Every day this past week seemed to bring news of another powerful man accused of sexually harassing or assaulting women.
While their apologies (see Russell's here and Matt's here) are for the women they hurt, not me, I find them sorely lacking. Some people doubt their sincerity because these men didn't see the need to change their ways until they were caught and their power was taken. But for me, the biggest issue is the one sentiment that keeps cropping up over and over in their apologies... that they weren't aware they were doing something wrong and now they need to do some soul-searching and learn their lessons.
Maaaaaaaan... as Ed Lover would say, c'mon son! These men seem educated, but even if they weren't, I'm pretty sure they all went to kindergarten at least. And with that little bit of education and socialization, I KNOW they're aware a few rules we ALL learned back then that would've kept them out of the trouble they're in now. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Butler, taught my class these rules and I bet your kindergarten teacher did too:
- Keep your hands to yourself.
- If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything all.
And there was one other rule that some kids needed to hear at certain times of the day, because, bless their hearts, they would forget they weren't at home and got a little too comfortable:
- Keep your pants on at school, especially during nap time.
If Harvey, Charlie, Russell, Matt and the rest (see the growing list here) had remembered those simple rules, we wouldn't even be talking about all this now. We'd be paying more attention to that crazy tax bill the Senate just passed.
I just hope that going forward, we all try the Golden Rule and do unto others as we would have them do unto us... AND learn how to apologize better. I bet everything would work out SO much better. Even with that tax thing.