RUTHFULLY YOURS

First:I think rapists and pedophiles should get the Lorena Bobbit surgery. I think physical force with threats of job loss is criminal. I think sexual innuendo and harassment is vulgar and discrediting. So is deliberate and targeted seduction by women vulgar and discrediting.

Last week Carly Fiorina spoke to Chris Wallace about the recent sex-scandals taking down celebrities, media personalities and legislators….all falling like dominoes. She described a vulgar suggestion many years ago that she use sex in order to get a contract. Her reaction then was to run out to her car and cry.

But the weeping gets to me. Fiorina wanted to be the leader of the free world? Would she run to her limo and cry if some banana dictator made a sexual suggestion threatening to withhold a treaty if she did not succumb to sex?

I would vote tomorrow for a woman who slapped or told off a sexual predator employer. Rep. Martha McSally a Republican in District 2 of Arizona is a retired United States Colonel and pilot. This is what she wrote about American female soldiers forced to wear headscarves in Moslem nations.

“To me, the abaya directive, with its different rules for male and female troops and the requirement that I don the garb of a faith not my own, violated the the U.S. constitutional values I pledged to defend and degraded military order and cohesion.”

“Our male and female troops are risking their lives every day in Afghanistan while proudly representing and defending the United States. They are there to disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda while assisting Afghans in securing their future from extremist oppression. With our Afghan partners, trust can be built on a foundation of mutual respect, where no one is expected to submit to others’ cultural and religious guidelines.”

I bet she wouldn’t cry. rsk

November is a month for memories. We think of the Pilgrims who celebrated their first year in the New World, in 1621 – and try to make sense of the hardships they endured, all for the cause of freedom to worship as they chose. We give thanks they succeeded. On the 11th of November, we remember the 18 million soldiers and civilians who died in World War I – a day commemorated as Armistice, Poppy, Remembrance and Veterans Day. Sadly, it was a war that did not “end all wars,” but served as prelude to a bigger conflict. But, in the end, freedom prevailed. On November 22nd, 1963 at 12:30PM President John F. Kennedy was assassinated – catapulting the nation into a struggle to understand, why? For us who were young and free, it was as though we also had been struck down. And, that most iconic of American films, Casablanca, premiered in New York City on November 26, 1942 – Thanksgiving Day. It was a movie with relevance today – a story of refugees trapped by events beyond their control, with a majority of the actors and actresses, either foreign born or refugees themselves – all seeking freedom.

The beacon of freedom, more than anything else, defines the world’s conflicts. That was so this month. Some who live in democracies are unappreciative of freedom’s rarity and fragility; for others, it is a distant siren, a promise. Islamic extremists, who despise the concept of freedom – individual, religious, political and economic – were relentless during the month. According to Wikipedia, more than 600 died at Islamists’ hands. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan now living in New York, drove a truck down a bike lane in lower Manhattan, killing eight cyclists. Before being caught, he shouted Allahu Akbar! God is the greatest! He had left a note pledging allegiance to ISIS. In a mosque on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, ISIS gunmen murdered 305 Sufi Muslims, a sect they consider heretical. On the Korean Peninsula, a North Korean soldier, identified only by his surname, Oh, escaped to the South, carrying with him five bullet wounds from North Korean soldiers, who shot him as he slipped across the border. What motivated Oh? Perhaps he had heard President Trump speak in Seoul of the “dazzling light” of South Korea versus the “impenetrable darkness” of the North – “the glories of freedom versus the toll of tyranny.”

