Bill Maher lay in wait for Spencer Pratt, then suddenly sprang the trap: "Your wife... look I hate to put it this way, but what I remember about this story was huge tits...."

"What is the state of the tits? They're not what you would call huge but they were at one point. At one time they were okay. So what happened there?"

Yes, that's what Maher said to the man's face, 37 minutes into the interview, after some drinking.

I think Maher wanted to destroy Pratt and had that planned. Either Pratt loses his temper and struggles to respond or he displays a Dukakis-like coldness or Franken-like jocularity that would turn women against him.

But no:

Maher: "But so then she had breast reduction?"

Pratt: "Yes, she did.... So I don't think you respectfully would notice anything."

Maher: "I respectfully wouldn't comment...."

Pratt: "Well, you brought it up."

Touché. Maher blabbers — "Well, I just... I'm telling you..." — then jumps to his backup attack: "My history of you is like 2007 douchebag and then years of nothing?"

Anyway, I think Maher came in wanting to reduce Pratt to the nothing he believed he was — a washed up reality show star who's pissed that his own house burned down — but Pratt prevailed and I think by the end Maher either felt supportive or wanted to manufacture some last-minute evidence that he had backed the winner. 

Bloviate.

From a biography of Warren G. Harding:

That was sent to me by my son Chris, who is quite far along toward his goal of reading a biography of every U.S. President. 

In the 22-year history of this blog, I've never used the word "bloviate." Twice, though, I've quoted someone else:

1. My November 1, 2019 post, "An impeachment trial would help Joe Biden — because Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker would all face the obligation to do their job as Senator," quoted NY Magazine writer Ed Kilgore, who wrote:  "[An impeachment trial] could be a boon to non-senators — particularly Joe Biden, who can bloviate to his heart’s desire about the lessons he learned on impeachment and all the issues involving Trump during his 44 years as a member or presiding officer of the Upper Chamber...." 

2. On October 7, 2004, the first year of this blog, I quoted Al Franken, who was boasting about his radio show on the radio network Air America: "We do a different kind of show. I'm not the mirror image of Rush Limbaugh. I do a totally different kind of show. I don't bloviate for three hours and pull stuff out of my butt and mislead and lie. We're very scrupulous about our facts. I'm proud of that." (I do go on to quip about whether Franken "did in fact bloviate," so count that as my using the word if you must, but I'm really still essentially quoting him.)

In both of those instances, the user of "bloviate" is insulting someone else. President Harding, the popularizer of the word, used it about himself, self-deprecatingly. 

***

Here's the biography — commission earned — "Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series: The 29th President, 1921-1923." Warning: It's by John Dean. Chris says: "It’s part of a series of very short books that I use when the options are very limited." He's relied on that series to read about William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, and Benjamin Harrison.

A liar or just woefully ignorant?

lol
pic.twitter.com/G4GSTfijFR

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2025

The hand-raising at the June 27, 2019 Democratic candidates debate is a powerful visual retort, but when I click the fact-check icon at Franken's post, X's own AI says:

• Al Franken's post critiques Vice President JD Vance's recent claim during a 2025 government shutdown debate that Democrats seek to provide health benefits to undocumented immigrants, framing it as either deliberate falsehood or profound misunderstanding. 

• Vance's statement targets a Democratic funding proposal to reimburse states for emergency Medicaid services to "lawfully present" immigrants, such as refugees and asylees, but federal law explicitly bars undocumented individuals from enrolling in such programs. 

• Independent fact-checks, including from FactCheck.org and The New York Times, describe the Republican portrayal as misleading, as it exaggerates limited emergency reimbursements into broad taxpayer-funded coverage for all

"This has been the mystery of the Trump era — every time we think this is the final straw, it turns into a steel beam that merely solidifies his political infrastructure."

Said Eliot Spitzer, a man who resigned for nothing more than using prostitutes.

Quoted in "Any Other Politician Would Have Bowed Out. Trump? Not a Chance. This week’s debate over his very eligibility for office served as a stark reminder that anyone else facing such a wide array of legal problems would have left the political stage long ago" (NYT).

