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Believe Women; Don’t Trust Fascists
“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation — the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up)
In the early morning hours of November 16, 2017, the Roger Stone-affiliated now-suspended Twitter account, the “Stone Zone,” declared “QUOTE: Roger Stone says it’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel’. Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of ‘grabby’ behavior.” A few hours later, right wing talk radio star and regular guest on Sean Hannity’s FoxNews show, Leeann Tweeden, accused Senator Franken of harassment releasing a photo, included on a souvenir CD-ROM distributed to the cast and crew by the producers of the USO tour on which Franken and Tweeden performed, of Franken’s outstretched hands apparently caught approaching Tweeden’s tits while she sat upright napping in a military cargo plane’s seat, wearing a helmet and Kevlar vest. Franken issued his denial with an apology and a request for a Senate ethics committee investigation. But Senate Democratic leadership focused on a campaign to pressure Franken to resign his Senate seat.
It was no secret that Franken has had a long and storied career as a comic performer and comedy writer with some social boundary issues. Tweeden is a less…