Al Franken and the #MeToo backfire
AL FRANKEN AND THE #METOO BACKFIRE
Author’s note
I withdrew this article from Medium five days after I originally published it. Now people who found the article valuable are asking me to re-publish it. One friend said that he never saw me as a person to be cowed by criticism. He’s right. I haven’t been that person. I wonder at the courage of my female game-design colleagues who have had to put up with so very much worse. Responses to the original article were divided. But when people with imaginary names post responses calling you a “bitch” it gives you pause. When negative responses line up to rigid, often profane denunciations for partisanship and “victim-shaming” you realize that you’re not having discourse. We humans don’t seem to be very good at discourse these days.
By now you’ve probably seen dozens of articles about and pictures of the alleged incident. Maybe you’ve seen the video of Leann Tweeden grinding with and slapping the ass of a musician while he is performing on the same tour. You may have seen a photo of Leeann fully clothed and cheerfully posing with Franken on what is said to be the same flight. You may have seen some forensic analyses of the infamous boob-grab photo. You probably know of Leann’s connections to Sean Hannity and Trump’s hatchet man Roger Stone. You may even know that I am a rape survivor — a point that I didn’t think I needed to make in the original post as some kind of defense against accusations of victim-shaming. I am acutely aware of the enduring consequences of sexual assault.
I’m re-publishing this article because I was a coward to withdraw it and that’s not the person I want to be. I’m leaving responses open so we can all look for evidence of actual discourse. Thanks to those of you who encouraged me not to silence my own voice.
Original Article
Al Franken responded to the recent accusations by Leeann Tweeden of inappropriate sexual behavior with a sincere apology — which she accepted:
“The apology, sure I accept it, yes. People make mistakes and of course he knew he made a mistake,” Leeann Tweeden said. “So yes I do accept that apology. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t accept his apology.”
Well, thank you, Leeann, that’s mighty civil of you. But millions of people may have now lost faith in one of the most promising and principled political leaders of our time, and you played right into the what-about-ism that’s the Republicans’ favorite tool. While the chosen people of Alabama forgive Roy Moore of allegedly stalking and assaulting underage girls in a mall, they are mad as hell about Al Franken.
According to the US Department of Justice, sexual assault is defined as “any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.”
Quite simply, being an actor experiencing a randy-assed rehearsal of a stage kiss on a USO tour or seeing a tacky personal photograph is not the same as being a sixteen-year-old waitress forcibly groped by the District Attorney who is also over twice your age in a locked car.
Think about this for a minute. You are on a USO tour with other celebrities. You’ve done this many times. You know that you’ll be entertaining troops who are likely massively stressed, dispirited, or even numb from their experiences during their deployment. You have chosen to do this because you want to help lighten their load by making them laugh. In the time-honored tradition of people from Bob Hope to Marilyn Monroe, you know from experience that parts of every tour are likely to be tuned to the sexual deprivations of the troops. Randy-assed performances are delivered by male and female performers alike. As a veteran of nine USO tours, you know what to expect. A comic skit including some sexual content is proposed to you. You accept. A kiss is rehearsed offstage. Shenanigans do or do not occur. You dislike the skit because it objectifies women, but — mystifyingly enough — you keep doing that same skit until the end of the tour. It isn’t offensive enough to make you stop doing it because you understand the need for those laughs, that release of tension. Or maybe even because you like the attention that you’re getting.
Shenanigans continue on the flight home. By now you have a bond with all the folks you’ve been touring with. People are still clowning around. Somebody takes a picture. Later you look at it and think, man, this is really crappy. I can’t really integrate it. When you get home you stew about it. Really? This guy is still doing the boob thing while I’m exhausted and asleep in my flak jacket?
Maybe you don’t notice that his hands are NOT ACTUALLY TOUCHING YOUR BREASTS. He’s making a tacky joke, but he’s not assaulting you. And you are the person responsible for the photo being put on display for all the world to see. And getting 1000% more name recognition in the process. Because you are a celebrity.
Theatre can get pretty tacky backstage. I’ve had decades of experience as an actor. I was born in 1950 and did most of my acting between 1965 and 1990. When I was in the acting program at Ohio State in the 70s, a certain dildo made a regular appearance. It was planted on the corpse of King Henry VI in performances of Richard III where the audience couldn’t see it but the actors could. It was intended to crack the actors up, a kind of trial by fire of the actor’s resolve set up by his or her colleagues. I and my fellows withstood that test, at least most of the time. The infamous dildo also stood proudly on Dracula in his sleeping coffin at the moment when Van Helsing was to drive a stake through the vampire’s heart, causing the unfortunate fellow who was playing Van Helsing to lose his composure completely and hilariously. Inappropriate? Hell, yes. Was it assault or harassment? No; it was actors having a blast.
Do you duck stage punches? Hell, yes — if you can. You don’t want to have your blood spurting all over the stage, as I did once, by not acting quickly enough. There’s a refined art to ducking stage punches believably; it’s called “stage combat.” You don’t simply turn your head. It takes careful rehearsal with both punch-er and punch-ee to make sure that injuries don’t happen. Nowadays with stars doing their own stunts in the movies, the punches are often real and people get hurt, either in rehearsal or on set. But the art of stage combat is meant to prevent that. And if another actor connects and hurts you, you don’t accuse them of assault. You’re an actor.
Do you duck stage kisses? You might, but I never did — not in comedy or any other genre. I agreed to perform the role, I knew there was a kiss, and that’s what I signed up for. It didn’t hurt me. As an actor, if there’s a kiss is in the scene, you rehearse it along with everything else. When you step into a role you are making a formal agreement to pretend persuasively. And yes, there’s sometimes a little too much realism in the rehearsal. In my case, the excess realism was often mutual, or sometimes just my own. But nobody would accuse me of assault (at least, not until this essay is published), nor would I ever accuse any of my co-actor-kissers of the same.
Yes, there is horrible sexist shit everywhere. When I was much younger I had my boobs fondled by executives and I felt powerless. I could only go out of body while it went on. There were no precedents of successful complaint, and I didn’t know I had any power. By the time I was 35 I was aware of my ability to resist and I used it effectively. Hopefully today’s young women know that fact at a much earlier age. But on the record I’ll say that in my youth I also seriously flirted with execs and fellow actors. The road runneth in both directions.
Here is a warning: #metoo is not a cudgel. It is a way in which to attempt to change the culture of sexism and to escape the shadow of false shame. But now in the blush of successes like the public humiliation of creeps like Harvey Weinstein, women may be tempted to use it for personal attention or political purposes. When that happens, #metoo will most certainly lose its power. The cry of “witch hunt” is likely to be validated and further revelations and accusations will be taken with a grain of salt.