I think the reason Spitzer — and let's throw in Al Franken — didn't stand their ground and fight is that they were beholden to their political party. Trump never was in thrall to other Republicans. He took over the party. Who holds sway with him? 

The article also has this quote from Trump: "Other people, if they ever got indicted, they’re out of politics. They go to the microphone. They say, ‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life, you know, clearing my name. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with my family.' I've seen it hundreds of times.... I can tell, you know, it’s backfired on them."

Maybe some of these others — Spitzer, Franken — would have prevailed if they'd fought. But it's hard to believe that other beleaguered politicians will fight like Trump. The Trump example shows that by fighting, you attract endless woes — multiple impeachments, felony charges, efforts to confiscate all of your wealth, the most miserable smears on your character. But Trump fights, and it's an amazing spectacle.

The sound of no one calling for civility.

 

Seen this morning because I went to Twitter and clicked on "Kavanaugh" in the "What's happening" sidebar.

If you're wondering whether writing "Really fuck you" on someone's photograph and posting it on Twitter is a protected speech under the First Amendment, read the Supreme Court's new "true threats" case, Counterman v. Colorado.

"Al Franken spends his first night as 'Daily Show' host making nice with Lindsey Graham."

The Star Tribune reports.

Their fondness for each other may have robbed viewers of any meaningful debate. The two each squeezed in their differing talking points on Donald Trump, but the chat felt a lot like a photo opportunity with both holding back any serious jabs. Franken even reiterated his belief that Graham was the funniest person he had met in Washington. The extended version of their conversation, available only online, had slightly more meat, but no fireworks.

Al Franken reemerges — as a comedian — guest-hosting "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

Sample joke: "Today, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a huge achievement. It makes the single biggest investment in addressing climate change ever. While I’m here, I — I really should talk about some of the other existential threats facing our nation: the enormous gaps in wealth and income, the threats to our democracy. But I really think one of the most serious issues facing our country today is just how big a dick Ted Cruz is."

"One of the reasons 'Secret Honor' is so affecting is that, with the distance of time, we feel sympathy for the man, especially because we are aware of how Nixon-hating..."

"... had a lot to do with a very personal reaction to the man. There was a sort of loathing that wasn't about politics, but about the way he looked and spoke and certain personality qualities of the sort that would have made him unpopular even as a child. And the truly challenging thing to think about is how he could have been politically effective if he repelled people on a deep psychic level. Bush-haters of today might try imagining themselves thirty years in the future, looking back at him as a mere man."

That's something I wrote on February 14, 2005, in a post called "Small and large falls." 

I'm reading that this morning after seeing this new piece at New York Magazine, "In Secret Honor, Philip Baker Hall Plays Nixon As a Wounded Animal." New York Magazine is writing that now because the actor who played Nixon, Philip Baker Hall, recently died. He was 90.

I was writing about "Secret Honor" in 2005 — 17 years ago — because I was teaching the Watergate Tapes case and I had a nice, new Criterion Collection CD of the Robert Altman film. 

"Instead of trying to carpet the world, put on slippers."

Said a commenter, at WaPo, on an "Ask Amy" column about a letter from a woman who wanted another woman's husband to stop talking so much and so obnoxiously on Facebook. 

The larger issue is the way people expect the wife to control her husband and think it's a wife's job to be an intermediary on their behalf. It's always the woman's job to tend to social harmony. A secondary issue is that people who are unhappy with interactions occurring on Facebook don't seem to realize you can just click a button — "snooze" or "unfollow" — and you don't have to see that person anymore. 

But the line "Instead of trying to carpet the world, put on slippers" was so good, I figured it's unlikely to be original with that commenter. Google gives over 9 million hits, rephrases it — "It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world" — and attributes it to...

Al Franken!

I see there's a discussion of the Al Franken adage at a subreddit devoted to... Jordan Peterson.

