#MeToo morphing into dangerous War on Men

(NEW YORK POST)

By Andrea Peyser

It’s gone far enough. What started as a necessary mass-rejection of sexual harassment and assault is sliding into absurdity and irrelevance. A backlash is looming against the very people the spontaneous battle against sexual villainy was meant to help: powerless women and men.

The fight is being waged not with force, but with the rather bland Internet movement, #MeToo. The battle by hashtag conflates genuine sex crimes with mere childish behavior — blending the Harvey Weinsteins and Kevin Spaceys with the Al Frankens and George H.W. Bushes.

How long before we stop taking victims seriously?

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Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer and performer and now staunchly liberal senator from Minnesota, has been tossed into the guillotine without a trial. And while I reject his leftist politics — even more so his inability to be funny — I don’t think confusing childish, even lewd, behavior with clear, intimate violations helps anyone. Rather, it threatens to make accusers, many of them women, appear unserious. Or “hysterical,’’ to use a term commonly wielded against humans bearing XX chromosomes.

On Thursday, former Playboy model-turned-radio host Leeann Tweeden claimed Franken stuck his tongue in her mouth. He claimed he doesn’t remember the tongue-lashing that evidently occurred as they were “rehearsing” a scene for a skit on a USO tour to the Middle East in 2006, before Franken was elected to office. But there exists photographic evidence that he took things a few notches further. Franken was snapped, with a doofusy grin on his face, groping Tweeden’s flak jacket-covered breasts as she slept.

Lewd and crude? For sure. Grounds for public censure? Perhaps. But potentially career-ending? I don’t think so.

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