The Slatest

Today in Conservative Media: Let’s Not Get Carried Away on Sexual Misconduct

Sen. Al Franken participates in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

Sexual misconduct continued to dominate debate in the conservative press on Thursday. At National Review, Jonah Goldberg argued the importance of maintaining distinctions between categories of misconduct:

We shouldn’t stand for any of it. And yet, the severity of our intolerance should run on a spectrum. Rape should put you in jail. Making a pass at a subordinate in the workplace should have consequences. Making one at a bar? It depends. Taking harassment seriously also requires making serious distinctions.

The problem is that the logic of zero tolerance often renders every bad act as equally unacceptable.

As much as I dislike Franken, making a gross pass at an adult woman is different than molesting a 14-year-old girl. Groping a woman’s backside is not the same thing as raping a woman. And yet Franken’s name is routinely listed alongside Moore’s and Weinstein’s. Some of this leveling is simply journalistic laziness. But a lot of it is partisan demagoguery and opportunism.

At Townhall, Ben Shapiro argued that the status of predators like Weinstein and Charlie Rose as cultural elites allowed them to evade accountability:

In America, three things confer aristocratic status: fame, money and power. Hollywood, politics and journalism are built on all three. And elite status in each of those industries bought not just a bevy of opportunities for brutality but also a silent knowledge that the consequences would be slight for engaging in that brutality.

First, the opportunities. Just as certain peasants of old sought to curry favor with lords, too many Americans seek to curry favor with the powerful. That’s the story of the Hollywood casting couch. It’s the story of the famed journalist and his nighttime corner booth at the local pub. It’s the story of the politician and his late-night office meetings. Does anyone think women were dying to meet Harvey Weinstein or Charlie Rose or Glenn Thrush? Each story we hear tells the same tale: Women thought the only way they could get ahead was to treat these men with complaisance. They thought that they couldn’t turn down dinner invites. And if they were abused, they thought they had to keep their mouths shut.

Also in Townhall, Betsy McCaughey criticized the use of taxpayer money in settling harassment cases like those brought against Democratic Rep. John Conyers. “How dare Congress vote itself such a perk,” she wrote. “Eliminating it is key to reducing sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan chorus is calling for mandatory sexual harassment training to make Congress a more hospitable workplace for women. Sorry. Training is window dressing. The harassers need to get clobbered where it hurts — in their wallets.”

In other news:

Conservatives commemorated Thanksgiving. The Resurgent’s David Thornton thinks politics should be kept from the dinner table:

The politicization of Thanksgiving began in earnest last year with a host of articles about how to survive Thanksgiving in the wake of one the most polarizing and controversial elections in American history.

The past year has not healed wounds from the epic battle of the unpopular candidates. In fact, with the recent explosion of sexual misconduct charges on both sides of the aisle, this year may be worse. It is not a foregone conclusion that this year’s table talk will be rated “G” with topics such as Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Wes Goodman and Al Franken on the table.

Partisans of both sides should be aware that they are not going to sway political views by attacking the deeply-held beliefs of other family members on Thanksgiving. The result of such a strategy would be more likely to persuade other family members that you are … a synonym for a donkey (note that this does not imply a Democrat political affiliation).

The Daily Wire’s Paul Bois assessed a GQ article advising readers to ruin Thanksgiving for Trump supporters. “GQ takes this very seriously, as it is about ‘more than just spite,’ but ‘about potentially chipping away at the ~35 percent of un-budging Trump supporters,’ ” he wrote. “Should any of this fail, GQ advises that people take pride in knowing they ruined their parents’ Thanksgiving and look forward to next year when they can ruin it all over again.”