The Redditor also quotes what purports to be the writing of some unknown person in the year 1100... though it sounds like something somebody wrote yesterday... and therefore I'm not going to quote it here. It's not good enough. It's like something somebody I'd like to snooze would put on Facebook. 

Also at that link is a quote that's quite similar to the wisdom attributed to Franken: "To walk the Earth without cutting your feet, it is easier to cover your soles in leather than to cover the world." 

Is that authentic ancient wisdom or recent old-time-i-ness? It gets over 30 million hits on Google, but that just means it's been repeated more often. And the Franken quote is better, because you can visualize carpeting the world, not that you could actually do it. It's a good, vivid image and the point is made, but it's awkward to picture covering the world in leather. On the other hand, you can go walking out in the world in leather shoes, but if you're only wearing slippers, you kind of need to stay home. 

I say kind of, because there are a few people who've gone out and about in slippers, notably Vincent Gigante. And I once saw a lady try a case in federal court in slippers. Pro se.

"Someone must explain why celebrities running for office is a recurring nightmare we cannot seem to shake. The Rock, Caitlyn Jenner, Matthew McConaughey, Randy Quaid."

"They all have suggested lately that when it comes to running the country, they have what it takes. And they do: malignant narcissism," said Bill Maher on his show Friday night: 

"The last four years was a warning, not an inspiration. You were supposed to see that and think, 'I guess high-level government jobs should go to people who have trained for it and know what they're doing.'..." 

The problem with that is that we don't think people in politics know what they are doing. 

"Let me put it bluntly to you and all of these show biz candidates. You're not good enough, you're not smart enough, and, doggone it, it completely doesn't matter that people like you. They like you now because you're an entertainer and thus largely uncontroversial. Governing is the opposite. If you think you can unite the country, you're delusional."

I didn't personally transcribe that. I relied on the transcription at The Hill, but I made one correction: "doggone it." The Hill has "dog on it," which made me laugh... then made me wonder what "doggone it" represents. Are we supposed to see the word "gone"? It's not as though "dog gone it" makes sense. 

Grammarphobia writes: 

"At the center of much of this creative coordination is Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler, chair of the state party Democrats, who was focused on comedy two decades ago, writing for the Onion and working for Al Franken..."

"... on his books and radio show, before rising in the political world. Now, his state party is the leading beneficiary of these fundraisers, raising more than $7 million since August, part of the $58.7 million it’s reportedly brought in over the past two years. David Mandel, former 'Veep' showrunner and 'Seinfeld' writer, says of the virtual format: 'I give credit to Ben Wikler for really weaponizing it.' Americans don’t particularly want to be politically lectured to by Hollywood, Mandel says. 'But they do like it when Hollywood people do what they’re really good at, and that’s to entertain,' he says. 'We entertained the fans and that’s what we weaponized.'"

 From "'Princess Bride,' 'Seinfeld' and more: How nostalgic cast reunions became a Democratic fundraising weapon" (WaPo) (you get to watch the actors on Zoom reading their lines from the old script).

When Al Franken intersected with The Grateful Dead (back in 1980).

Don't miss the sexual harassment — at 3:30 — and the attempt to justify it with the invocation of the lyric "We can share the women, we can share the wine." Comically justify it. They're mocking the justification.

Here's a Reddit discussion from a year ago: "We can share the women we can share the wine?/Looking back, what are the most problematic Dead lyrics?"

Here's a defense of the line at Dead.net:

It’s unfortunate that the opening lines of the song ["Jack Straw"] are often taken by listeners at face value—I always felt very strange about the roar that would emerge at the lines “we can share the women, we can share the wine.” In fact, as has been pointed out, that attitude led our pair of ne’er-do-wells onto a path of self-destruction. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else heard that at shows—that inappropriate roar of approval—kind of like the line in “Baba O’Riley”: “You’re all wasted!” Hmmmm... and that’s a good thing?

"Back in late 2017, it looked like Franken was going to weather the charges of inappropriate conduct against him, until Democrats apparently decided to sacrifice him..."

