Author Topic: "Me Too" Blowback  (Read 6057 times)

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Offline Michael Hardner

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #75 on: January 30, 2018, 06:23:13 am »
When iPhone footage starting sinking candidates (like Mitt Romney) I said that we were going to have to have 'dirty' people as candidates because nobody could withstand the scrutiny of pervasive coverage via phones.  I didn't consider that the web would soon connect anyone with dirt on a candidate to an audience.

JFK was the television man, and maybe Trump is the internet man.  Maybe somebody so typical, so dirty is immunized against the 'October Surprise'.  I don't know yet.

In any case, Brown is a curious case of somebody who came up through popular support and was downed because of it.  Kind of populism vs. populism although the downfall was initiated by caucus.  He could have actually won the election if he stayed on, but polite Canadians wouldn't stand for that.

-----

Ultimately, this is very healthy and feels like 'adam and eve biting the apple'.  The truth is coming out, and there's no going back.  People are talking about inappropriate behaviour and regular people are moving on.

Offline SirJohn

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #76 on: January 30, 2018, 10:46:39 am »
Ultimately, this is very healthy and feels like 'adam and eve biting the apple'.  The truth is coming out, and there's no going back.  People are talking about inappropriate behaviour and regular people are moving on.

Yeah, but there's no agreement on what is inappropriate. Oh, sure, the worst of it, but not most of it. Depending on age, gender and religion, the answers will all vary wildly. What a 20 or 30 year old man considers appropriate might not be considered appropriate by a 60 year old man or, for that matter, a 30 year old woman. It can also vary for other reasons. A man who has daughters probably feels differently than a man who has sons, for example.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2018, 10:48:26 am by SirJohn »
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Offline Omni

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #77 on: January 30, 2018, 12:23:38 pm »
Yeah, but there's no agreement on what is inappropriate. Oh, sure, the worst of it, but not most of it. Depending on age, gender and religion, the answers will all vary wildly. What a 20 or 30 year old man considers appropriate might not be considered appropriate by a 60 year old man or, for that matter, a 30 year old woman. It can also vary for other reasons. A man who has daughters probably feels differently than a man who has sons, for example.

I don't think it's nearly as complicated as you try to suggest. If things are going in a direction or at a speed that makes one party uncomfortable and they express that feeling, then the brakes need to be applied. sure a 20 year old might be a little more energetic about things than a 60 year old, but no is still no regardless of age, gender, religion etc.

Offline Michael Hardner

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #78 on: January 30, 2018, 01:33:39 pm »
Yeah, but there's no agreement on what is inappropriate.

There is generally agreement on a lot, and disagreement on a lot also.  That's why somebody is a politician: they can tell.
 

Offline SirJohn

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #79 on: January 30, 2018, 04:35:15 pm »
I don't think it's nearly as complicated as you try to suggest. If things are going in a direction or at a speed that makes one party uncomfortable and they express that feeling, then the brakes need to be applied. sure a 20 year old might be a little more energetic about things than a 60 year old, but no is still no regardless of age, gender, religion etc.

I don't think there's much disagreement about no. The disagreement is what below that level is inappropriate. Not taking 'no' for an answer does not seem to be the case here but his conduct is still being called inappropriate. Which it may well have been but without knowing both sides it's hard to say. It may well have been inappropriate to take a staffer, even a summer student to his house and try to have sex with her, for example. Still, he took no for an answer and took no retaliation. The other one is more questionable still since you have to believe her story that he simply dropped his pants, asked for oral sex, and she gave it to him. I would agree that exposing yourself with no preliminaries is inappropriate.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2018, 04:37:39 pm by SirJohn »
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Offline kimmy

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #80 on: January 30, 2018, 08:05:19 pm »
I'm curious why you quoted and acknowledged my whole post except for the part where I said how the two women ended up in his room because it's very pertinent to the point we're debating. 

One of them he offered a tour of his house and the other came along with him and a friend of his who conveniently left.  The reason they were in his room therefore had nothing to do with false pretenses on the part of the women or any kind of gray area about mutual desirability where he could have taken things the wrong way and whipped out his ****

His behaviour was not 'overly optimistic', it was outright calculated and predatory. Legal, ok, but definitely not who I'd want leading my party into an important election. 