Freedom, or the lack thereof, was at the center of the decision to elevate Xi Jinping last month. It is the crux of the debate between Brussels and London over Brexit – between the vision of Europe articulated by Margaret Thatcher almost forty years ago of a region based on nation-states that cooperate in trade and defense, versus the bureaucratic and liberty-challenged monolith preferred by those like Jean Claude Junker – an unaccountable and under-representative government that serves the needs of bureaucrats, not the wishes of the people – the populous. (Populism has been redefined by European politicians and media, and has assumed a pejorative connotation, to include all those – from nationalists to lovers of liberty – who threaten the comfortable lives led by arrogant elites in Brussels.) In the U.S., freedom lurks behind the debate raging between those who want government to do more, and those who would have it do less – to determine where on the spectrum, between anarchy and tyranny, one would prefer our politics to lie. Freedom is at risk in universities and colleges where conservatives are banned and debate is stifled.

Many years ago an Arab in Jerusalem stabbed an elderly Orthodox Jew whose companions gave chase, captured the assailant and beat him until the police came. Peter Jennings, who was the anchor of ABC News from 1984 until his death in 2005, described it thus: “Today an Orthodox mob chased and beat a Palestinian Arab.” That was artful bias–reporting an incident factually with no exculpatory explanation.

The other networks were no better. NBC reported outright lies during their coverage of the Lebanon War.

In 1984 Americans for a Safe Israel produced a documentary entitled NBC in Lebanon- A Study in Media Misrepresentation. In The New York Times, the television critic John Corry reviewed it as flawed (naturally) but admitted “[I]t attempts to prove, and to a large extent does prove, that coverage by the NBC Nightly News of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982 was faulty.” He continued “One may argue, of course, that journalism ought not to reflect any viewpoint, and that to accuse NBC of not reflecting the ‘Israeli viewpoint’ is only to accuse it of not taking sides. On the other hand, the documentary, judiciously using NBC’s own film, suggests that NBC was indeed taking sides and pressing the viewpoint of the P.L.O.“

Of Tom Brokaw, the “star” of the AFSI documentary, Dan Rather who ‘resigned’ in disgrace from CBS after he orchestrated a false report on the National Guard Service of then President George Bush, and Peter Jennings, journalist Sarah Pentz had this to say: “Each of these men leaves a shameful legacy on the face of American journalism. They led their networks into a shocking wave of politically biased reporting and did absolutely nothing to rebuke those who indulged in it––because, it was their agenda, too. They knew exactly what they were doing. Each is responsible for the blackening tarnish that covers all journalists today because of their partisan politics.”

These biased network journalists paved the way for the clowns who dominate network as well as print media today. At least those three had credentials as journalists, however badly they misused them. The present lot reports on world events, and especially Israel without a clue. They pretend that the history of Israel started in 1967 when Jews, without provocation or legitimate rights, invaded the peaceful and productive lands of the “West Bank.”

Chris Matthews of MSNBC worries that moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem will “desecrate the Holy City”, defends Palestinian Arab terrorism, and worries, worries, worries full time about the perverse Jewish lobby, Jewish Republicans, Jewish influence–and non Jewish Donald Trump. As Stuart Schwartz summed up in the American Thinkerin 2010: “Matthews has long used his television platform to spotlight the danger to the United States posed by Israel and American Jews who conspire against the country. Call it ‘The Protocols of Chris Matthews,’ or, perhaps, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of MSNBC.’ Rid us of Israel, rid us of Jews, and Pandora will return to its pre-kosher bliss.”

In 2014, in a widely circulated column from The Atlantic “What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel – The news tells us less about Israel than about the people writing the news” former AP reporter Matti Friedman writes: “The uglier aspects of Palestinian society are untouchable because they would disrupt the ‘Israel story,’ which is a story of Jewish moral failure.” He includes this pithy 1946 quote from George Orwell: “The argument that to tell the truth would be ‘inopportune’ or would ‘play into the hands of’ somebody or other is felt to be unanswerable, and few people are bothered by the prospect that the lies which they condone will get out of the newspapers and into the history books.”

Media reporting on North Korea, China, Iran, Africa, Russia, and anything about the President and domestic policies is devoid of historical context and alternative perspectives. It is “one size fits all” liberal cant.

