Argumentum Ad Hominem

Can you separate the person’s work from the deplorable things they do?

As fate would have it, I had just finished Al Franken’s latest book, “Giant of the Senate,” a week before the first allegation came out against him.

Of course I didn’t want to believe it. The guy’s storytelling about his transition from comedy to politics made me like him even more than I had before, and I agreed with a lot of the things he said in the book. His values appeared to align with mine, and I was happy that he was “on my side.”

Then the first allegation came out, and I looked for evidence that it wasn’t true. The woman accusing him had reportedly just signed a book deal with a publisher that exclusively publishes conservative authors, for example.

Franken himself had spent a lot of time in the book talking about Republicans’ efforts over the years to discredit him by taking things he did for comedy and reporting them out-of-context, making them seem awful and worthy of shame. It felt like the accusations might be another case of this tactic.

But then the allegations kept coming. As of today, to my knowledge the number is 8.

As an observer to all of this, not knowing for sure, I have to assume the women are telling the truth, and that Franken is, despite my previous beliefs, a dirty bastard.

Because to assume Franken is telling the truth and the women are out to get him is to make myself part of the problem.

In situations as nuanced as this, “innocent until proven guilty” does not apply like it might in a courtroom. With one accusation, yes. Maybe even with two or three. But eight? That is enough to establish a pattern, and the most likely conclusion is not that there is some giant conspiracy. The most likely conclusion is that it is true. Al Franken is a misogynist.

So where does that leave me? How can I reconcile agreeing with a man’s political beliefs, applauding his political actions, and at the same time feeling he is a deplorable human being for degrading women and using his position of power to abuse them?

In logical arguments, there is a fallacy called “argumentum ad hominem,” which translates to “argument to the man.” It is considered a fallacy because the person arguing against a point does so by attacking traits of the person making the point instead of addressing the point itself.

That makes sense when you are focusing on the content of what someone is saying. You can’t listen to Al Franken say that global warming is a threat and conclude that it isn’t true because Al Franken has done misogynistic things.

But it does not mean that you have to support Al Franken, even if you believe many of the same things he does.

When I ask myself if I am okay with Franken serving as a U.S. Representative, based on what he has apparently done, the answer is “no.” This kind of behavior is not acceptable from anyone, and certainly not acceptable from a person in a position of power and influence.

I have deliberately not mentioned Roy Moore up until this point, because I wanted to talk about how I was dealing with the news about Al Franken personally before talking about the other side of this coin.

So Roy Moore has been accused of things that are, in my opinion, worse than the things Al Franken has been accused of. Taking a zero tolerance stance, it is tempting to create a false equivalency between the two, but let us be honest about the difference between harassing adult women and harassing teenage girls.

According to MSNBC, here are the allegations against Franken:

• Leeann Tweeden, a radio news anchor, says Franken groped and forcibly kissed her during a USO tour in 2006, before the former comedian was a senator. She says Franken “aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth” when the pair rehearsed a skit that featured a kiss. A photo also surfaced showing Franken looking at a camera while pretending to grab Tweeden’s breasts as she was sleeping while clothed.
• Lindsay Menz says Franken grabbed her buttocks when the pair posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010.
• Two other unidentified women told HuffPost that Franken grabbed their buttocks at separate events in 2007 and 2008. One of the women says Franken suggested that he and she should go to the bathroom together.
• Stephanie Kemplin, an Army veteran, says Franken put his hand on her breast during a USO tour in 2003.
• A woman described as a “former elected official in New England” told the Jezebel website that Franken tried to give her a “wet, open-mouthed kiss” during an event in 2006.
• An unnamed former Democratic congressional aide told Politico that the senator tried to forcibly kiss her after he taped a radio show in 2006. She says she avoided the kiss, then heard Franken say “it’s my right as an entertainer.”
• Tina Dupuy writes in The Atlantic that Franken put his hand around her waist while the pair posed for a photo and squeezed “at least twice” during an event in 2009.

None of the things on the list above are okay. But they are also not rape, statutory or otherwise.

