Hmmm. The Republican Party has been plagued with putting a rapist onto the Supreme Court, and moving a hush-money adulterer into the White House. That's different from these outward awkward displays by Scranton boy Biden that have to do with personal space (which is an interesting study topic in psychology). The Dems might be saying to themselves thank goodness he's not another Clinton or Kennedy with their White House antics.
Just so you know, I am hoping for a deployed vet this time around -- from either party, assuming that the winner will be either Democrat or Republican. The very idea that we have a tough talking, draft dodging coward for a president aggravates me to no end, and he follows other presidents who just drop the ball on military affairs and foreign policy in their own ways.
If you're talking about Kavanaugh, none of the charges came close to being proved, and lots of people who were there at the time, including women, came to his defense. Check out due process. We remain innocent until proved guilty.
It was pretty clear from the polygraph that she was telling the truth. If you want to be blind to that like the Republican Senators, then go ahead. The test was given properly and expertly, and the results were conclusive, as opposed to being a close call. The chances of that test showing its results, yet given to someone who was lying are very low, very very low. We can be sure that we have a rapist on the Supreme Court. I'll pass my lie detector test on that too. I doubt the partisan Senators can.
It was also pretty clear from Kavanaugh's public testimony -- and I watched it all -- that he was lying about several matters. I wouldn't go as far as calling him a rapist, but the lying alone disqualifies him from the SC. Again, this was not a trial, so the 'innocent until proven guilty' standard doesn't apply--merely enough doubt to question his integrity.
Rus: I think you may have misconstrued the satirical thrust of the piece. Just so you know, I'm a far left liberal -- one who very much believed Dr. Ford's testimony and who, unlike Frank, also believed that the rushed investigation into Kavanaugh (in which the FBI failed to contact numerous sources) was a travesty of justice. Nevertheless, I will giddily skewer any double standard, whether it comes from the left or the right, that prioritizes favoritism over a reckoning. Alyssa Milano, The View, and many other feminists -- who have locked their crosshairs towards those politically convenient (which would include Al Franken) -- refuse to apply the same shock and horror towards Biden. They "believe" women, but only when it's politically convenient. What really pushed me over the edge was Eve Gerber's Atlantic piece, linked below, which showed how cartoonish and revisionist this all is (not long after Meghan McCain's similar defense of "decent"):
Personally, I actually think Biden (and Franken) should be forgiven and permitted to change and contribute to political discourse. But as anyone who follows the history of political power knows, a consistent moral standard is often the first to go when you can throw someone over the bus for political gain.
I got the satirical thrust. I suppose compared to other countries' leaders -- such as murderous pervert Hassanal Bolkiah, who made himself infallible under Brunei law and has other people killed for how they have sex -- I should allow for some humor. But it's hard to keep tongue in cheek with the damage going on. We seem unable to address the Biden situation, when the president wants it conflated with his, which in turn gets conflated with Kavanaugh's.
I felt the humor was intended as a nervous response not to address the real issues, sheepish -- although the perspective can be different from his home state as it gets personalized or regionalized.
I'd rather deal with these issues head on, and not gloss over them so. The article you link to seems to want to do this same thing, to open a discussion of how some politicians are touchy feely. As a sales person, we are trained to go right for the kids, which it seems Biden does. He knows what he is doing and why, in other words. Touching can throw people off and make them listen to you. Try touching someone on the forearm, and say, "Listen." They'll give you all their attention in a compassionate and open way. Is it his "sales" technique that he is adjusting? Can we talk about this, without comparing him to the 2-timing president, something completely different?
Apparently not. We either get "cartoonish and revisionist" as you note, or stop being serious, as a nervous reaction. If we didn't have Trump and Kavanaugh, we wouldn't be in this discussion pickle. We wouldn't have to be understandably sheepish.
Joe Biden's behavior is, by any metric, pretty damn strange -- even accounting for a rather liberal interpretation of "touchy-feely." Yet you're right. It's not as bad as Bolkiah or Trump. And yet the same people who threw Al Franken under the bus have decided to suspend the moral whiplash for Biden because they feel that he is electable and thus pardonable in a way that Franken is not. He is not touching people on the forearm. He is standing BEHIND women, grabbing their shoulders, and inhaling their hair. That's both alarming and funny. And this behavior, along with the double standard, is not something that Biden's defenders wish to address. It is thus ripe for satire. Maybe if we examine the double standard by any means necessary, we can get closer to understanding what standards we should expect from our politicians and thus not sheepish.