"... presumably in part to demonstrate that they could police their own.... The coup was quick and brutal. First, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand posted on Facebook a call for him to resign. Then, in quick succession, 13 more Democratic women senators (and a majority of the entire caucus) joined her. Whether Franken was guilty or innocent -- and he'd asked for a hearing -- his position became untenable. The day after Gillibrand’s shiv, he announced his intention to resign. (Chuck Schumer had told him to be out by 5 P.M.) If it looked like an orchestrated takeout, that's because it probably was. Biden -- even if innocent -- is now in a position where he must constantly worry about getting Frankened. By whom? Well, by the same sorts of powerful Democrats who helped him win the nomination (perhaps by helping orchestrate the well-timed withdrawals of Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg).... I'm also not saying 'they' want to replace Biden now.... But they could change their mind, and quickly, if he gives enough of them enough reason -- either by faltering, or pissing them off, or a combination of the two.... Biden probably wasn’t about to forge bold new directions.... But now Biden’s really in no position to step on anyone’s toes. Power has shifted away from the candidate."

From "The Frankening" by Mickey Kaus.

That could be read to say that Biden's position is stronger than ever. The Party wanted Biden because he would do what they want, and now there's even more reason for them to believe he will. He's boxed in.

"People have speculated that Speaker Pelosi or the party leadership asked me to resign because of the photos and the allegations about me. That could not be further from the truth."

Writes Katie Hill in "It’s Not Over After All/I overcame the desperation I felt after stepping down from Congress, and I’m still in the fight" in the NYT:

In fact, one of the most difficult moments during my resignation process was my phone call to the Speaker, a woman I admire more than anyone and whom I had come to love. She told me I didn’t have to do this, that the country needed me and that she wished I hadn’t made this decision, but she respected me and what I felt I needed to do. I told her what I told everyone else when I announced my resignation: that it was the right thing to do.

Do you believe that? I think she got the Al Franken treatment — forced out, and now, on the outside, really regretting it.

I knew it was the best decision for me, my family, my staff, my colleagues, my community... [I]n the days that followed... I would start shaking, crying, throwing up....

[W]hen it got dark I drew a bath, lit candles and brought over a bottle of wine. I laid there and thought about what I’d lost.... The bath water had gone cold. The wine bottle was empty. Suddenly and with total clarity, I just wanted it all to be over. I got up and looked for the box cutter. I couldn’t find it... and I got the paring knife and got back into the cold bath.... And I realized I couldn’t do it...  I don’t get to quit...

So the next day I put on my battle uniform: a red dress suit that my mom had bought me. I put on my war paint: bright red lipstick. I stepped up to that lectern and told the world that although my time in Congress was over, I wasn’t done....

The contemplation of suicide, with some knife-wielding action, is getting the most attention, I believe. But what I think is more important here is the pro-Pelosi propaganda, and I think it's no accident that the NYT is running this very long essay now about something that happened over a year ago. [CORRECTION: No! It was only last October.]

NOTE: I did not get caught up in the Katie Hill story last year. I only wrote about her after she resigned, and I said "Katie Hill shouldn't have resigned! She Frankened!" I said:

I think there's too much willingness to resign and get out of the way. You got elected by a set of people. Are they asking you to get out or are you letting members of Congress tell you to get out of their way? They're not you're constituents. Don't Franken!

ADDED: Well, I was wrong about when the Katie Hill defenestration happened, so I must turn my suspicion of the NYT way down. But I still do not believe the assertions about Pelosi, the woman Hill purports to "admire more than anyone."

I'm wary of things I'm told "could not be further from the truth." That's never true — that the asserted thing is the farthest thing from the truth. Why obviously exaggerate right at the point when you're pressuring us to believe you?

Katie Hill shouldn't have resigned! She Frankened!

Get your Katie Hill background info by Googling "Katie Hill." I'm not into filling in on the details on this one. I think there's too much willingness to resign and get out of the way. You got elected by a set of people. Are they asking you to get out or are you letting members of Congress tell you to get out of their way? They're not you're constituents. Don't Franken!

