New accuser claims Al Franken groped her buttocks during photo op.
(CNN) A woman says Sen. Al Franken inappropriately touched her in 2010, telling CNN that he grabbed her buttocks while taking a photo at the Minnesota State Fair.
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Menz's mother, Jodi Brown, also told CNN that she discussed the incident with her daughter immediately after it happened. She said she distinctly recalls her son-in-law saying to her: "Our senator just groped my wife right in front of me."
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Menz posted the photo with Franken on Facebook at the time, on August 27, 2010. Her sister, Cari Thunker, commented under the photo: "Sorry, but you two aren't Bibles (sic) width apart" -- a reference, Thunker explained to CNN, to how physically close Menz and Franken were in the photo.
Menz responded to her sister on Facebook: "Dude -- Al Franken TOTALLY molested me! Creeper!" (The exchange is visible to Menz's Facebook friends.)
CNN: Woman says Franken inappropriately touched her in 2010
This past Thursday I got a timeout on Kos for cussing-out my fellow commentators, and I don’t feel sorry at all.
Al Franken had been accused of inappropriate sexual advances by which I mean: pantomiming groping on a sleeping woman and putting his tongue in that same unwilling woman’s mouth during rehearsal for a play. These are, to say the least, serious accusations. They certainly don’t look good for Franken considering that the photo is itself self-evidently disrespectful to women. Yet still Today, yesterday, and basically since the story broke Daily Kos has been a hotbed of victim blaming, slut shaming, and Conspiracy theory that the allegations are false and invented by the trumpers. We’ve passed through the looking glass and stand on the other side wholly different than before, or maybe that’s just my naivete about my fellow democrats.
Let me make this clear, nobody hates the Trumpers more than I do, I believe they are literally unredeemable for their actions. No matter what they do in the future they will forever be stained by their actions and ignorance of how bad trump is. Part of the stain they carry is the shaming, victim blaming, and attacking trump’s many many accusers. So very attached they are to him that anyone who speaks against him must be silenced thought attack. It’s rather shameful state of affairs if you think about it.
That being said, I really think it is terrible here we are as Democrats at risk losing ourselves to this new media reality, we are becoming more and more like the republicans. We fear that media reports are being falsified and exaggerated and have begun to doubt the veracity of the stories, at least that is, now that our guy is involved. We’ve become so inured to the shouts of fake news that we’ve begun regurgitating them. That is a great and terrible shame. I’m completely shocked by the things I’ve seen fellow Kossacks saying. It’s sounded like a Trump rally in the comments for the past 4-5 days. Calls for investigation into accusers, assertions that it is a planned false attack, Twitter rumors going right to the top of the Recc list, CT nonstop, Cries that Al Franken is so tough “he’s scaring the trump admin” and that explains these accusations. It’s all self-serving bullshit to cover up the logical strain from finding out someone who you like isn’t all their cracked up to be. We all need to take a step back and reevaluate ourselves and actions over the past few days.
I admit, I went over the line with my telling people to go fuck themselves, but can we admit we’ve gone over the edge with the denials around here! Story after story…Diary after diary of people claiming that the whole accusation is false because they saw someone say this or that on twitter. Comment after comment proclaiming that the accuser is making this up completely. Entire stories written from the perspective that the accusation SIMPLY CAN’T BE TRUE because one time you acted in a play and the backstage was pretty busy therefore ITZ ALL LIEZ! Multi-post swarms of stories based on an unverified anon twitter profile troll-claiming to have been there that day and disputing the details. We’ve gone over the edge people, look at us, the republicans finally broke us. They broke us and now we’re broken just like them.
I’m not going to spend this diary taking apart the LITERALLY INSANE CT that has been flying around.
Suffice it to say that Right wind media jumping all over Al Franken does not in any way prove he is not guilty. Frankly RW media is a machine built to do exactly that, jump on every weakness the Democrats expose. The fact that Roger Stone knew about this article early only proves that they are coordinating to hurt democrats, hardly a surprise considering the accuser is a Right-Wing Radio host. What it does not prove is innocence for Franken or dishonesty by the accuser. Just because they are using this to distract from Roy Moore doesn’t make it automatically a lie. In fact, right wingers love to find the kernel of truth in something and inflate it as false equivalents to their own wrong doing. I believe that this is a right winger media attack plan AND that Franken absolutely did it. Allow me to reiterate that I believe the accusations and I believe that Roger Stone is capitalizing on this for republican benefit. I believe them even more now that other women are coming forward and proving a history of this sort of thing.
After that CT and slut shaming started in earnest around here is when I lost it and began telling other kossacks to go fuck themselves and that they were being scumbags. I told in totally about 4 people to fuck themselves before the time out came down and I’m a little glad I got timed out. It gave us all time to process and absorb the allegations more. What I’ve been able to process is 2 more women have come out against him, one alleging phone harassment the second a citizen alleging groping. What I’ve been able to process that the number of people around here with no intention of critically looking at our own side and cleaning our own house is vast.
What I’ve been able to process is that cussing our my fellow kossacks didn’t help, It only hardened the sentiments of some. I saw many people from across the party divide laughing and mocking the more progressive wing of the party and our calls for Franken to step down. I can see that when you’ve decided that the progressives are, in the word of multiple posters here over the weekend, “purity obsessed” it’s easy for you to ignore what we are saying. So next time this happens (and there will be a next time) I will not cuss you out the way I did.
The question is now, will we accept that Al Franken has a history of inappropriate sexual conduct? Or will we all spend the next few days digging into this citizens history and past to discredit her?
Will I have to hear about any scantily clad photo she’s ever taken? Her divorces if any? Every conjecture about her that floats across twitter from anon accounts? Will I be subjected here on DK to every type of attack on the accuser that women everywhere face when coming forward? We will see if that is what happens this time.. But that is what already happened last week.