The Franken Regrets Miss the Point of #MeToo

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- We’re now reliving the saga of Al Franken. New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer has reopened the still-scabbed wound with a sympathetic portrait of the former Minnesota senator, who left Congress in 2017 after being accused by eight women of inappropriate touching. The response has been swift and fierce. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the presidential candidate who first called for his resignation, has stood by that decision. Pundits have accused Mayer of missing the point: While not all the details of the first accuser’s case stood up to scrutiny, there were seven other women who came forward, one of them a congressional staffer.

But to many men and women, this is the case that looks the most like #MeToo overreach. After all, Franken didn’t have a rape button under his desk, or ejaculate into a potted plant, or wander around in an open bathrobe in front of his assistants, or molest hundreds of young gymnasts, or create an underage sex trafficking ring. He’s not a monster. He seems like a good guy.

Here’s the thing, though: You don’t need to be a bad person to be a sexual harasser.

There are good men out there who’ve said or done stupid things. The whispered conversations among their friends are much the same as things Franken’s friends and family say about him in the New Yorker piece. He’s so devoted to his family. This will absolutely crush him. He never meant to cause any harm.

That can all be true, and the behavior can still be enough to get the guy fired. You can be kind to many and oblivious to some, and good at some parts of your job and unprofessional at others. Losing your job doesn’t make you a martyr.

But when a good man loses his job for doing something dumb, people seem to think the process must have gone awry. In Franken’s case, several of his former Senate colleagues have said as much: “Due process didn’t happen” (Tammy Duckworth), “I should have stood up for due process” (Bill Nelson), and “I really believe in due process” (Tom Udall). Franken himself says he asked Chuck Schumer “for due process and he said no.” Another (Angus King) skipped right over the process to the punishment, saying Franken suffered “the political equivalent of capital punishment.” (Surely only a fellow senator would compare resignation with death.)

Underneath these comments about process is an anxiety about proportionality: Did Franken deserve to lose his job? While losing a job is horrible, the reality is that it happens every day, for all kinds of reasons. Just last week, an Iowa state official made headlines for apparently being canned for liking Tupac Shakur too much. Amazon workers say they’ve been fired for taking too many bathroom breaks. It’s no longer news when someone gets fired for something they tweeted or posted to Facebook. Is that proportional? “Due process” conjures the idea that the accused has certain rights, but if your employer wants to fire you, there’s very little you can do.

“Due process” also sounds legalistic, and indeed, there’s a fairly high legal standard for proving harassment in a court of law. But there’s a big gap between the kind of behavior that will win a lawsuit and the kind of behavior that organizations — whether companies or political parties — want to endorse. That’s why you can’t get sent to jail for being bad at your job, but you can get fired for it.

When people cleave to due process, it seems to suggest that harassment is just a misunderstanding; with enough hearings and paperwork, we can clear it up. Perhaps bureaucracy can save us from being beloved one moment, pilloried the next.

But eight different women have said that Franken made them feel uncomfortable by being too handsy, too kissy, too huggy. And then there’s that photo — the future senator mugging for the camera, apparently about to grab the breasts of a sleeping colleague. What “process” was going to clear that up?

The reason we're (still) having this #MeToo debate isn’t that too many men were fired too fast for small infractions; it’s that so many managed for so long to avoid suffering any repercussions for wildly inappropriate behavior. We can acknowledge that as true while still having empathy for the clueless guys who should have known their behavior was creepy, but didn’t.

Historically, accusing a man of harassment was worse for a woman’s career than it was for the man’s. Those scales have started to tip, and that’s a good thing. But it doesn’t mean this will be painless.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mary Duenwald at mduenwald@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Sarah Green Carmichael is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. She was previously managing editor of ideas and commentary at Barron’s, and an executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she hosted the HBR Ideacast.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.