women "want it" and the only women who get raped are promiscuous or prostitutes.
This is sick, and is an insult to every woman in my family--and indeed any woman in America.
So yes, sir, you are right than Mr. Franken's comments are loathesome. But it is not okay for you to minimize, discount, or apologize for Mr. Akin.
Make no mistake, it is not my intention to defend this moron in Missouri. My intent was to show the disparity of perspective that the leftist media and the democrats have when viewing the same conduct.
A democrat can be caught in some sordid homosexual affair, or he can be revealed to have been having an affair with an under-aged staffer? And all you get from the left and media are blank stares and WTF looks.
Let the same conduct be discovered concerning a republican? And they are reaching for the pitchforks and lighting the torches.
Akin is an idiot and he should be soundly rebuffed by those in Missouri for any consideration of public office. I am all for cleaning house of ideologues and the prejudicial thinking that is not supported by facts, but I believe that the culling should be equally dispersed on both sides of the isle.
No different than the moron of a VP that we have who makes and has made for mental fubars and public misstatements than all the VP's of the 20th century combined. Yet the media just smiles and looks the other way.
Post a Comment