Celebrities routinely host galas to reward themselves: Emmies, Golden Globes, Oscars. Journalists have their own awards for distinction in reporting–the Peabody, the Pulitzer, the Edward R. Murrow. I would recommend the Apate award for all those who compound ignorance and bias into fake news. In Greek mythology Apate was the goddess of deception, guile and fraud. The statuette could have a Pinocchio nose, although the Disney legend was limited to thirteen lies, and reporters have no limits.

Many articles have been written about the growing trend of adult children choosing estrangement in American families. The recent Thanksgiving holiday has highlighted this alarming movement toward the dissolution of family bonds of love and loyalty. What is the source of this dreadful shift? What happened to honor thy father and mother?

Sheri McGregor, M.A. has written an important book titled Done With The Crying that explores the disturbing increase in families with adult children who disown their parents. There are, of course, appropriate conditions for estrangement but the current trend appears baffling to the 9,000 confused and grieving parents surveyed who cannot fathom why the children they have loved for a lifetime are choosing to reject them. Done With The Crying attempts to help devastated parents accept their loss and move on with their lives. McGregor is asking “What now?” I am asking “Why now?”

Generation gaps between parents and their adult children have traditionally been resolved with courtesy, respect, and a sense of humor. Adult children honored their parents even when they disagreed with them and chose a different path for their own lives. A fundamental level of gratitude for the parent’s efforts and dedication allowed the differences to be minimized and the family bonds maximized. What has changed??

The bewildered parents McGregor describes cannot accept the estrangement because they simply do not understand it. She describes the staggering lack of respect, restraint, gratitude, and overarching sense of entitlement in adult children’s demand for parental conformity including restricting their parents’ freedom of speech. In the upside-down world of self-seeking millennials the parent/child role has been reversed. Parents are expected to conform to their adult child’s new norms. If the parent refuses the adult child withdraws himself to a “safe space” seeking protection from the “toxic” ideas of his parents. Toxicity, like hate speech, has been redefined as anything the adult child opposes.

My essay last week on the worrying elision of the criminal and the minimal in the current wave of sexual-assault allegations seems to have stirred some colleagues. So at the risk of being accused of never taking “no” for an answer, let me jump straight back on in. For as Jonah Goldberg mentioned in his recent column, this whole realm is in flux, and debate is going to be needed if this panic is going to be resolved in a sensible manner.

In a column yesterday, Christina Hoff Sommers brilliantly dissected as well as lampooned some recent heights of the present frenzy, such as Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times who recently asked: “I seriously, sincerely wonder how all women don’t regard all men as monsters to be constantly feared.”

To which Sommers rightly responded by asking: “Does Manjoo include himself? Are his female colleagues at the Times suddenly in constant fear of him?”

Of course not. Manjoo is simply engaging in male posturing of the most prostrate and supplicant variety. If we are going to get beyond such posturing, it will also be necessary to have a discussion that is capable of raising inconvenient, even unpleasant, facets of this whole business.

To that end, there is still one aspect of all this that seems cordoned off. That is the whole issue of “power”: Who has it, who gives it, and who wields it. Given that it is almost impossible for a man to write about a woman’s experience in this area without being flayed alive, let me relay the story of somebody I once met some years ago.

The man was an acquaintance of a friend, was fairly attractive, and as such had decided to become an actor. Since acting is not, alas, an art in which talent will always out, a degree of networking is usually necessary for someone to succeed. Though heterosexual himself, this young man had come within the circle of an actor who was known to be gay. And since acting, like sport, is one of the few areas left where being gay is still thought to be a vast career drawback, the celebrated actor had kept the whole gay thing an open-ish secret.

Anyhow — the straight, aspiring actor mentioned in passing that he had been out on a couple of dates with this actor, though added that things had ended cooly. The cause was that a couple of dates in, the aspirant actor guessed that it might be time to drop into the conversation the fact that he happened to have a girlfriend. I recall that he explained the need to make this admission with a certain regret, for relations with the gay actor had, understandably, wound down after that. The older actor had not been back in touch, and the younger actor seemed slightly resentful that he had spoilt what could have been an ongoing bit of career-furthering by not continuing to play along with the whole gay-date thing.