Okay, let's talk about these two incidents in detail, because it seems like some of the details are getting muddled.  The first incident, which occurred in 2007, when the girl was 18 and Brown was 28.
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The first incident occurred more than 10 years ago. The woman, a high school student in Barrie at the time, said she and a mutual friend met Brown at a bar.

Brown then invited them back to his home and provided them with alcohol, though the woman was under the legal drinking age at the time.

She says she was drunk when Brown invited her for a tour of his home. When the pair entered the bedroom, Brown closed the door and exposed his **** to her.

"He pulled down his pants said, and I don’t know if he said 'suck my dick' or 'put this in your mouth,' but something along those lines,” she said.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/patrick-brown-denies-sexual-misconduct-allegations-from-two-women-resigns-as-ontario-pc-leader-1.3774686

So first off, I think it's ridiculous that people keep saying "a tour of the home" as if it's something with a well-understood itinerary and code of conduct. "Come tour Brown Manor", as if it's like a tourist attraction.  Last time I invited someone for a tour of my place, we were both naked before the tour was half over, and my apartment is only 700 square feet, so it's a pretty short tour.   

Second key point: Brown was 28 at the time. He wasn't an MP. She didn't work at his constituency office. He didn't have a constituency office.  He didn't have any sort of leverage over her in the least.

"28 year old man asks for, receives, blow-job from 18 year old he met at a bar" is not news.  People who insist that the Brown story is totally different from the Aziz Ansari smear piece need to stop talking about the part where he showed her his ****, because that part of the story is EXACTLY like the Aziz Ansari story. 

And if this is what people feel women needed to be protected from, they are full of ****. That is completely retarded.


Let's move on to the second account, which bears closer analysis.
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After an interview in his Parliament Hill office, Brown hired her to work in his Barrie constituency office.

Brown tasked her with organizing the Hockey Night in Barrie charity game he hosts annually. Emails from Brown viewed by CTV News confirmed this.

"You know you are my favourite :)" writes Brown in an email to the woman days before the Aug. 15, 2013 event.

At an after-party in a now-closed local nightclub, The Bank, the woman says Brown and others provided her with a string of free alcoholic beverages. She was by then legal age.

"It was too many to count," the former staffer said.

When the bar closed, the party moved to Brown's home, all captured on social media.

 The woman says she was extremely drunk when Brown invited her and a male friend of his to Brown’s bedroom to look at photographs of a trip to Asia stored on his iPad.

Brown's friend then left, leaving her and Brown to sit alone on the bed.

"The next thing I know he's kissing me. Sitting beside me, kissing me and then I was, I kind of just froze up. He continued to kiss me and he laid me down on the bed and got on top of me. I remember consciously trying not to move my mouth and I was just not moving, so I was laying there immobile and he kept kissing me," she said.

"I felt it was sexual. I could feel his **** on my legs when he was on top of me so I felt that it would have gone to sexual intercourse if I had not done anything," she said. "I would characterize that as a sexual assault."

"That scenario, like of a very inebriated young employee in the bedroom of her boss, alone with him, who hasn’t had a drop of alcohol all night, just that’s an intimidating situation and I was not sure what to do about it," the former staffer said.

She told him to stop, saying she had a boyfriend and told Brown to take her home, which he did, driving her back to her parents’ house.

So first off, you claim that Brown's friend leaving was "calculated". That's highly speculative. And there's nothing indicating that the woman couldn't have left as well. Personally I have said words along the lines of "yeahhh, I should go too..." more times than I can remember.  If she didn't feel safe sitting alone with Brown on his bed, maybe she could have accompanied the other guy out of the room.

I stand by what I said earlier: I don't think it's unreasonable that Brown thought she was interested in pursuing things further. And when she made clear she wasn't, he respected her wishes.

Is Brown guilty of bad judgment?  Clearly.    Is this "deeply disturbing" or any of the other hyperbole that is currently being thrown around?  Absolutely not.


