I awoke this morning to my wife’s triumphant claim of “I told you so.” She predicted about a couple of weeks ago that Matt Lauer would fall in the sexual-harassment purge. But my gosh, Garrison Keillor? Really?
Despite my misogyny, I have no complaints about media companies and Hollywood people firing those accused of such behavior. Apparently Lauer’s behavior was one of those “open secrets,” like J. Edgar Hoover’s domestic partnership, that all the insiders knew, and reporters are having a field day digging up clips like the one of Katie Couric telling an interviewer that Lauer’s most annoying habit was “he pinches me on the ass a lot.” To illustrate how much the landscape has changed, that was all the way back in 2012.
Those people are employed by companies or people who have every right to fire them. We, on the other hand, do not employ Al Franken or John Conyers. They were elected by the state of Minnesota and residents of Michigan’s 13th representative district. They, not we, get to decide their fate, unless their colleagues in the Senate and House move against them, as the Senate did with Bob Packwood in 1995.
But you know what? Any Delaware Democrat who calls for Franken’s and Conyers’ resignations over past transgressions can instead deal with the case of Tom Carper, whose ex-wife accused him of hitting her in a divorce deposition decades ago. This was long rumored, but wasn’t revealed publicly until his run for governor against Janet Rzewnicki in 1996. The revelation backfired because Rzewnicki tried to hide her involvement in finding it and releasing it, and in the aftermath nobody did much to pursue it further. Celia Cohen wouldn’t even mention it because she blew the story, but it’s in the News Journal files at the public library. So how does that jibe with the current climate? If you’re willing to hoist somebody else’s senator, how about your own?
So all you Delaware warriors who want their politicians to resign if they’ve ever mistreated women, get to work on the one guy you actually have some influence over. Go after Tom Carper.
