The editors of the Wall Street Journal summarize the Republican Party’s predicament with respect to Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore:
A famous country song aptly summed up where the Republicans are with Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama: You’ve got to know when to fold ’em.
There is no doubt a sense in which Mr. Moore deserves the opportunity to challenge accusations against him for acts alleged to have happened more than 30 years ago. Though too many women were too easily ignored in the past, we do not want to live in a country or political culture in which every accusation of sexual misconduct is automatically accepted as true. Accusers can be liars too.
But Mr. Moore isn’t in a courtroom today. He’s in the political arena in which a candidate has to maintain a minimal level of public credibility to survive. And his political situation has moved well beyond a more familiar she said/he said predicament.
Several women have made detailed accusations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Moore, and multiple people now say he was known for trolling shopping malls for young girls while in his 30s. Mr. Moore’s public defenses have also been less than convincing, not least that he doesn’t know his latest accuser, though he signed her yearbook.
I find the entire matter baffling. Even without the sexual aspects of his candidacy I would find his candidacy unacceptable because of his attitudes towards the rule of law and governing precedent. But I’m not an Alabama voter.
I wish this entire matter were open to more reasoned reflection rather than the same old partisan coups counting. At what age is it seemly to consider a young woman as nubile? At what age does it become unseemly for a man to think so?
Here’s some food for thought. The average age of a Playboy magazine centerfold is 22.4 years. Many of them have been 18 or 19 and a number have been as young as 16. Do you really believe that all of the men gawking at them have been in their teens and twenties? Or have most been in their 30s, 40s, or 50s?
According to its flight logs, Bill Clinton was a frequent flyer on Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express”. Right or wrong? Seemly or unseemly? Does it matter with which political party the man was affiliated?
Just to make it clear, I don’t approve of either. I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton because I thought he was a person of low character and I believe that events have proven my assessment correct. I don’t think anybody should vote for Roy Moore for precisely the same reason. But there’s a more basic point, a much larger societal issue.
I hold more to Lew Archer’s observation: as a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him, the women he likes are getting older too.
Dave, I find your comments candid and sensible, refreshingly absent left/right banter, and instead simply reflecting on human nature.
The timing was political. The standards at the time were different. False accusations have been made in the recent past (5-10 years).
These can all be true, but the standards were not that low. The women are not necessarily lying. At the time, “dating” a minor would have resulted in a beatdown, within my social level, and unless he is able to provide credible evidence of his innocence, the beatdown should still be administered.
From the beginning, there has been something not quite right, and his interview with Sean Hannity nailed it. Interestingly, this interview is most likely to be the end of Roy Moore. I may have missed it, but President Trump has not defended Moore.
He should read the 10 Commandments statue he installed. That and subsequent political stunts using God and Christianity are breaking the Commandment against using the Name of God in Vain.
[…] At what age is it seemly to consider a young woman as nubile? […]
Legally,18, but historically, probably 16. Socially, 18 to 22.
[…] At what age does it become unseemly for a man to think so?
For most men, a young female will always be sexually attractive, and I suspect it is hard wired into the male brain. Civilization occurs when the male instincts are tamed, and it is unseemingly for an over-30 year old man to be “dating” an 18 to 22 year old female. In the 25 to 30 year old group, it is questionable but acceptable.
Also, what kind of freak rides a horse to the polling place?
There’s a number of fundamentalists (not a majority, but a significant minority) who want their women folk married off young, before they’ve had a chance to even learn to be independent — a woman should submit to her husband, etc. It’s creepy as can be, and Roy Moore’s Christian Values seem to come from that camp.
Honestly, that seems worse to me than just being a creepy old man.
But, on the subject of creepy old men, you can look without touching. There’s no harm in that if you’re discrete about it.
For dating and forming an actual relationship, the “half your age plus seven†rule generally applies. On the edges it can raise some eyebrows, and I don’t think a 21 year old should really be dating a 28 year old since they are at different phases in life. (After the younger person is 24, I think all bets are off — they’ve been out of the house, had a chance to figure out what they want, and can make their own mistakes. They’re going to make their own mistakes, why shouldn’t I be one of them?)
For just hooking up… we have a legal age for that. There’s an adage about leaving people better or lat least no worse than when you found them.
Generally, I think it’s fine to be considered a mistake, but not fine to be a regret.
Anyway, Moore is icky. He crosses all the lines, and appears to do so for the creepiest reasons — wanting someone who isn’t his equal.
Programmable sex robots can’t come soon enough.