The weirdness continues

About the same time we heard that Congressman John Conyers was being pressured to resign because of sexual harassment claims and his use of congressional funds to settle a complaint against him, it emerged that Conyers was not unique in his abuse of federal money. Texas Congress critter Blake Farenthold, a repellent toad in semi-human form who was elected multiple times by the not-very-smart inhabitants of Corpus Christi, had apparently engaged in similar behavior. In fact, it emerged that Farenthold's using congressional funds predated Conyers' abuse of the account. Farenthold, however, didn't seem to be going anywhere until things got weird.

It developed that not only was Farenthold a lech, he was (and probably still is) The Boss from Hell. He verbally abused his staff, he threw literal temper tantrums (staffers describe him as having sceaming fits, throwing things, and dramatically sweeping everything off his desk to create a mess the staff then had to clean up), and he had a potty mouth that came straight from a drunken kegger at a frat house. He was, in fact, such an abusive jerk that his male staffers had a hard time working for him, too. One of those male staffers, a man who had been hired to serve as Farenthold's communications director and tasked with trying to clean up his image, actually became physically ill as a result of the stress created by the hostile work environment

The staffer resigned from Farenthold's staff two years ago, but the recent surge in women coming forward to tell their horror stories may have prompted the man to go talk to the congressional ethics office. The incidents described included Farenthold telling the staffer to be sure to get his fiance to perform oral sex before the wedding because it wasn't ever going to happen after he said I do. Except Farenthold didn't phrase it quite that politely. It was a crude, vulgar remark made at full volume in front of multiple staff members. He also made suggestive comments about whether or not the fiance qualified for wearing white for the wedding. The comments were ones that had they been delivered by a peer could have led to a fistfight, or worse, but when they came from the boss? Just what is the appropriate reaction when your power tripping boss jokes in front of the entire office about your soon-to-be wife being a slut? The staffer had to stand there and try not to react, kind of the same way female staffers find themselves refraining from telling the boss where to shove it when he grabs their ass or tells them they have nice tits. 

One of the not-so-secret secrets about working for a Congress critter is that quite a few of the critters really are abusive asshats. The genial good ol' boy voters see on the campaign trail is not the tyrannical Lizard Person the staff gets to deal with. When I read an article about Farenthold's temper tantrums and general Prize Prick of the Year behavior, I found myself hoping that someone will find the guts to narc on Mitch McConnell. One of my friends worked for McConnell during his first term in the Senate, which makes it so long ago fresh dinosaur dung still littered the landscape. She went into the job really psyched because she'd been a huge McConnell supporter but left before the end of that first term feeling very disillusioned. I figure that if McConnell was one of those power-tripping bosses from Hell during his first term, just how horrible must he be now when he's in his 6th? The typical abusive louts do not mellow with age -- they get worse.

As for why you don't see staffers complaining publicly, e.g., going to the ethics office or its equivalent and doing some whistle blowing, it's because they all know full well that if they do lodge a formal complaint anywhere they're never going to work on Capitol Hill again. Or, for that matter, any place else where your old boss's reference can make a difference. If you're a young, not long out of college staffer with a degree in political science and a desire to be in politics, you're going to keep your mouth shut, eat your Xanax, Valium, Prilosec, and whatever else it takes to get you through the work week, and hope you're able to move on to something better.

Anyway, back to Farenthold. Following the latest revelation about his asshattery, he's announced he's retiring at the end of this term. His staff only has to put up with him for one more year. Poor bastards.

A small digression. Farenthold would come up in the news occasionally, usually for making some comment that made Alex Jones look sane or Jenny McCarthy look smart, I always wondered just how thin the candidate pool was in that part of Texas. Surely there must have been at least one other person in the Corpus Christi area whose IQ was not in single digits who wanted to run for office? Apparently not if an escapee from "Animal House" like Farenthold was the best they could do.

And another one bites the dust

Make that two. I started off typing about Matt Lauer. Had to step away from the computer for a few hours, came back, and Garrison Keillor had joined the list. My lede required a rewrite. 

Matt Lauer. Holy wah. Matt Lauer. That one surprised me a bit. I don't pay much attention to the morning celebrity gossip showcases so did not know Lauer had a track record of being an ass and a philanderer. Garrison Keillor? Not so much of a shock. I've always thought there was something a tad creepy about Keillor. Still, based on close to 70 years of observing men in action, I've been saying all along that the number of men who have never been guilty of playing grab ass, saying something openly offensive, or being generally boorish toward any woman who isn't either their wife or their daughter is depressingly small. The combination of testosterone poisoning and peer pressure can turn almost any dude into a total jerk at least once in his life. And now that boorishness is coming home to roost -- every time a woman comes forward to say, hey, it happened to me, you know other women are wondering if maybe they should finally tell their stories.

