I am a resident of San Diego who has disliked former Mayor Robert Filner from the moment he first reared his ugly head in electoral politics — and that was a long, long time ago. As far as I’m concerned, he is a man with no good qualities. So I was not unhappy when he (at last!) became the subject of national ridicule. I was disappointed, however, that he was ridiculed almost exclusively for being what the early 20th century called a masher, “a man who attempts to force his attentions on a woman.”
Filner did hundreds of things wrong, besides planting unwelcome kisses and giving hugs from which women had difficulty escaping. I thought that some of those other things deserved notice also. But it was the sex behavior that drove him from office a few weeks ago.
On Oct. 15, Filner paid a surprise visit to a local court, where he admitted his guilt for one felony and two misdemeanors. The Los Angeles Times has a convenient summary:
The felony count involves allegations of false imprisonment by "violence, fraud, menace and deceit." The count alleges that Filner used undue force to hold a woman against her will at a political fundraiser in March, apparently in a move known derisively as the "Filner headlock."
The battery counts involve accusations that he kissed one woman at a Meet the Mayor session at City Hall in April and grabbed another by the buttocks at an environmental cleanup . . .
State Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris said Filner's conduct — touching women inappropriately, kissing them without permission, whispering lewd suggestions — "was not only criminal, it was also an extreme abuse of power."
For such crimes, Filner will be sentenced to three years’ probation and forced to agree not to run for public office again.
News of this event ignited a controversy between citizens who thought he had been punished appropriately and citizens who thought he should have been taken out and hanged. I am one of the few people who appear to have been disgusted by the whole procedure.
First, of course, I’m disgusted with Filner. But second, I’m disgusted with the politically correct pretense that being gross and offensive amounts to “false imprisonment by violence, fraud, menace and deceit,” and that such conduct is something for criminal courts to involve themselves with.
I say “pretense” because nobody really believes that Filner imprisoned anyone, and few people really believe that kissing someone at a Meet the Mayor session should, even theoretically, send you to jail. Run you out of office — fine. But make you liable for imprisonment? Why?
Watch a movie from the 1960s or before, and you will see men — the heroes! — behaving toward women in ways ten times worse than the ways in which Filner behaved.
We live in a time when the news is full of stories about people who have assaulted other people, stolen their property, swindled them out of their life’s savings, clobbered them in a drunken rage, stolen their personal information (are you listening, US government?), instigated riots, kept but did not control vicious and destructive animals, spent years camping, pissing, and shitting on other people’s doorsteps, abandoned infant children while appropriating the mother’s welfare checks, paralyzed cities with acts of political self-expression, and yes, actually held other people against their will, who are never seriously prosecuted for anything — until the day when, by some amazing chance, they end up committing and being apprehended for what is then called “a major crime.” Few other people get excited, even when that happens. But along comes Filner, and the sky falls. The city, we are told, could proceed with the healing process only when Filner was dragged into court and forced by some secret process of plea bargaining into confessing to charges worthy of a pirate with free admission to a nunnery.
Watch a movie from the 1960s or before, and you will see men — the heroes! — behaving toward women in ways ten times worse than the ways in which Filner behaved. Now, in the great B movie that is our public lives, we see the forces of law and light acting exactly like the Legions of Decency that, we are told, used to make such a ridiculous to-do about morals.
The main indecency, it seems to me, is the American people’s long-standing habit of abandoning reason and proportion whenever they hear the magic word SEX. Picture Filner in the dock, confessing to those high crimes and misdemeanors. Now picture the kings and queens of the “music” world, standing on spotlit stages, collecting awards for purveying attitudes toward sex and women so vile, so lewd, that they cannot be exemplified on a site like this.
There is something badly wrong about Robert Filner. There is something much worse about the atmosphere in which we live.
