In his new autobiography, Woody Allen apparently responds to the notion that we should always “believe women” with a reference to the Scottsboro Boys. He didn’t mention the Salem witch trials, but he could have. It’s the same thing.
I’ve always been perfectly consistent on this point–neither sex has a monopoly on the truth, which has to be ascertained on a case-by-case basis. And so, I thought Harvey Weinstein’s accusers were completely credible, but I also thought Al Franken was railroaded, and that the allegations against Allen were probably false, because the police investigated them and did not press charges.
That, of course, brings us to the new allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden. I don’t find them credible for a variety of reasons, including: there is, of course, no physical evidence of the attack; no other workers in the Biden office at the time have any recollection of receiving a report of the attack; no one has found any evidence that a paper report was filed, even though the accuser says it happened; the accuser made no reference to the attack earlier in the year when other women were complaining about Biden’s habit of being too handsy with them; the accuser has little information about the specifics of the alleged assault; and the accuser has a partisan axe to grind. That’s a lot of reasons not to believe it. No single one is necessarily disqualifying, but the entirety of the picture is pretty clear.
The NYT clearly conducted an exhaustive investigation of the subject; the lack of publicity given to the allegation indicates that the investigators found it incredible, and wanted to avoid making it another bogus Clinton e-mail issue. You can read the article and decide for yourself. For me, it’s a very easy call.