Apparently there isn’t much news to report that doesn’t have something to do with sexual misconduct of politicians, TV personalities, or entertainers. It’s reported on so often and at such great length that both Diane and I are becoming immune to it. When it’s reported that another woman stepped forth accusing, say, Al Franken, of touching her a few years ago, Diane changes the channel. Neither of us view that as condoning the behavior but rather we’re tired of hearing about it.

This morning I was reading Bing News, which provides info from a variety of sources, and was treated to another repeat of the things Roy What’shisname, that ex-judge in Alabama, … Moore, that’s his name … and learned that it’s apparently OK to round up certain things to make the story more interesting, I guess. The article, by Marina Fang of the Huffington Post, reported that Roy has “… been accused of sexual misconduct by nearly 10 women, with several incidents allegedly occurring when the women were teenagers and he was in his early 30s.” Since Roy is now 70, I guess that means these alleged early events occurred nearly 40 years ago, or thereabouts. When reporting news like this I guess the Huffington Post editor is OK with reporters just getting close to the correct number of accusers. Using the ’round up/down’ rules I learned in school, the proper number could be any number between 6 and 14. That’s about 10, right?

Nearly 10? Really?

I may never read the Huffington Post again. Ever.

Actually, I will, and I’ll be looking for stuff like this and totally miss the point of the article, no matter what it’s about.

Now – about all this misconduct by all these people, all of a sudden. I think it started with Bill Cosby, one of the more notable offenders, and has recently created a kind of mob mentality that’s causing women to come forth with all these really old accusations. This is just my guess, or course. There’s safety in numbers and they’re finding it easier to share stories of their abuse. I get that. I have no doubt that this kind of behavior goes unreported all the time and I find it distressing for both the victims and the accused. There are people on both sides who don’t believe the other side. It seems the only resolution lies in the hands of lawyers who are allowed to warp the truth, for either side, in defense of their clients.

OK. As I’ve got into that dissertation and struggled to find a way out of it and then it turned into a lawyer “thing”.

Sorry I went down that road and hope I didn’t offend anyone in the process. Just so you know, I tend to believe the women in nearly all of these accusations because I’m a guy. I actually know how easy it is to offend people – men and women. In all cases, when I’m made aware that I’ve done something inappropriate, like reach out to tap a lady on the shoulder to get her attention and she turns just in time for me to touch her breast. It wasn’t my intention, but it happened. I snap my hands back to my chest and apologize. That’s simple, right? My most mortifying moment of inappropriate touching happened when I was walking with a co-worker in Portland. I was a little bit ahead of her at a crossing and started to move when a car came around the corner with no intention of stopping. Like my Mom used to do, I put my right arm out to block this person’s progress so she wouldn’t get splattered on the road. She stopped and I held my hand in place until the car had passed and I decided that I had apparently missed her arm and had my hand planted firmly on her left breast. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that it didn’t feel like an arm should. To confirm this, I looked at my hand, then into her eyes, and snapped my hand back out of her space. I apologized and we continued on. It never happened again and I’m confident to this day, maybe 20 years later, that had we been in that same situation later on, she would have been run over in the cross walk.

Not really. I would have stopped her somehow. Honest.

The problem with these folks in the news is I believe they do stuff like this with intent, not accidentally, and they do it repeatedly because they are in positions of power over their victims. This is an opinion but I’m sure it’s true.

Done with that.

So, it’s been raining like crazy since August and all the grass that withered in the 90+ days of sunshine has found new life. Too bad I can’t mow it.

Gotta stop and go brush the dogs. One of them doesn’t like it so wish me luck.