ADDED: This is my first and perhaps only post about Katie Hill, but I've seen lots of talk about her in comments to my posts, and I responded to one of those comments, so let me front-page myself. I had a post about a WaPo column about Trump's supposedly horrible treatment of women (which began "Ew"). The commenter Leland wrote:

"No one will miss her. A self-promoter who destroyed Al Franken’s political career for no reason whatsoever. Good riddance."

The top-rated comment — with 1141 up votes — at "Kirsten Gillibrand Drops Out of 2020 Democratic Presidential Race/The New York senator anchored her candidacy in issues of women’s equality, but she was unable to gain traction and her failure to qualify for the next debate convinced her to withdraw" (NYT).

I keep reading comments, in order of up votes, and every single one is about Al Franken:

1073 Recommend: "She thought that taking down Al Franken would springboard her to national office. Not only was she wrong to silence one of the most effective progressive voices in the Senate, she badly miscalculated its effect on her political career."

998 Recommend: "Gillibrand’s insistence that denying due process to Al Franken was the right path demonstrates what a poor senator she is, and what a terrible president she would be. Franken deserved a hearing, not a lynch mob. He may have been found culpable, in which case he should have resigned. But Gillibrand instead forced fellow Democrats to pile on to her rush to judgement. I’m so glad to see her go."

994 Recommend: "To some this will sound terrible, but most likely, her assault on Al Franken doomed her candidacy from day one. In my ultra liberal household where both my wife and I plan to vote for Elisabefh [sic] Warren, we just did not believe her when she claimed that she felt morally obligated to insist on Franken resign from the senate. We both believe that her motivation was to make a national name for herself and Al Franken was nothing more than collateral damage. If you can’t convince people like us, the north east liberals that we are, of your authenticity, I don’t see how you stand a chance in a national contest."

835 Recommend: "Her entire career is now defined by what she did to Al Franken. So long Senator, don't let the door hit you on the way out."

669 Recommend: "Al Franken should move to New York State and primary her."

I read 15 more comments that are about Al Franken before I get to the first one that doesn't mention him.

"This is one of the more bizarre articles I've read in a looong time, but not necessarily for the details (which are admittedly bizarre), but more because it's unclear to me why this article exists."

"The article title suggests that it's about how an 'expert' on judgment is still capable of making bad decisions. This led me to believe the rest of the article would expand on this concept, and perhaps offer some insights on the human condition or how all of us are fallible, etc. But it doesn't do that at all, it's more like an extremely detailed laundry list of unpleasant human behavior, but no real attempt at analysis. The punchline is 'Hay remains mystified about what the women really wanted from him.' Um, ok? And you're publicly revealing all this why?"

Writes jeremias at Metafilter, about "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge/A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?," which we've been talking about here and which I can't stop thinking about.

Answering jeremias's question is jam jam:

Since you won't say it jeremias, I will.

We are seeing this right now because so many people are so uncomfortable about the things women are saying about powerful men, and they are DESPERATE for any excuse at all to disbelieve those women.

And this story will give them that at an unconscious level.

Suddenly, "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge" pairs up with that other article we've been talking about,"The Case of Al Franken/A close look at the accusations against the former senator."

A "master class in biased reporting"? Seems like pretty normal biased reporting to me.

Let me be direct and clear: This article is a master class in biased reporting and editing. There are so many subtle ways that it seeks to manipulate the reader into taking Franken's side.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 22, 2019

One reason I rarely do Twitter is that it doesn't look right to me to make comments on things you don't link to or even cite. You just assume people know what you're talking about. It seems a tad mental. If you did this in real-life conversations, it would be weird.

Embedding these 2 tweets on my blog, I now feel that I should explain the context and link to the Jane Mayer article about Al Franken (yes, it's Al Franken, not some other Franken). Of course, if I were writing a mainstream news article, I'd have to say Al Franken, the former Senator from Minnesota who was... oh, it's too tedious to spell out.... I enjoy the freedom of not having to do that, but I resist the freedom of Twitter, to just blurt out my latest thought with no preface, no context.