The Law of gravity has not been repealed. What has risen will, at some point, decline. But, when? Hundreds of people are paid millions of dollars to predict the unpredictable. Yet, the best advice about the direction of the market over the short term I have ever read was given by J.P. Morgan. The story may be apocryphal, but it was re-told by Benjamin Graham in The Intelligent Investor (1949); it still resonates. Asked by his lift boy, in 1901, what will the stock market do? He replied, “it will fluctuate.”

The past year has seen establishment-types in Washington, mainstream media and coastal elites trying to undo last year’s election. Has the market’s positive performance deepened their denial and made more passionate their hysteria? Would they have been so relentless had stocks done as Paul Krugman (economist and New York Times columnist) predicted when news of Trump’s election was clear? Krugman wrote as stock futures plunged early before trading began on Wednesday, the 9th of November. As to when they would recover, he opined: “a first-pass answer is never.” The DJIA rose 257 points that day.

The performance of U.S. equity markets since the election of Donald Trump has been remarkable. He came after a President who entered office following the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Stocks were at five-year lows. Mr. Obama’s two terms saw the market (DJIA) rise 151%; he left office with an approval rating in the mid 50% range. In contrast, Mr. Trump was elected with stocks near all-time highs, and he has the lowest approval numbers in memory. However, those ratings run counter to optimism seen in polls like the IDB/TIPP Poll: Economic Optimism Index – a mixture of consumers, workers and investors. Over the first sixteen years of this century, the Index averaged 49.3, or slightly negative. Today, it stands at 53.6. During the last year of Mr. Obama’s Presidency, the number was under 48.

Benjamin Graham, considered the father of value investing, explained his concept of investing this way: “In the short term, it is like a voting machine – tallying up which firms are popular and unpopular. But in the long run, it is like a weighing machine – assessing the substance of a company.” Is a year a long enough period to measure Mr. Trump? Is the market reflecting his popularity, or is it weighing what he has accomplished, in restoring cost-benefit analysis and undoing restrictive regulations in federal agencies like the EPA, FDA, FCC, Transportation and the Department of Education? Is it measuring Betsy Devos’s focus on making public school more competitive through vouchers and Charter schools? Is it weighing Mr. Trump’s appointment of originalists as judges, ones more predictable, as they are aligned with the Constitution and less governed by politics or relativism? Does it see an end to authoritarianism at the CFPB?

I don’t pretend to know why markets have done what they have. And I know they will correct, but when and by how much? So, what should investors do? There are no simple answers. The needs of each is individual. The future is like peering through a windshield in driving rain. Clarity is confined to the past.

But, in my experience, market timing is only accurate in retrospect. What I do know is that over the long term – two, three or four decades – stocks have risen. They should continue to do so. If one had bought stocks on September 3, 1929, the day that year the DJIA peaked, one’s compounded annual return, through today, would still have been 4.8%, even though stocks did not exceed those 1929 prices until 1954.[1] If you had reinvested dividends your total compounded annual return would have exceeded 6%. On my birthdate, January 31, 1941, the DJIA was roughly one third of what it had been twelve years earlier. If my grandparents had given me a $1000 as a birth gift, and if I had been smart enough to leave it invested, it would be now worth $187,000, or a 7.01% CAGR. Over the 48 years I spent on Wall Street annual returns compounded at 6.3%, despite stocks being lower fifteen years after I got into the business.