Here are, according to Time, the list of accusations against Roy Moore:

• Leigh Corfman told the Washington Post that she met Moore in 1979 when she was just 14 years old. The then-district attorney offered to watch Corfman while her mother attended a custody hearing, she said, and he asked for her phone number when he was alone with her. Corfman said that days later, Moore drove her to his house and kissed her. During a second encounter, he allegedly took off her shirt and pants and touched her over her underwear and led her hands to touch him over his underwear. “I wanted it over with,” Corfman told the Post.
• Wendy Miller told the Post that she met Moore when she was 14 and working at Gadsden Mall. She claimed that Moore asked her out on dates when she was 16, but her mother forbid her from going out with Moore. Miller said that she was flattered at the time. “Now that I’ve gotten older, the idea that a grown man would want to take out a teenager, that’s disgusting to me,” she told the Post.
• Debbie Wesson Gibson told the Post that Moore first asked her out in 1981, when she was 17, after he had spoken to her high school civics class. She said that they went on several dates over a period of two to three months, but they never did anything more than kiss. She said her mother approved of her going out with Moore.
• Gloria Thacker Deason told the Post that she met Moore when she was 18 at the department store where she worked at the Gadsden Mall. She said they dated on and off over several months, including dates where they drank wine. But she said that the relationship did not go beyond kissing. “My mom was really, really strict, and my curfew was 10:30, but she would let me stay out later with Roy,” she told the Post.
• In a press conference on Nov. 13, Beverly Young Nelson said that Moore sexually assaulted her in 1977 when she was just 16. She claims that Moore offered to drive her home from her job waitressing at a restaurant and then groped her and forced her head toward his crotch. She said that she had first met Moore at the restaurant she worked at when she was 15. She said he frequently complimented her appearance and signed her yearbook with the note: “To a sweeter, more beautiful girl I could not say Merry Christmas. Love Roy Moore, D.A.”
• Tina Johnson told AL.com that Moore groped her in 1991 when she visited his law office with her mother. Johnson, who was 28 years old at the time, said Moore complimented her appearance throughout the meeting and then grabbed her butt when her mother had left the room.
• In an interview with the Post published on Nov. 15, Gena Richardson said that she first met Moore at Gadsden Mall in 1977 either before or just after her 18th birthday. She said that she declined to give him her phone number, and Moore then called her at school to ask her out. After Moore allegedly attempted again to ask her out, she agreed to go on a date, Richardson said. At the end of the night, she said that Moore gave her an unwanted “forceful” kiss.
• Becky Gray told the Post in the story published Nov. 15 that she met Moore at Gadsden Mall, where she worked at the time, when she was 22. Gray said that Moore repeatedly asked her out, and that she consistently turned down his advances. She said she complained to her manager, who allegedly told her that it was “not the first time he had a complaint about him hanging out at the mall.”

Looking at this list, you will notice the same kinds of forcible kisses and groping that Franken is accused of. The one major difference is that the majority of Moore’s victims were underage. There are also differences related to Moore attempting to establish relationships with these underage girls, there are differences in how each man has responded to the allegations, and so forth.

The allegations are different, showing that each man made unwanted and/or inappropriate advances towards women (or girls) in different ways. They are not the same.

But the conclusion I reach about the character of these men is the same. They are both men who used their power to do things to women that made them uncomfortable or even traumatized them.

I don’t know the laws about sexual assault very well, so I can’t speak to what laws Franken and Moore have potentially broken and/or whether they can be prosecuted for these things, but I would say if they can be, they should be.

And I absolutely think neither of them should be in office based on their actions.

Now we need to go back in time to the Clinton Administration. Being a good liberal, you would assume that I have probably come up with some kind of justification for why what Bill and Monica did was okay. Well, I haven’t. Even at the time I thought it was unacceptable, and grounds to have him out of the Oval Office.

Back to today, Franken announced his resignation from office, and Moore is still running, with an endorsement from the President, nonetheless.

Voters in Alabama are about to show us that they care more about making abortion illegal in their state than they do about showing that Roy Moore’s behaviors are unacceptable and that men who do things like this should not hold public office.

I guess you have to ask yourself what is more important — making sure our elected representatives are moral and reasonable human beings, or making sure whoever in the office is going to agree with your stances no matter what.

The fact that he will get elected (and I am sure he will) just shows the trend that we are already on — ignoring or making excuses for reprehensible behavior by elected officials in order to make sure that our agenda gets pushed through.

I feel like I can say that, at the very least, Democrats seem a little more willing to turn on their own when they do horrible disgusting things than the Republicans are. Otherwise President Dumpster Fire would never have made it this far.

So, “argumentum ad hominem” might be a logical fallacy, but in the real world, we should look at a person’s character and how they treat all kinds of people before we decide whether or not we want them on our side.