Like every other adult in the country I've been observing miscellaneous men getting unmasked as  creepers of varying degrees, from the mildly disgusting -- the ass grabbers who want to hug just a little too long while letting their hands drift south -- to the blatantly pervy, like Roy Moore hanging out at the local mall while trolling for barely legal teenyboppers. I have, of course, Had Thoughts.

The most obvious thought is that heads are going to continue rolling for awhile. Payback Time has arrived; women who have kept their trauma and their disgust bottled up for decades are going to take advantage of a changed climate, as they should. Way too many men have been blatant pigs, abused their power as supervisors or celebrities, and it's about time some karma caught up with them.

I also had the usual thought that once again men in general were demonstrating how totally clueless most of them are about what a woman's life is really like. As Louis C. K. once said (when he wasn't busy whacking off in front of women who weren't real interested in seeing his dick or how proficient he was at self-love), when men meet women through dating sites, their biggest fear is that the woman will turn out to be fat while women fear that the man will be a psychopath who will kill them.

And, yes, it is more than a tad bizarre that a man who actually seemed to get some of the things that make women's lives a heck of lot more stressful than most men's was also so clueless that he thought it was okay to masturbate in front of women who until they got treated to the unwanted floor show had viewed him as being one of the good guys. (I keep hearing that he asked the women if it was okay if he got naked/choked the chicken. Just how does one phrase that? "Mind if I beat off while we chat about the craft of writing good jokes?" "Is it okay if I get totally naked while fondling my dick and pretending this is a normal conversation?") Nonetheless, what the man said is true. Men worry about a lot of stuff when it comes to women but the possibility of getting raped and killed by a lady they've just met usually doesn't make the stress list. The Elaine Wuornos of this world are few and far between.

I get reminded of this truth, incidentally, about the unmentioned but always present paranoia of women whenever I listen to Stephanie Miller on satellite radio. One of her major advertisers is Tiger Lady, the company that makes an easy to carry self defense device that mimics a cat's claws. You carry it in your hand when walking or jogging. It has retractable claws that emerge when you clench your fist. The claws are curved and hollow to ensure that sufficient skin will get collected to make a DNA match possible. Every ad lays it on thick about what a great device this is for women. When was the last time you heard an ad telling men they needed to invest in something they can use to defend themselves? Yes, it's true you'll see and hear ads telling men to buy guns or install security systems, but it's never for their own personal defense. It's to protect the man's family, his defenseless wife and kids. Or the weapon will be so he can be the good guy with a gun when some maniac menaces the public. It's never personalized, like the man is in danger of bad stuff happening to him.

And, speaking of clueless men, you've got to love the way so many guys are emerging as apologists for their fellow creepers by spouting lines like "If I pat a woman's ass, it's a compliment" or "Catcalls are a type of flattery." These are generally the same dudes who have homophobic fits over the vague idea of some other guy checking their equipment out in the men's room or maybe randomly grabbing their junk -- you know, being objectified and treated the way they treat women. Which means they know damn well what the problem is, but only in some mythical world where they're the victims and not the perpetrators.

Moving on to a final thought, it hit me that the whole Roy Moore saga would have played out a lot differently if the distinctly creepy Moore had been, let us say, a janitor instead of a lawyer. How fast do you think the police would have gotten involved if the creeper was a blue collar worker instead of a white collar one? Would it still have fallen into the category of "Oh, don't worry about it, that's just Roy. He likes younger women." Or would the blue collar guy found himself being hauled off to jail for being a public nuisance or worse?

We all know that class plays a role in how seriously crime (or perceived crime) gets treated. If some homeless guy ogles a teenager, he's going to get labeled as a pervert and a definite threat immediately. Society as a whole is going to make it real clear his attentions are not welcome. A dude in a suit and a well-respected position in the community, like a lawyer or a teacher, can be a serial molester but when girls or young women complain, they'll get the brush-off. "You're imagining things." "Oh, it's just Roy, he's a lawyer, he'd never do anything wrong." I wonder just how many teenagers Roy Moore had to hit on before it finally sank in with the mall management that what Moore was doing was definitely too creepy to allow to continue?

The whole Roy Moore episode, for what it's worth, brought back some disturbing local memories, like the elementary school teacher who got away with molesting dozens of students because no one wanted to believe a nice guy in a suit would hurt kids or the serial killer who didn't fall into the suspect pool immediately because he worked in the local Social Security office. Another nice guy in a suit. . . and perhaps the subject for a separate post on the many reasons women were reluctant in the past and remain reluctant today to report abuse that goes way beyond boorishness into outright criminality.

I guess the good news, such as it is, might be that the reluctance could be fading. Young women today should be a lot less likely to decide to ignore it when their boss plays grab ass or suggests that if they invest in some knee pads they've got a better shot at a promotion. Whether or not men's behaviors change will no doubt depend on just how many heads do roll before the current wave of outrage subsides.