Anyway, we talked about the Al Franken article yesterday, here. The idea that it wouldn't be biased never crossed my mind, so it's hard for me to see anything as subtle. The interesting question is therefore why Nate Silver chose this occasion to call out a journalist for using skill to manipulate readers. And Silver's tweet is just as much of a "master class" in bias, just as "subtle" in its effort to bias readers.

Silver sees the use of quotation marks around "zero tolerance" as a nudge to think of Kirsten Gillibrand as "sloganeering" or hypocritical, but did he even check to see whether The New Yorker is simply following its own convention of copy editing? I searched The New Yorker archive for "zero tolerance" and "#MeToo" and found:

"The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced," by Jeannie Suk Gersen (December 2017): "And, echoing their successful student counterparts over the past several years, the men will claim in court that the pressure to implement a 'zero tolerance' policy against harassment led employers to act without sufficient investigation or proper process, motivated by the employees’ male gender."

"Can Hollywood Change Its Ways?/In the wake of scandal, the movie industry reckons with its past and its future" by Dana Goodyear (January 2018): "In the past, men who got caught used a magic spell: 'I am an alcoholic/sex addict and am seeking treatment.'... [T]he magic spell no longer works. In its place is the righteous meme of 'zero tolerance.'"

Now, it might be that The New Yorker generally disapproves of a "zero tolerance" approach, but would that cause it to adopt quotation marks? The New Yorker has a special reputation for copy editing. I've read the copy editor's book, "Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen." Excerpt:

Lu taught me to do without hyphens when a word is in quotation marks, unless the word is always hyphenated; the quotation marks alone hold the words together, and it would be overkill to link them with a hyphen as well. (Capital letters and italics work the same way.) Eleanor once mystified me by putting a hyphen in “blue stained glass” to make it “blue-stained glass.”

That may explain why New Yorker articles about Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy leave off the quotation marks:

"What the Bible Really Says About Trump’s Zero-Tolerance Immigration Policy" by James Carroll (June 2018): "Attorney General Jeff Sessions invokes the Bible to justify the heinous zero-tolerance immigration policy, which incarcerates children."

"Will Anyone in the Trump Administration Ever Be Held Accountable for the Zero-Tolerance Policy?" by Jonathan Blitzer (August 2018): "The failure of the zero-tolerance policy has done little, if anything, to diminish the group’s standing; on the contrary, Miller has only seemed to gain allies in the government."

I strongly doubt that The New Yorker disapproves of Gillibrand's staunch feminism more than Trump's approach to illegal immigration.

But there is a fine point of punctuation here. When you write "zero-tolerance policy," you're using the phrase "zero tolerance" as an adjective, and — as the indented passage above explains — you need to "hold the words together." You could use either quote marks or a hyphen, and I think the idea is that the hyphen looks less fussy. But in the quote about Gillibrand — "a feminist champion of 'zero tolerance' toward sexual impropriety" — "zero tolerance" isn't used as an adjective, so a hyphen isn't an option — unless you reword it as "a feminist champion of a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual impropriety."

Since rewording is an option, it was possible to avoid the "air quotes" effect of making it seem as though Gillibrand is some sort of demagogue. But to switch to a hyphen would be to treat #MeToo non-tolerance the same as Trump's immigration non-tolerance. Would that improve the treatment of Gillibrand? Maybe these are 2 different ways of subtly attacking someone, and there's some sexism in the choice. Gillibrand is disparaged as ditzy — using a dumb slogan. Trump is disparaged as a cruel oppressor.

Enough of that. Here's something subtle that I think neither Silver nor Mayer considered. To champion "'Zero tolerance' toward sexual impropriety" is NOT zero tolerance! The word "impropriety" drains the absolutism from "zero." What are we going to call "improper"? It's subjective, and the answer can be: Whatever we won't tolerate at all. Flexible.

