Milbank: Cant excuse Moore by pointing at others bad acts
Call the CDC. Alert the surgeon general and put the National Institutes of Health on standby.
We’re having a severe outbreak of whataboutism.
In mild forms, the primary symptom is a vulnerability to false equivalencies. Virulent strains, such as the current one, can cause victims to lose all moral perspective.
After I wrote about the grotesque spectacle of President Trump and Kellyanne Conway throwing their support behind accused child molester Roy Moore in Alabama’s Senate race, Trump fans answered with a flurry of whatabouts:
What about Al Franken?
What about John Conyers?
What about Bill Clinton?
“You write these words without even mentioning Conyers, Franken (who both need to go) and of course Bill Clinton,” writes a retired Air Force colonel. “Crickets from you on a louse like Bill.”
Another (of many) asked: “Where was your indignation and outrage due Bill Clinton? And how can you justify electing his enabling and complicit partner Hillary?”
I would have thought the best treatment for this faulty logic would be to ignore it, but it seems to be infecting the commentariat, too, to some extent: We are now hearing that the Conyers and Franken cases are muddying the waters and causing Democrats to lose the political high ground.
But there should be no muddiness here, and it has nothing to do with politics. Here’s “what about” Moore that is different: He has been accused, credibly and repeatedly, of sexual misconduct with children. Franken, Conyers and Clinton (Bill and Hillary), and, for that matter, Republican Joe Barton, have not. As Ivanka Trump put it: “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I’ve yet to see a valid explanation, and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.” (Her father, the New York Times reports, “vented his annoyance” over these words, asking aides, “Do you believe this?”)
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/milbank-cant-excuse-moore-by-pointing-at-others-bad-acts/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=0155bc410b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-0155bc410b-228635337