Do We Understand What an Allegation Is?

                  Do We Understand What an Allegation Is?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 11/19/17

            Anyone who wants to tell Alabama citizens how they should vote had better get in line.  The line of out-of-state know-it-alls is already quite long.  Let us say too many cooks have run down to the Alabama kitchen.

            Never has outside meddling, condescension, and arrogance been on such display as with those who are telling Alabamians what to do about their December 12 senatorial election.  Republicans in the U.S. Senate, including one of our Georgia senators, have deigned to tell Alabamians what they should do.

            Need we remind these outsiders? Our Constitution’s federalism means Alabama gets to choose her own senators.  Imagine Senate leader McConnell saying, “There are options we are looking at regarding the election.”  And who is “we”?  It’s Senate members who don’t get to vote in Alabama.  Add to them the media stars who are trying to pick or keep Alabama from picking the candidate they choose.

            For instance, who is Sean Hannity to tell any candidate, “You have 24 hours to clear up your mess?”  Wow!  Being recently crowned the most-watched cable news anchor on television, Hannity is really feeling the power.  He’s sounding like the pompous U.S. Senators he has long critiqued.   How disappointing.

            Yes, it’s still relevant, so let’s ask it.  Where were the feminists, the media, and Gloria Allred when Bill Clinton’s victims charged him with assault and rape?  Clinton’s victims also went on television and cried, only to be ignored and forgotten.  Why the selective rage?  We know the answer.  It all depends on who is being accused and which election you are trying to influence.

            It isn’t the task of Alabamians to “do what’s best for the nation.”  Their civic task and privilege is to elect candidates they prefer to elect.  The guilt of their Republican nominee has not been established, so why all the moral high horses?

            Easy question.  The answer is that for Republicans, climbing upon a moral high horse is easier than fighting.  I have quite a few Democratic friends and not one of them is hesitant to fight for what they believe.  Most Republicans leaders won’t fight.  They run from the thought of trouble, spurning anyone less genteel than they.  They get spooked by seeing a Republican candidate riding a horse and wearing a hat.  They probably freaked years ago when the iconic Charlton Heston, speaking against gun control, held his gun high and said, “From my cold, dead hands.”  Their most feared enemy is the northeastern media who is also trying to school the voters of Alabama.

            Allegations, allegations, allegations.  And just weeks before an election.  Everybody reading this has seen this movie before.

            Be careful if you’re a male, especially a male college student, a male teacher, or a male candidate.  Examples abound of “guilty until proven innocent.”  Ask the Duke University lacrosse team, or Richard Jewel, the innocent security guard who during the 1996 Olympics was dragged through career-ending mud by the Atlanta papers and NBC.  Ask the exonerated male janitor and male special education teacher with whom I worked years ago.  Ask Herman Cain.

            Ask me.  I’ve been accused not of sexual impropriety but of misusing public funds.  Guess when, moviegoers.  Three weeks before an election.  The investigation by the State Ethics Commission (after I was re-elected) wasn’t fun.  A good friend called to ask if I was guilty.  Had he been the accused, I would have called him to lend my support.  See what allegations can do to people’s heads?

            What, then, are we to do about a litigious society that allows allegations to morph into truth before the ink dries?  First, we can honor “innocent until proven guilty” again.  Secondly, we should acknowledge that while smoke does indicate fire, there are lots of arsonists in the world, especially in politics.  Political fires are often ignited by a lie and fueled by the piling on of allegations.

            Allegations are often a dog’s breakfast of charges designed to smear someone.  It’s American to hear the charged one out, particularly when the accuser’s defenders are self-serving and as suspect as the timing of their charges.

            Moral superiority is the refuge of the immoral.  Just as Trump supporters are viewed as deplorable, so are “those Alabamians down there” being viewed as less than intelligent. They are also being besieged by arrogant smarter-than-you media types and Republican senators who are simply acting uppity about it all.

 And all because of yet unproven allegations.  Resistance is in order.

Roger Hines

11/16/17