And since we've come this far, we might as well see the subjectivity and flexibility in "sexual" and "tolerance." Is intensely sniffy neck-nuzzling "sexual"? Analysis of Joe Biden's behavior toward young girls has generally led to the answer no. And "tolerance" can mean doing nothing at all. Suppose we eradicate "tolerance" — and I do take "zero" seriously. That could mean only that we stop doing nothing at all. We could end the state of tolerance by simply expressing disapproval, something as mild as: I see what you're doing and I find it unacceptable.

"Holding his head in his hands, he said, 'I don’t think people who have been sexually assaulted, and those kinds of things, want to hear from people who have been #MeToo’d that they’re victims.'"

"Yet, he added, being on the losing side of the #MeToo movement, which he fervently supports, has led him to spend time thinking about such matters as due process, proportionality of punishment, and the consequences of Internet-fuelled outrage. He told me that his therapist had likened his experience to 'what happens when primates are shunned and humiliated by the rest of the other primates.' Their reaction, Franken said, with a mirthless laugh, 'is I’m going to die alone in the jungle.'... 'I can’t go anywhere without people reminding me of this, usually with some version of You shouldn’t have resigned,' Franken said. He appreciates the support, but such comments torment him about his departure from the Senate. He tends to respond curtly, 'Yup.' When I asked him if he truly regretted his decision to resign, he said, 'Oh, yeah. Absolutely.' He wishes that he had appeared before a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, as he had requested, allowing him to marshal facts that countered the narrative aired in the press.... A remarkable number of Franken’s Senate colleagues have regrets about their own roles in his fall."

Writes Jane Mayer in "The Case of Al Franken/A close look at the accusations against the former senator" (The New Yorker). Seven  of Franken’s Senate colleagues went on record with Mayer: Patrick Leahy, Heidi Heitkamp, Tammy Duckworth, Angus King, Jeff Merkley, Bill Nelson (“I realized almost right away I’d made a mistake. I felt terrible. I should have stood up for due process to render what it’s supposed to—the truth”), Tom Udall, Harry Reid (“It’s terrible what happened to him. It was unfair. It took the legs out from under him. He was a very fine senator”).

This is a long article. Let me just also excerpt the part where Franken weeps and Kirsten Gillibrand's new statements:

"In her 2014 memoir... Gillibrand described her childhood self as 'a massive kiss-ass [who] lived for positive reinforcement.' When I ask if that little kiss-ass lives on inside of her, Gillibrand tells me, 'Yeah, she’s still there.'"

"Perhaps it’s that instinct to people-please that’s led to accusations of corelessness. During Gillibrand’s tenure in the House of Representatives, she catered to the primarily white, Republican towns and farming communities that made up New York’s 20th Congressional District.... Gillibrand frames her leftward tilt with appealing, party-neutral language. Our children should be safe. We should be able to afford to live....  Gillibrand may have drastically changed positions on guns and immigration, but from the beginning, she’s bolstered women.... At the apex of the Me Too reckoning in November 2017, then-Sen. Al Franken was accused of sexual misconduct by radio host Leeann Tweeden; subsequently, a photograph of Franken pretending to grab Tweeden’s breasts was released, and seven other women came forward, including a congressional staffer, saying Franken kissed or touched them inappropriately. Other future 2020 candidates encouraged Franken to resign — Harris, Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand’s friend Cory Booker — but Gillibrand was, by 16 minutes, the first to publicly say he should step down. Consequently, much of the coverage focused on her.... Gillibrand has been accused — by what has turned out to be a vocal lobby of forced-kissing apologists — of overreacting to the mostly pre-governmental behavior of a popular senator, of enforcing standards of behavior that Republicans would never agree to follow, of hurting her political chances and, of course, of capitalizing on a cultural moment for publicity."

From "The Ignoring of Kirsten Gillibrand/In 2019, it’s unforgivable for a presidential candidate to be boring. Maybe that’s our loss" by Anna Peele (WaPo).

When the self-proclaimed kiss-ass met the self-satisfied forced-kisser...