As women have come out to charge that Joe Biden’s creepy contact made them feel uncomfortable, many conservatives joined in the criticism. But there is now a countermovement on the Right arguing that the attention the former vice president’s behavior is getting is just another example of politically correct culture run amok.
Last night, Fox’s Tucker Carlson apologized for being part of the chorus that mocked Biden’s behavior after having seen that Biden was forced into a video response to the various accusations.
With an image of an American flag over his shoulder and the headline “Left’s PC Hell,” Carlson said in a monologue, “What we should have said every bit as loudly and what we apologize now for not saying, is that hugging is not sexual assault, Eskimo kisses are not rape. That used to be obvious and it’s not obvious any more and so we’re sorry for helping to blur the distinction between human affection and coercive immoral behavior. The last thing this country needs is more aggrieved people who think they’ve been assaulted because a senior citizen hugged them wrong. And so we apologize for adding to that nonsense and anti-human hysteria.”
On Twitter, Matt Walsh expressed a similar sentiment:
This thing with Biden is stupid. We all know that Biden’s behavior does not rise anywhere close to the level of sexual assault. I don’t like the guy and disagree with everything he says and I don’t want him to be president, but the bad faith BS by conservatives just annoys me.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 3, 2019
However, this argument is a straw man. Nobody criticizing Biden, as far as I have seen, is accusing him of being a rapist, or of having engaged in sexual assault. His behavior isn’t being described as malicious in intent, violent, or even necessarily sexual in nature.
But there are a wide range of behaviors that fall well short of being outright rape that are nonetheless inappropriate.
However harmless he may have meant it, his various actions — kissing hair, sniffing hair, rubbing noses, massaging shoulders — was inappropriate and made women feel uncomfortable.
I may not have been a teenager in the 1950s like Joe Biden, but I am quite aware of the mores as they existed in what Allahpundit has described as “the distant mists of time circa 2016.” And Biden’s behavior was not appropriate, as some commentators pointed out at the time.
Women will often describe uncomfortable experiences in which, say, a handsy boss gives them an unwanted shoulder rub. They may let it pass, and move on, and no it isn’t the same thing as a violent rape, but there’s still no reason why they should have to endure it. So I’m perfectly supportive of drawing a line in the sand in which unwanted touching of the sort initiated by Biden is seen as inappropriate even if it isn’t to be confused with sexual assault.