Mr. Obama became President at a fortuitous time. During his eight years in office, the DJIA compounded at an annual rate of 12.1%. But, had you bought stocks on the dawn of the new millennium, on January 3, 2000, your compounded return would have been only 3.9%. That modest performance reflects the bear market that began in March 2000 and ended in March 2003; and the one that began in October 2007 and ended in May 2009. If one goes back 100 years, stocks, as measured by the DJIA, have compounded at 5.9% – a reasonable assumption for future prospects, considering what the last century saw: a world-wide depression, two world wars and numerous smaller ones, a cold war that lasted forty-five years, the deaths in office of three presidents (one by assassination), a bout of inflation that sent Treasuries to 20% yields, the first attack on American soil since the war of 1812, and a credit crisis that nearly sent financial markets into a tail spin. But it was also a period that highlighted American creative genius, that saw the Country land a man on the moon, and which witnessed revolutions in farming, manufacturing, transportation, merchandising, electronics, computing and communications.

There have been structural changes in markets. Among them has been the shrinking of the number of publically traded stocks, and the concomitant increase in value of those that survived. According to the Carlyle Group, there are 3671 companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges today. Twenty years ago, there were about 7300, yet the value of publically traded stocks today – about $27 trillion – is double the value of all publically traded stocks in 1997. What happened? Private equity allows start-ups to wait longer to go public. Mergers and bankruptcies caused the disappearance of many micro and small-cap stocks. Also, passive strategies have limited the number of shares available for trading. Since the millennium, about $1.7 trillion has been invested in index funds, ETFs and other similar strategies, while funds actively managed have seen about $1.4 trillion in outflows. Equity derivatives have affected valuations, altering the nature of risk. And, over the past eight years, the Fed purchased over $4 trillion in government and agency debt. That has ended. The yield on 30-day Treasury Bills has risen from 0.26% on September 30, 2016 to 1.29% now. Over the same time, the spread between Investment Grade Corporates and the 10-Year Treasury has narrowed from 191 basis points to 137 basis points, implying a willingness to assume more risk.

In response to Mr. Buffett’s quote in the rubric at the top of this essay, I suspect people are neither greedy nor fearful. They are somewhere in between. But, keep in mind, investing is for tortoises, not hares. Avoid being cute or believing every seer. Think long term and maintain perspective.

The only addition I would add to the wisdom of J.P. Morgan quoted at the start of this essay is that over the long-term stocks rise; though returns can be negative for a decade or more. The caveat: our democracy, entrepreneurship and capitalism survive. Warren Buffett recently predicted the DJIA will hit 1,000,000 in the next hundred years. One’s first reaction is that the Wizard of Omaha is losing it; but 1,000,000 on the DJIA from the current level implies compounded annual returns of 3.7%, easily doable, as long as our democracy stays strong. My guess is that my great grandchildren will see that happen.

Power,” Henry Kissinger observed, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Men, but mostly women, have been trading erotic services for access to power since time began.https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/24/power-sex-and-politics/

The ruling class’s recent carrying on over a supposed epidemic of powerful grabbers and gropers runs counter to common sense and experience. If Henry, who resembled less a prince than a frog even in his youth found his connections with power and wealth sufficient to satisfy his longings, so can anyone similarly placed.

Nor is there any evidence of a sudden increase in morality or restraint having cut into the supply of the willing. There is even less reason to believe that the very same arbiters of public behavior who, increasingly, penalize advocacy of restricting sex to men and women married to one another have become defenders of female modesty.

What, then, is the fuss about? It seems as the ruling class’s leadership experiences a major turnover, it is making a minor shift in tactics and in its list of enemies. Herewith, I try to explain.

Washington’s Trade-Offs
First, the basics. During my eight years on the Senate staff, sex was a currency for renting rungs on ladders to power. Uninvolved and with a hygroscopic shoulder, I listened to accounts of the trade, in which some one-third of senators, male senior staff, and corresponding numbers of females seemed to be involved. I write “trade,” because not once did I hear of anyone forcing his attention. Given what seemed an endless supply of the willing, anyone who might feel compelled to do that would have been a loser otherwise unfit for survival in that demanding environment.

