The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer’s desperately dishonest attempt to exonerate disgraced former Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is filled with more than just deception and lies of omission. On moral grounds, what Mayer admits to doing to one of Franken’s accusers is beyond shameful.
Mayer actually tries to shame this woman, a longtime Democrat, as a way to make it seem as though the accuser is the villain and Franken is the victim.
Back in December, the far-left Politico published the story of this anonymous Democrat staffer (Mayer leaves out the fact she’s a Democrat) who accused Franken of forcibly attempting to kiss her in 2006 when she appeared on his failed Air America radio show.
When she refused his kiss, she says he told her, “It’s my right as an entertainer.”
“He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me. It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked,” the woman told Politico. “I was really startled by it and I just sort of booked it towards the door and he said, ‘It’s my right as an entertainer.’”
Franken denies the allegation.
“This allegation is categorically not true and the idea that I would claim this as my right as an entertainer is preposterous. I look forward to fully cooperating with the ongoing ethics committee investigation,” he said in a statement.
For her New Yorker piece, Mayer did pretend to interview Franken, but because she is only interested in rewriting history and portraying him as a victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy, she didn’t ask him any tough questions. One thing Franken did admit to Mayer, though, is that it was this allegation “that killed me.”
For the record, this was the seventh of a total of eight — eight! — allegations accusing Franken of sexual misconduct.
And so, because this was the allegation that “killed” poor Franken, Mayer went after this woman with a hatchet:
Not long ago, I asked the woman if she thought that Franken had been making a sexual advance or a clumsy thank-you gesture.
“Is there a difference?” she replied. “If someone tries to do something to you unwanted?” From her standpoint, because she was at work—a professional woman deserving respect—his intentions didn’t matter.
Franken has maintained that the woman’s story was the allegation “that killed me.” I asked her if his behavior was bad enough to end his Senate career. [emphasis added]
“I didn’t end his Senate career—he did,” she said.
Good answer. The woman pours cold water on all of Mayer’s victim-shaming, victim-blaming, “Gosh don’t you think you might have handled this differently if you thought about what’s good for Al” accusations disguised as questions: he did what I said he did, and he chose to resign. Yet Mayer allows the real victim — in her mind, Franken — to have the last word, to attack his accuser as “callous,” to blame her for how this has “affected my family”:
Franken was stricken when I related her comments to him. “Look,” he said. “This has really affected my family. I loved being in the Senate. I loved my staff—we had fun and we got good things done, big and small, and they all meant something to me.” He started to cry. “For her to say that, it’s just so callous. It’s just so wrong.” Rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, he said, “I ended my career by saying ‘Thanks’ to her—that’s what she’s saying.”
What everyone wants to forget when it comes to Al Franken, and what Mayer is hoping everyone forgets as she screams FOX NEWS!!!!, is that eight — eight! — separate women came forward to accuse him of forcible kissing and groping.
Most importantly, at least half of those women were not only Democrats — some were supporters of his!
What’s more, Leeann Tweeden, the first woman to come forward, has an actual photograph of a leering, 55-year-old, then-married Al Franken taking advantage of her while she’s asleep to grope her, or appear to grope her… or whatever it is, it’s clearly an attempt to sexually humiliate her.
And never forget that, thus far, Tweeden’s photograph is the only photographic evidence any #MeToo victim has produced to back up their claim an actual #MeToo violation occurred.
But what does Mayer do to Tweeden? Smears her, and slut-shames the former pinup, and fabricates wild conspiracy theories about Fox News and Roger Ailes, even though seven — seven! — other women came forward to basically tell the same story Tweeden did and more than half of those seven are Democrats.
Mayer spends some 13,000 words, more than 5,000 attacking Tweeden, to exonerate Franken for one reason and one reason only — he’s a far-left Democrat, a fellow traveler.
The bottom line is this…
When eight women come forward and one of them has an actual photo of the #MeToo violation, and others can prove they were with Franken when they said they were with Franken, and others are able to produce contemporaneous witnesses who they told about the misconduct at the time, and when you can remove all suspicion of a political hatchet job because at least half of them are Democrats, that’s the whole ballgame.
But because Mayer’s bitter that her irresponsible and shoddy reporting couldn’t take down Brett Kavanaugh, because she’s furious no one believes the stupid allegations against President Trump, she’s out to settle political scores at the expense of Franken’s female accusers.
Even worse, Mayer is sending an unmistakable signal to any woman who dares come forward about a Democrat that they will not benefit from #BelieveAllWomen. Instead, they will be dragged through the mud on the pages of the New Yorker.
#MeToo was supposed to take Trump down. But what ended up happening is that legions of left-wing men in the elite media and in Hollywood were forever destroyed, and that included the precious Al Franken.
And so, Mayer is recalibrating the #MeToo movement. She is reminding women that if a Democrat assaulted you, you had better keep your mouth shut, or else…
In other words, Mayer is single-handedly dragging us back to the ’90s, to the Bill Clinton era, when rabidly-partisan, left-wing feminists like Mayer methodically destroyed Clinton’s accusers and victims with the help of the establishment media.
Mayer has just announced the end of the #MeToo era.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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