We agree on one thing at least, that it was his caucus who forced him out, but again, I don't think it's about #MeToo, it's about a winning campaign.

Predatory men rarely act out randomly, you can bet he didn't pull this kind of stunt only twice in life.  The party members likely knew about his behaviour and they knew **** could hit the fan with more women coming forward. 

Smart move, #MeToo or not.  He would have been a huge liability who could've cost important votes in urban areas.

I have no doubt that this news item would have been damaging to the Ontario PC's chances of winning the election, and I completely understand the decision to dump Brown.

Would Brown's conduct still be "deeply disturbing", and so on,  if he were an accountant rather than a politician. 


 -k
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Offline kimmy

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #81 on: January 30, 2018, 08:47:34 pm »
When iPhone footage starting sinking candidates (like Mitt Romney) I said that we were going to have to have 'dirty' people as candidates because nobody could withstand the scrutiny of pervasive coverage via phones.  I didn't consider that the web would soon connect anyone with dirt on a candidate to an audience.

Well, Romney's comments to his private gathering of wealthy donors created a strong impression that he didn't care about "the 47%" and viewed the well-heeled as his constituency.  The covert nature of the tape being made public might have been "dirty", but the nature of his comments was in the public interest and well worthy of attention.

immunized against the 'October Surprise'. 

Rue earlier speculated that this was somebody in the PC party trying to immunize their own party against an "October Surprise", and I have to agree that the theory makes a lot of sense.

I have heard that nobody who has been in a bar in Barrie in the past couple of decades is surprised to hear that Patrick Brown is accused of trying to score with much younger women.  It could well be that somebody decided it would be better to sink Brown now rather than wait for the election to see a Roy Moore type situation. 

Maybe in the future our politicians will be figures whose private follies and foibles are already exposed and haven't killed them yet.  Perhaps Trump is the first such figure.


If I ever found myself in the public eye, I can only imagine what kind of nightmare might befall me as all my exes and hook-ups come scrambling for microphones...

Quote
Anna Maria Tremonti: "Kim Party leader Kimmy, MP for Kim City/Lost Lake, has stepped down amid a storm of controversy over sexual misconduct.  Today on The Current, we interview one of her accusers."

...

Accuser: "...and so then she said, 'Why don't you come back to my place and I can show you my record collection!' And I was like, 'OK, that sounds fun,' so we went to her place."

AMT: And then what happened?

Accuser: "well, so she showed me the shelf by her stereo, and it was like just some crappy CDs. She doesn't even have any real records. Just CDs. And I don't think she even listens to them very much because they're all covered with dust."

AMT: (skeptical sounding) "hmmm." pause. "And then what happened?"

Accuser: "so I said 'Hey I thought you said you had records,' and I notice her shirt is unbuttoned, and, like, the kim-bobbles were like practically bursting out of her bra."

AMT: (concerned sounding) "hmmm." pause. "And then what happened?"

Accuser: "well, like, before I could tell her to stop, my hands and mouth were all over the kim-bobbles..."

AMT: (concerned sounding) "hmmm." pause. "So she didn't even give you a chance to stop her?"

Accuser: "well like after about 4 hours she told me her nipples were really sore and asked me to stop. But until then, no."

AMT: (deeply disturbed sounding) "hmmm." pause. "And you said that she was much older?"

Accuser: "like, over 30."

AMT: "and you?"

Accuser: "Under 30."

AMT: (judgmental sounding) "hmmm." pause. "And what happened then?"

Accuser: "well then she told me like 'well I have to work tomorrow so I have to get some sleep, but I could give you a ride home if you want.'"

AMT: (sympathetic sounding) "hmmm." pause. "So how did you feel afterward?"

Accuser:  "well I felt like really used, you know? And taken advantage of? Because I thought she was going to show me her record collection and all I got was a tired mouth from kissing the kim-bobbles for 4 hours, and I felt like I was kind of taken advantage of because I thought she had real records and she just has crappy CDs that she doesn't even listen to..."

AMT: (accusatory sounding) "hmmm."

...