There's another issue as well, which is how men learn not to do things. On one hand we are asked to show more emotion, and on the other to accept reprimand, or change behavior when we do something like Biden has. It causes us to be careful how we respond to women and children, so as not to be blamed or misunderstood.
The behavior is social in the sense of being part of his personality, or at least his developed public persona. It's there in front of the public and everyone he encounters. Did he have a grandfather who did this? It's been happening under everyone's noses. If he had a male relative, were there women in that grandfather's life who tended to stay at arms distance, and others who were not bothered? Are these articles sheepish, because men are socialized to be sheepish about such details in behavior.
Then there's the question, why now, why now that he is about to announce his candidacy -- after already spending 8 years as VP. This is not a secret sexcapade or a scandal of any sort. It's someone being critical of someone else's public behavior -- politically speaking, we are now asked to take sides -- should Dems no longer back him, and should the GOP shame him in tandem? How did we get to this point?
On the other hand, the current president is calling the country "full" and says, "Frankly, we should get rid of judges." These are his quirks. Do Biden's even compare?
I will have nothing further to say on this matter, since I try to not to engage in religious disputation. Ed's piece, of course, is about applying standards uniformly.
If we try to blow out a match, it works. If we try to blow out a house fire, it doesn't.
So far, we do not know that Biden is a rapist like Kavanaugh is, or an adulterer like Clinton. As Franken's conduct seems sexual, Biden's does not. We have degrees here. We could give them sexual color codes. Kavanaugh's would be a code red. Maybe Clinton's is a code orange, Franken's a yellow, and Biden's a green. Now that we know this, it seems Kavanaugh ought not be on the bench. Clinton, well, it's up there with a warning, and he lied about Jones-Lewinsky, and became impeached. Code yellow, when it proves a hypocrisy from a Senator, apparently becomes a reason to suggest stepping out of office. Code green? I guess behavior change might be in order. Of course, categorical application of standards gets thrown out the window when voters vote in a known crotch grabber. Kavanaugh could say the same thing, "Hey, you knew I was a rapist when you appointed me."
Hmmm. The Republican Party has been plagued with putting a rapist onto the Supreme Court, and moving a hush-money adulterer into the White House. That's different from these outward awkward displays by Scranton boy Biden that have to do with personal space (which is an interesting study topic in psychology). The Dems might be saying to themselves thank goodness he's not another Clinton or Kennedy with their White House antics.
ReplyDeleteJust so you know, I am hoping for a deployed vet this time around -- from either party, assuming that the winner will be either Democrat or Republican. The very idea that we have a tough talking, draft dodging coward for a president aggravates me to no end, and he follows other presidents who just drop the ball on military affairs and foreign policy in their own ways.
If you're talking about Kavanaugh, none of the charges came close to being proved, and lots of people who were there at the time, including women, came to his defense. Check out due process. We remain innocent until proved guilty.
ReplyDeleteIt was pretty clear from the polygraph that she was telling the truth. If you want to be blind to that like the Republican Senators, then go ahead. The test was given properly and expertly, and the results were conclusive, as opposed to being a close call. The chances of that test showing its results, yet given to someone who was lying are very low, very very low. We can be sure that we have a rapist on the Supreme Court. I'll pass my lie detector test on that too. I doubt the partisan Senators can.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIt was also pretty clear from Kavanaugh's public testimony -- and I watched it all -- that he was lying about several matters. I wouldn't go as far as calling him a rapist, but the lying alone disqualifies him from the SC. Again, this was not a trial, so the 'innocent until proven guilty' standard doesn't apply--merely enough doubt to question his integrity.
DeleteRus: I think you may have misconstrued the satirical thrust of the piece. Just so you know, I'm a far left liberal -- one who very much believed Dr. Ford's testimony and who, unlike Frank, also believed that the rushed investigation into Kavanaugh (in which the FBI failed to contact numerous sources) was a travesty of justice. Nevertheless, I will giddily skewer any double standard, whether it comes from the left or the right, that prioritizes favoritism over a reckoning. Alyssa Milano, The View, and many other feminists -- who have locked their crosshairs towards those politically convenient (which would include Al Franken) -- refuse to apply the same shock and horror towards Biden. They "believe" women, but only when it's politically convenient. What really pushed me over the edge was Eve Gerber's Atlantic piece, linked below, which showed how cartoonish and revisionist this all is (not long after Meghan McCain's similar defense of "decent"):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/joe-bidens-affectionate-warmth-what-makes-him-great/586435/
Personally, I actually think Biden (and Franken) should be forgiven and permitted to change and contribute to political discourse. But as anyone who follows the history of political power knows, a consistent moral standard is often the first to go when you can throw someone over the bus for political gain.
