It’s Official: Al Franken Was The Victim Of #MeToo Overreach

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the latest #MeToo news, veteran New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer has published a lengthy investigative story that appears to vindicate Al Franken, the former Democratic Senator from Minnesota who resigned in 2017 under a barrage of sexual misconduct charges. Mayer’s conservative critics have accused her of partisan bias, especially in view of her (they say) unskeptical coverage of charges against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They have a good point. But partisan though it may be, Mayer’s piece is a step in the right direction—that of tempering the #MeToo movement’s laudable concern with sexual violence and abuse of power with a genuine commitment to a presumption of innocence and a more realistic view of sexual dynamics.

Back in 2017 when the Franken scandal played out, some of us—including some who, like my own libertarian/center-right self, did not particularly care for most of the Senator’s politics—said all along that he was the victim of a witch-hunt. Granted, the notorious 2006 photo in which Franken (then a comedian) reached toward a sleeping woman’s breasts in a mock intent to grope while grinning at the camera was not a good look. But the details that quickly emerged added some strong exculpatory context.'