This, I wager, is not so different from others’ experiences in Washington. Senior female staffers were far more open than secretaries in describing their conquests of places up the ladder, especially of senators. There was some reticence only in talking about “relationships” with such as John Tower (R-Texas) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) because they were the easiest, and had so many. The prize, of course, was Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)—rooster over a veritable hen house that was, almost literally, a “chick magnet.” Access to power, or status, or the appearance thereof was on one side, sex on the other. Innocence was the one quality entirely absent on all sides.

In the basic bargain, the female proposes. The power holder has the prerogative to say “no,” or just to do nothing. By a lesser token, wealthy men need not offer cash to have female attention showered on them. Money is silver currency. Power is gold. A few, occasionally, get impatient and grab. But taking egregious behavior as the norm of the relationship between power and sex willfully disregards reality. Banish the grabbing, and the fundamental reality remains unchanged.

The Sins of Others
What, then, are our powerful rulers’ claims of zero tolerance for sexual harassment or sexual commerce about? First, they do not involve the ruling class giving up any of their privileges, never mind what are effectively their harems. They are confessions—not of their own sins, but of the sins of others. The others whose sins they confess are not the friends of those doing the confessing—at least, not their current friends. Yet again, they implicitly validate their own behavior by signaling their own virtue vis à vis others.

The humanitarian hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Unconditional love is the Holy Grail for millennials. They talk about it, dream about it, want it, need it, and are outraged if anyone dares to question its value. Unconditional love is, after all, “settled” science among millennial “experts” whose opinions are accepted and observed with religious conformity by their devotees.

Wikipedia defines unconditional love as “affection without any limitations or love without conditions.” The current demand for unconditional love is consistent with the left-wing liberal campaign to value feelings over facts and effort over achievement as metrics for what is good in society. So, let’s examine unconditional love.

First, an appropriate season for unconditional love exists during infancy and early childhood. Parents accept anything and everything that babies do – we love them for just being. Babies and young children lack the ability for any self-control so we do not expect standards of behavior – anything goes. Unconditional love separates the individual from his/her behavior which is entirely appropriate for infants and young children. When the demand for unconditional love is extended into adulthood the individual inappropriately demands to be loved without regard for his/her behavior in the same way an infant is loved.

Relationships are structured with written, spoken, and unspoken rules and standards of behavior. Family relationships, social relationships, business relationships, professional relationships, sexual relationships are all organized on some level by rules that participants are expected to follow. Societies are similarly organized by their infrastructure of rules/laws that citizens are expected to observe. What makes infancy and early childhood so exceptional is its distinguishing “no rules” formula. Society temporarily accepts the separation of the individual from his/her behavior. What happens when a society refuses adulthood and instead strives for permanent childhood?

When the no rules formula is protracted and adulthood is rejected the result is an infantilized population and social chaos. Consider the societal implications of adults who refuse to abide by laws – traffic laws, property laws, environmental laws, civil rights laws, family laws. All rules and regulations are considered anathema to chronological adults living in the subjective reality of “no rules” infancy including college campuses that no longer respect Constitutional guarantees of free speech. Fragile infantilized students require safe spaces and trigger warnings to protect them from ideas that they disagree with. College students have historically been considered future leaders. How can a leader be a leader in a pluralist society if he/she cannot even listen to an opposing point of view?

He is the offspring of the unhappy marriage between feminism and the sexual revolution.
https://spectator.org/the-rise-of-the-beta-male-sexual-harasser/?utm_source=

The winds of what the New York Post calls Pervnado continue to gather strength, carving a hole through the beta male worlds of NPR, PBS, Hollywood, the New Republic, Vox, the New York Times, and MSNBC, among others. What emerges from this storm of scandal is a clearer picture of a culture that trained men not to respect women but to respect feminism. In many ways, the Beta Male sexual harasser is the squalid offspring of the unhappy marriage between feminism and the sexual revolution, from whose chaotic household he learned virtue-signaling without virtue.

