The nature and content of his response is so telling. He DID INDEED make the point that - if it bothered her, that was enough. Didn't matter what he thought. It was HER opinion that counted. That mentality should tell the whole story. You take THE OTHER PERSON'S VIEWPOINT into consideration. It's being considerate. You try to view something through THEIR lens. Walk around in THEIR shoes.
Isn't that a fundamental tenet of the most basic, entry-level, garden-variety morality? "Do unto others..." and all that? Isn't that THE guideline? The "Golden Rule," the foundational truth spelled out in Matthew 25: 35-45 - "whatever you do to the least of these, you do to Me" and all that? Taking the other person into account.
So if somebody makes that kind of observation in, I take that seriously, and I regard it as a "tell." If that's how he governs his morality, and if that's what motivates his contrition, then I totally accept. Particularly when others are coming forward now to attest to Franken's sincerity, character, and conscience. His track record over years speaks loudly for him, and hardly in a bad way. Context dontchaknow.
Everybody makes mistakes. None of us is perfect. There's a rather freewheeling atmosphere to a USO tour, particularly when it's at an end. Just imagine. You've been shlepping around in this really crazy traveling minstrel show to some really crazy places some of whose names you've never heard before, thrown together in the small troupe of people you never knew before, all of you far from home, amid ridiculous scheduling, jet lag, time zones, insane work hours, catch-as-catch-can meals (if you're lucky to get there before they run out), heavy baggage to lug around and keep track of, and in many cases no sleep, while you haven't been eating your vegetables and your skin starts breaking out and you've had no time for a bath - a quick few minutes with a bar of soap and MAYBE a washcloth might be the best you can do. Toward the end, especially, you get a little slap-happy. Emotions are all askew, the littlest things are ridiculously funny or ridiculously horrid, depending on the moment and the company, and everybody's crazy. And the camaraderie, wild behavior, and recklessness that can develop, very quickly, in that intense little crucible, can really be powerful, and easily drive one to do goofy things.
I remember hearing from audio and video crew people who went on the road covering the presidential campaign in 1980. They were gone for weeks. running from gig to press bus to tarmac to find-a-seat in the transport plane, almost literally thrown together. Toward the end, nobody knows what time it is, where they just were, where they were a week ago, or anything. One of the guys told me that the "Zoo Plane" (that's what they called the jet with all the newspeople on it - that accompanied the Reagan campaign plane from stop to stop) was NUTS. Loopy as hell. On their last takeoff from their last campaign stop before heading home to Southern California, NOBODY was seated or strapped in. They ALL were up, on their feet, yelling their brains out, whooping and screaming with laughter. Buncha wild 'n' crazy people. Katy Tur's book about life on the campaign trail is a MOST illuminating read.
I myself have been out in the field away from home for days, covering extended stories. It's like riding INSIDE a kaleidoscope. There's always at least one wise-ass in the group, and when there's more than one, they compete - to the death! There's always at least one dirty jokester. There are pranks. You get punchy and goofy. And you fall into anything that might break the hurry-up-and-wait boredom and the tension and the loneliness and the mood swings and the sense of being totally disconnected from everything, in your own little microcosm with the other weary travelers schlepping along on the same journey with you.
I also have been on tour, when my kid got a gig with a studio-backed youth band, and we were sent off to performances at a slew of schools throughout the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Even just two weeks of that left you slap-happy. "Where are we?" "Uh - when are we supposed to be there?" "What/where/when are we playing?" "What school is this?" "Uh - who-am-I-where-is-my-car?" And there were fights, tears, hissy fits, bouts of homesickness, hundreds of miles of crabby and moody, etc. At one point, we headed out at the crack of dawn for bookings in the next state, and forgot the studio teacher who was also on the tour because the kids were still school-age! She overslept, and got left behind, and had to find her own way to the next stop! And THIS tour was absolutely across-the-board G-rated. One parent per band-kid was present. So everything remained rather militantly on the up-n-up.
Later, when my son started touring with his own band, man, there were pranks! Didn't even require female involvement! Headliner to new opening band, in Bakersfield CA on the last night of the tour, for example. MY boys were invited into the headliners' tour bus to hang out before the show started, and they were over-the-moon about that, since this kind of honor, from these headliners, was rare. Meanwhile, unbeknownst, the roadies for the headliners pranked the stage. Baby powder on the drum heads. Vicks Vap-o-rub on the microphones and Vaseline on the mic stands. Filled water bottles and soda cans set up, ready to be sprayed all over everywhere. A box of Saran Wrap ready to attack the bass player and mummy-wrap him from the waist up INCLUDING his bass (which they did WHILE my boys were onstage!). My boys were even higher over-the-moon - THRILLED, even! - at having been pranked like that. They felt like they were initiated into some sort of exclusive fraternity! And whenever they were out on the road somewhere and had a Halloween show scheduled - miles and miles of 70mph craziness. There was one headliner band they toured with, whose members specialized in gross pranks. The more disgusting the better. Fortunately, they preyed upon each other and it didn't extend outside the confines of their own tour bus. None of the other bands on the bill were targeted. And no women were ever around for that kind of thing. That headliner band turned out to be rather kind and generous to my boys, ironically enough. But man, the stories...
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