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.