 -k
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Offline Michael Hardner

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #82 on: January 31, 2018, 04:58:31 am »
Well, Romney's comments to his private gathering of wealthy donors created a strong impression that he didn't care about "the 47%" and viewed the well-heeled as his constituency.  The covert nature of the tape being made public might have been "dirty", but the nature of his comments was in the public interest and well worthy of attention.

Sure, but the public will not be told what to watch.  If there's a tape of some powerful person yelling at an underling, or frowning at a baby ... watch out.

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Rue earlier speculated that this was somebody in the PC party trying to immunize their own party against an "October Surprise", and I have to agree that the theory makes a lot of sense.

Me too.  Oh... jeez that was unintentional but I left it instead of editing out.   :(

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I have heard that nobody who has been in a bar in Barrie in the past couple of decades is surprised to hear that Patrick Brown is accused of trying to score with much younger women.  It could well be that somebody decided it would be better to sink Brown now rather than wait for the election to see a Roy Moore type situation. 

Ok, but these "everybody knows" memes are bullshit at the core.  People are ignorant and oblivious.  That said, you just need one journalist or person with an axe to grind...

Quote
Maybe in the future our politicians will be figures whose private follies and foibles are already exposed and haven't killed them yet.  Perhaps Trump is the first such figure.

Yes I am thinking that.


Quote
If I ever found myself in the public eye, I can only imagine what kind of nightmare might befall me as all my exes and hook-ups come scrambling for microphones...

 -k

If they want to talk about you anonymously, they need to find a reputable journalist to take the story and protect your identity also.  But the bar also does become a little higher than for the average person.

"Patrick Brown and I hooked up for a one night stand back when he was a nobody" is not a story.  I will bet money that this has happened in the past, and we don't have a story nor do we need one.  People may even have approached news outlets with those stories.

What we have now is a new system but it's still a system. 

Offline kimmy

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #83 on: January 31, 2018, 09:47:08 am »
Sure, but the public will not be told what to watch.  If there's a tape of some powerful person yelling at an underling, or frowning at a baby ... watch out.

We've seen this sort of thing before... the CEO caught kicking his puppy on elevator security footage, for instance.  CEO Kicks Puppy might not be a news item, but the degree of social media backlash was such that the media felt that the backlash in itself was newsworthy.

Thinking back to 2008, CBC found similar excuse to put the Trig Palin conspiracy theory on air.  CBC's own high standards prevent them from reporting such rubbish on air, of course.  But because the Trig Palin conspiracy theory was apparently sweeping the land, they featured it in their coverage of the RNC convention, complete with a timeline and handy graphics of airplane routes.

Ok, but these "everybody knows" memes are bullshit at the core.  People are ignorant and oblivious.  That said, you just need one journalist or person with an axe to grind...

My point is that if Brown's "bar star" habits were known among people in Barrie, they were waiting to be discovered by political opponents (including those in his own party) and, potentially, if somebody did some research there was a potential scandal waiting to happen.


If they want to talk about you anonymously, they need to find a reputable journalist to take the story and protect your identity also.  But the bar also does become a little higher than for the average person.

"Patrick Brown and I hooked up for a one night stand back when he was a nobody" is not a story.  I will bet money that this has happened in the past, and we don't have a story nor do we need one.  People may even have approached news outlets with those stories.

What we have now is a new system but it's still a system.

I am extremely confident that Brown has attempted to score with many other young women in Barrie bars.  I'd be far more interested in finding out whether Brown has attempted to score with any other employees of his office.

It appears to me that the threshold for "multiple accusations" is now 2. In this instance, one of those appears to have been included just to justify use of the word "multiple".


 -k
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Offline Michael Hardner

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #84 on: January 31, 2018, 11:10:13 am »

Thinking back to 2008, CBC found similar excuse to put the Trig Palin conspiracy theory on air.  CBC's own high standards prevent them from reporting such rubbish on air, of course.  But because the Trig Palin conspiracy theory was apparently sweeping the land, they featured it in their coverage of the RNC convention, complete with a timeline and handy graphics of airplane routes.