Someone UNDER the bus. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteI got the satirical thrust. I suppose compared to other countries' leaders -- such as murderous pervert Hassanal Bolkiah, who made himself infallible under Brunei law and has other people killed for how they have sex -- I should allow for some humor. But it's hard to keep tongue in cheek with the damage going on. We seem unable to address the Biden situation, when the president wants it conflated with his, which in turn gets conflated with Kavanaugh's.
ReplyDeleteI felt the humor was intended as a nervous response not to address the real issues, sheepish -- although the perspective can be different from his home state as it gets personalized or regionalized.
I'd rather deal with these issues head on, and not gloss over them so. The article you link to seems to want to do this same thing, to open a discussion of how some politicians are touchy feely. As a sales person, we are trained to go right for the kids, which it seems Biden does. He knows what he is doing and why, in other words. Touching can throw people off and make them listen to you. Try touching someone on the forearm, and say, "Listen." They'll give you all their attention in a compassionate and open way. Is it his "sales" technique that he is adjusting? Can we talk about this, without comparing him to the 2-timing president, something completely different?
Apparently not. We either get "cartoonish and revisionist" as you note, or stop being serious, as a nervous reaction. If we didn't have Trump and Kavanaugh, we wouldn't be in this discussion pickle. We wouldn't have to be understandably sheepish.
Joe Biden's behavior is, by any metric, pretty damn strange -- even accounting for a rather liberal interpretation of "touchy-feely." Yet you're right. It's not as bad as Bolkiah or Trump. And yet the same people who threw Al Franken under the bus have decided to suspend the moral whiplash for Biden because they feel that he is electable and thus pardonable in a way that Franken is not. He is not touching people on the forearm. He is standing BEHIND women, grabbing their shoulders, and inhaling their hair. That's both alarming and funny. And this behavior, along with the double standard, is not something that Biden's defenders wish to address. It is thus ripe for satire. Maybe if we examine the double standard by any means necessary, we can get closer to understanding what standards we should expect from our politicians and thus not sheepish.
DeleteThere's another issue as well, which is how men learn not to do things. On one hand we are asked to show more emotion, and on the other to accept reprimand, or change behavior when we do something like Biden has. It causes us to be careful how we respond to women and children, so as not to be blamed or misunderstood.
DeleteThe behavior is social in the sense of being part of his personality, or at least his developed public persona. It's there in front of the public and everyone he encounters. Did he have a grandfather who did this? It's been happening under everyone's noses. If he had a male relative, were there women in that grandfather's life who tended to stay at arms distance, and others who were not bothered? Are these articles sheepish, because men are socialized to be sheepish about such details in behavior.
Then there's the question, why now, why now that he is about to announce his candidacy -- after already spending 8 years as VP. This is not a secret sexcapade or a scandal of any sort. It's someone being critical of someone else's public behavior -- politically speaking, we are now asked to take sides -- should Dems no longer back him, and should the GOP shame him in tandem? How did we get to this point?
On the other hand, the current president is calling the country "full" and says, "Frankly, we should get rid of judges." These are his quirks. Do Biden's even compare?
I will have nothing further to say on this matter, since I try to not to engage in religious disputation. Ed's piece, of course, is about applying standards uniformly.
ReplyDeleteIf we try to blow out a match, it works. If we try to blow out a house fire, it doesn't.
DeleteSo far, we do not know that Biden is a rapist like Kavanaugh is, or an adulterer like Clinton. As Franken's conduct seems sexual, Biden's does not. We have degrees here. We could give them sexual color codes. Kavanaugh's would be a code red. Maybe Clinton's is a code orange, Franken's a yellow, and Biden's a green. Now that we know this, it seems Kavanaugh ought not be on the bench. Clinton, well, it's up there with a warning, and he lied about Jones-Lewinsky, and became impeached. Code yellow, when it proves a hypocrisy from a Senator, apparently becomes a reason to suggest stepping out of office. Code green? I guess behavior change might be in order. Of course, categorical application of standards gets thrown out the window when voters vote in a known crotch grabber. Kavanaugh could say the same thing, "Hey, you knew I was a rapist when you appointed me."