The Life and Times of Judge Roy Moore
I don’t have anything against Alabama. I’ve never been there. I do, however, wonder why my father, who was born there, hardly ever mentioned it. He left Alabama as a teenager, but he never returned there before he died a few years ago.
Alabama’s role in its resistance to civil rights may have had something to do with my father’s antipathy toward the place.
I’m pretty sure there are some nice Alabamians.
It’s just that some of them who’ve surfaced during this lurid Roy Moore thing have appeared to be anything but nice.
Moore is that former Alabama Supreme Court justice who’s on next month’s ballot to fill Jeff Sessions’ U.S. Senate seat.
He’s being accused of having had several unsavory relationships with young girls many years ago.
At least one of those girls was young enough to be his daughter.
This isn’t really about those allegations, but more about how alleged sexual improprieties can cause shame, end careers and ruin lives – but still have no bearing on American politics.
We’ve all seen this before.
When the so-called “Access Hollywood tape” was released a month before the 2016 presidential election, it was thought that Donald Trump might have to drop out of the race.
He didn’t.
Then he won.
It didn’t matter to millions of voters that he’d been caught openly bragging about engaging in sexual misconduct.
Yet, since last year the country has been faced with a new reality.
In early October, The New York Times and The New Yorker published scathing articles about Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and his alleged predilection for serious sexual improprieties.
He’s now been accused by 80 women of either making sexual advances toward them, or worse, rape.
That opened a floodgate.
Since then, women and men all over the country have come forward and alleged that nearly 20 high-profile men have engaged them in sexual abuse.
These kinds of activities aren’t new.
Sexual abuse and harassment have long been woven into the fabrics of every country on earth.
But the “Harvey Weinstein Effect” stirred something different.
It allowed hundreds of women, and men to bravely free themselves of the burden of keeping quiet about their own encounters.
So, when a woman who claimed she was only 14 years-old when Judge Roy Moore tried to take liberties with her – it struck a chord.
Then several women, who were teenagers at the time, made similar claims.
Yet in today’s nasty political environment, many of Moore’s fervent supporters either deny he had anything to do with those girls, or much worse – they say, even if he had, they’ll vote for him, anyway.
At Fox News, where sensitivity sometimes goes to die, Sean Hannity was the first person Moore chose to have him lob softball questions.
Hannity asked Moore if he ever remembered having any girlfriend in her late teens.
“I don’t remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother,” Moore replied.
But who asks somebody’s mother to date their child?
That interview, as awkward as it was, helped bolster Moore’s support down in Alabama.
But in Washington, among Republicans in Congress, Moore has run out of supporters.
It’s at Fox News that he still has a chance for survival.
Right-winger Laura Ingraham, who recently debuted her new Fox News program, has a different take.
That, perhaps, we might need to rethink all of this stuff about sexual improprieties.
Maybe men are the ones getting a raw deal.
“We have to look at the other side here as well and not make it so sterile and antiseptic a workplace that no one even enjoys the job,” she said (I might add with a straight face)
Then there’s Fox News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin.
She went even further than Ingraham.
“These individuals, a lot of these women, it’s all about money,” she proclaimed.
She wasn’t finished. She claimed that genuine sexual harassment victims are “very few and far between.”
It’s come to this?
That’s a sad commentary about the way things are.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.