The growing pile of confession notes — which combine ostensible empathy and promises of sensitivity and submission with strategically placed, lawyerly denials — testifies to the grimly comic dishonesty of the Beta Male sexual harasser. He thought that he could continue to indulge his appetites as long as he adjusted his attitudes, a view that all of the prattle about “systemic change” confirms him in, insofar as it treats his misbehavior as an ideological problem rather than a moral one. Implied in many of the confession notes from the harassers is the ludicrous suggestion that with a little more “education,” with a few more training seminars, with a little more consciousness-raising, they would have behaved virtuously. This pose allows them to escape moral responsibility and painlessly join the “solution.” The sexual revolution’s massive crisis of unchastity is thus turned into a “problem of power” that can be remedied by the hiring of more female executives, the expansion of HR departments, and “better” education.

For sheer pomposity, perhaps nothing beats Richard Dreyfuss’s non-apology apology, chalking up his misbehavior to the “performative masculine man my father had modeled for me to be.” But, no worries, he is enlightened now: “I have had to redefine what it means to be a man, and an ethical man. I think every man on Earth has or will have to grapple with this question. But I am not an assaulter.”

Al Franken, trading in the therapeutic, I-stand-ready-to-listen babble of his SNL character Stuart Smalley, says he is going to commit himself anew to believing “women’s experiences.” Never mind that he denied his accuser’s experience. He doesn’t “remember the rehearsal for the skit as Leann does,” but women “deserve to be heard, and believed.” For this act of blatantly dishonest and contradictory atonement, he is receiving praise for his “honesty” and now — in a reminder that feminism will always put politics ahead of the protection of women — a concerted effort is underway to save his career. Thirty-six women from Saturday Night Live have penned a letter saying that his behavior “was stupid and foolish” but that shouldn’t detract from his status as “an honorable public servant.” Michelle Goldberg, writing in the New York Times, says that she is hedging on her call for the ouster of Franken, offering this look into the quality of her reasoning: “It’s easy to condemn morally worthless men like Trump; it’s much harder to figure out what should happen to men who make valuable political and cultural contributions, and whose alleged misdeeds fall far short of criminal.”

Other figures who see themselves as male feminists, such as Charlie Rose and Glenn Thrush, have adopted a similar stance to Franken’s: apologize for making women feel “uncomfortable” while treating the underlying charge as a subjective difference of opinion. Michelle Goldberg treats these phony apologies as a sign of progress:

It’s not a coincidence that the post-Harvey Weinstein purge of sexual harassers has been largely confined to liberal-leaning fields like Hollywood, media, and the Democratic party. This isn’t because progressive institutions are more sexist than others — I’m confident there’s at least as much sexual abuse in finance as in publishing. Rather, organizations with liberal values have suddenly become extremely responsive to claims of sexism.

One can see in such deluded musings why the feminists prefer Beta Male sexual harassers to the Mike Pences. Whether one is “responsive to claims of sexism” is determined in their eyes not by the person’s virtue but by his politics. They will take a goatish Al Franken over a chivalrous Mike Pence. Or take Al Gore, one of the leading Beta Male pols of his generation, who has completely escaped notice during this frenzy, despite credible reports of his having lunged at a masseuse. You won’t see his face in any of the mainstream media’s montages of sexual harassers, lest that set back the cause of climate-change activism. For all the talk of a Clintonian “reckoning,” the feminists still agree with Nina Burleigh that the advance of liberal politics, or as she put it “keeping theocracy off our backs,” is worth “kneepads.”

In the coarseness of that remark, in its shameless admission that feminism seeks power not decency, one could hear the rumblings of today’s scandal. In a culture that rejects chivalry, chastity, and the countless prudent safeguards previous generations adopted in light of real differences between the sexes — in a culture that in effect reduces “goodness” to a set of political attitudes — the rise of the Beta Male sexual harasser was inevitable. From the sordid bed of the sexual revolution and crass feminism has come a new creature — the male feminist pig.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY  TO ALL