Peter Mansbridge, also, showing the latest cute dog video from Vimeo on the National.  McLuhan would have loved it.

Quote
It appears to me that the threshold for "multiple accusations" is now 2. In this instance, one of those appears to have been included just to justify use of the word "multiple".
 

You are right.

Offline waldo

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #85 on: January 31, 2018, 01:38:18 pm »
I am extremely confident that Brown has attempted to score with many other young women in Barrie bars.  I'd be far more interested in finding out whether Brown has attempted to score with any other employees of his office.

It appears to me that the threshold for "multiple accusations" is now 2. In this instance, one of those appears to have been included just to justify use of the word "multiple".

and somehow your expressed confidence in that precludes you from accepting there might be more to the Ontario Conservative party/members concerns... than just 2, "threshold meeting", publicly revealed accusations. Your expressed confidence... in spite of all the emphasis being placed on the difficulty women have in coming forward and actually saying, "#MeToo".

Offline cybercoma

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #86 on: January 31, 2018, 02:01:18 pm »
and somehow your expressed confidence in that precludes you from accepting there might be more to the Ontario Conservative party/members concerns... than just 2, "threshold meeting", publicly revealed accusations. Your expressed confidence... in spite of all the emphasis being placed on the difficulty women have in coming forward and actually saying, "#MeToo".
The Conservatives acted awfully quick for this to have been some unexpected accusation.

Offline Rue

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #87 on: January 31, 2018, 04:07:29 pm »
The Conservatives acted awfully quick for this to have been some unexpected accusation.

Yes indeed.
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Offline Rue

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #88 on: January 31, 2018, 04:26:34 pm »
I don't see it as "consent" either.  But I do see it as "interest" and I really have trouble blaming someone like Brown, who interpreted women's willingness to drink heavily, go back to his house, and saying Yes to his invitation to go into his bedroom as sexual interest.  When they refused, he didn't force them.  I dont' see the problem.

I deliberately defer to you and Kimmy on that. It ultimately comes down to a woman's decision and I know I have taught my daughters to think twice and they may have shown poor judgement as we all have but the point is, when do we say we are responsible for the decisions we made? Can we just off  load them and dump them on someone else to avoid asking ourselves were our decisions forced by others or do we simply regret them.

I am not hear to justify bad behaviour, sexual assault, etc. I am hear to say it is women I have often listened to in my work, and when they discuss the freedom to control their bodies and make choices, I have not heard them say it means abrogating those choices. Sometimes the very empowerment of a woman or man is accepting they have made mistakes on an individual level and learning from them.

T
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Offline kimmy

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Re: "Me Too" Blowback
« Reply #89 on: February 01, 2018, 09:18:14 am »
and somehow your expressed confidence in that precludes you from accepting there might be more to the Ontario Conservative party/members concerns...

On the contrary.  If there's more to those concerns, I'm all ears.

than just 2, "threshold meeting", publicly revealed accusations.

Of these two accusations, one bears discussion and the other is nonsense.

As I say, I strongly suspect that many other women in Barrie could tell stories of Patrick Brown attempting to pick them up in bars. It sounds like something he was known for. I simply don't care. If 1000 other Barrie women come forward and say that Brown tried to score with them in bars, I still don't care. "Young single man tries to pick up women in bars" isn't "sexual misconduct" to anybody except fore puritans.

The woman who worked in his office, on the other hand, that's worth talking about.  This is a situation that could have been cleared up by a word to Brown from an HR manager or similar, but as she pointed out there wasn't anybody like that at the constituency office, leaving her to deal with it on her own. So that's a point worth talking about.  Many working women work in smaller businesses and don't have resources like that to turn to if they're uncomfortable with their coworkers' behavior. And that's an important point that has been lost in the furor over Brown's ****.

Your expressed confidence... in spite of all the emphasis being placed on the difficulty women have in coming forward and actually saying, "#MeToo".

The one woman who came forward about her experience had a good point and a story that contributes to the discussion.

But the woman whose story is that she met Brown at a bar and went home with him and gave him a hummer... she shouldn't have come forward, and has no business saying #MeToo.

 -k
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