I haven't written for a while because I've been trying to get my arms around the Colin Kaepernick situation, which seems to have morphed into the Jerry Jones/Roger Goodell situation, which morphed into the Ezekiel Elliott situation. All of which, except for the Elliott discipline, spells bad news for the NFL.
But layered over this has been a constantly shifting miasma of opinion and outrage that started with the Harvey Weinstein revelations. And then we had Roy Moore, and, today, Al Franken. So I thought this would be a good time to pick up the keyboard.
Notwithstanding the creepy and probably illegal (at least in one case) allegations against Republican senatorial candidate Moore, there is no hard evidence that he engaged in any of the conduct alleged. Not so with Senator Franken, a liberal Democrat from Minnesota, who has long been the darling of feminist advocates. And the picture of Senator Franken groping or attempting to grope the breasts of a sleeping woman on a military aircraft on a USO tour teaches us an important lesson that was first raised in the infamous Ray Rice elevator video some years ago.
Rice seemed to be on the track to rehabilitation following a domestic violence incident in a casino elevator. The NFL gave him a limited suspension, the local judiciary was satisfied with his entry into a diversion program, and he was welcomed back on the field by the fans. Then video surfaced of him actually striking his then fiancée and knocking her unconscious. Everything changed at that point. Rice has not played another down in the NFL.
What changed? Once there was irrefutable photographic evidence of his conduct, the NFL felt it could not ignore the outcry and bad press that broke immediately after TMZ put the video on its website. In other words, the verbal description of what happened did not carry the negative weight that the picture did. The whole thing caused the satirical website, The Onion, to put a story up with a headline "NFL Takes a Zero Tolerance Stance on Videotaped Domestic Abuse Incidents." A funny headline, but it's also absolutely correct.
As Mr. Franken is now discovering. The aspects of his offense that are alleged only in writing- forcing a kiss on the same woman in the picture (which actually involves unwanted physical contact, and intimate contact at that)-are being effectively ignored. It's that picture that is driving calls for his resignation.
And so the lesson for everyone policing conduct in the public sphere is that a picture is not only worth 1000 words. It's worth a career.
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