A Quick Contrast Of Schneiderman And Brokaw

5/8/18

Why the immediate and appropriate response to Schneiderman’s disgusting behavior and the relative pass seemingly being given to Brokaw?

I suppose the answer is obvious: even before a conclusive determination of S’s guilt in beating and choking women, the numbers who came forward, the brutality of what they described and the pattern to their stories made his presumptive guilt impossible to ignore. 

Impossible it was even as some told at least one of the women, paraphrase, “You hush up now, he’s too important a Democrat, too important to the “resistance,” too important in the fight for Democratic ascendancy and too important in the fight for women’s rights.” 

(Shades here of those who lied and attacked and vilified his victims in trying to protect Clinton B from accusations of predation.)

Brokaw’s accusers apparently haven’t achieved a critical mass sufficient to turn the liberal tide against him what with the letter from 100+ women—some complaining of undue pressure to sign it, some who weren’t out of knee pants when the sexual assaults apparently took place in the nineties, what with his reputation as a nice guy, what with the dent the accusers pose to his liberal iconicism. 

Yet with Brokaw the fact of the two victims with similar stories—how many others I wonder, their detailed accounts, their distraught accounts, their telling others about them at the time, what with the foundational premises of #metoo (or whatever is the hashtag du jour), should, I’d think, all be enough to tilt the presumption of guilt against Brokaw and which in different bundles *have* been enough to put away lesser men.