File that face under “C”, for creep.
You’re married, and you describe a much younger employee as your “soul mate”, and you think that’s OK, even though she never reciprocated or expressed similar statements.
Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) sought to defend himself against an accusation of sexual harassment Tuesday, saying he “developed an affection” for a decades-younger staffer he considered his “soul mate” but never sought a romantic or sexual relationship with her.
You get upset when you discover she is dating someone her age, who you don’t know.
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday — Meehan’s first lengthy response to the New York Times report — the four-term congressman denied engaging in harassment. He acknowledged lashing out when he learned the aide had started seriously dating someone outside his congressional office, attributing his reaction to the stress of a debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act.
“I started to talk to her about my reaction to [her relationship] and you know, selfishly I was thinking about what this was going to mean to me,” he told the Inquirer, adding that he “should have been looking at it from the perspective of a subordinate and a superior.”
I don’t know what that last bit means. So he should have ordered her, as her boss, to stop dating other men? It’s a bit ambiguous.
She accuses you of sexual harassment, and you actually settle for some large unspecified sum — not paid out of your pocket, obviously, but rather with taxpayer’s money.
Meehan settled with the former aide last year using taxpayer dollars after she filed a formal complaint of sexual harassment. The revelation of the settlement in a report by the New York Times on Saturday led to Meehan’s expulsion from the House Ethics Committee, which began investigating his behavior this week.
You are brought before an ethics hearing where you still insist that there was nothing abusive about your “relationship”, despite admitting guilt with a payoff, despite admitting that you’d been possessive of this woman, and despite openly talking about having an imaginary deeper relationship with her.
You know, by this point you ought to realize that you really are a great big creep, and that you’ve been oblivious.
But no can do: he’s a Republican.
I currently live in PA, one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. (So bad it was recently ruled illegal, by the way).
Meehan’s district, in particular, is one of the most ridiculously gerrymandered ones. It’s so bad it got extra special mention in the nytimes opinion piece from yesterday, “Putting the Voters in Charge of Fair Voting”.
Take a look at its shape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania%27s_7th_congressional_district
Dunning-Kruger in action? He thinks he can explain his way out of this. He doesn’t even understand the reality of his situation, so he can’t possibly succeed. He’s failing Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging, Rule #3: Let bad enough alone.
However, his political buddies may let him off because they are all a bunch of crass, immature idiots.
For context: CNN – Congress releases some specific numbers on settlements for sexual harassment.
To be fair he is a Republican – it would be difficult from him to think any other way.
I think he means he should have seen that she would feel threatened and coerced and she just might consider it to be sexual harassment. He is claiming to be blind to this. Hard to tell if this is “I’m sorry I did that” or I’m sorry I got caught”.
The term soul mate is quite problematic, but let me accept that it makes sense – I’ve known someone who I might call my soul mate.
“selfishly I was thinking about what this was going to mean to me.”
Then Meehan was not her soul mate – he was not thinking and/or feeling the same way his staffer does.
I suspect that if I started sending him letters telling him he was my “soul mate” and otherwise acting like a creepy stalker, I’d get a visit from the FBI.
I used to live in the 13th district, which interdigitates weirdly with one fragment of the 7th.
Is this the guy who literally blamed Obamacare for his acts of sexual harassment?
Actually Mr. Myers, you’re wrong about one thing. Beyond how arduous it is to actually file a sexual harassment claim in Congress, coworkers are forbidden from discussing it, as is the accuser, and it’s not an admission of guilt.
Unfortunately I failed to translate the term that I was looking for but I try to describe it: it’s when a person is a living prop, serving no other purpose than being there and look important, which is how he had seen her, and what he probably meant based on his admission.
Reminds me of liar, serial adulterer, racist, pompous, pseudo-intellectual, Newt Gingrich. He blamed his affair with a women while his wife was dying of cancer on his passionate patriotism and concern for the direction his beloved country was going. He still appears as an “expert” talking-head on news programs.
Objectification?
@ 1 ealloc
I had a look at that district. Either it is a Esher drawing or the ravings of demented topologist.
Here, in comparison, is a Federal riding (roughly district) in Ontario that someone I met was bitterly complaining was “gerrymandered”. http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps2/mapprov.asp?map=35049&lang=e
I understand his point,but for historical and population reasons I disagree.
In the case of the Meehan’s district, it is not so much a district as an example of origami gone feral.
Can anyone explain what goes on in dudes’ heads when they unilaterally declare special relationships with women? Just like this one, where he thinks he can just decide they’re “soul mates” and that makes it manifestly true to all the world, no matter what she thinks or feels or wants?
I’ve been on the receiving end of that a number of times, and I find it bewildering.
Up until 2010, I lived in the 13th district. Even though I didn’t move, I have been living in the seventh district ever since and I’ve voted against Meehan every chance I’ve gotten. He always struck me as tea party light, and from my interactions with the man (which includes his never responding to any of my calls, texts, emails, or faxes and a couple of in-person meetings), there’s absolutely nothing surprising about this story.
Between the redrawing of the district and these allegations, it’s safe to say his political career is over. One of his opponents this year — Molly Sheehan — is a bona fide scientist.
I really wish there were a way to make these people feel the sheer, soul-corroding, omnipresent creepiness their antics cause in their victims. It’s got to be a lack of empathy thing…
ealloc @ #1: I hereby pronounce Mr Meehan the Member for Thyroid Disorders, based on the appearance of his electorate. Possibly what needs to be pointed out to the various members of Congress is that if your electorate resembles any diseased organ (including liver, lung, kidney or brain), you probably need to take another look at the boundaries.
“You’re married, and you describe a much younger employee as your “soul mate”, and you think that’s OK, even though she never reciprocated or expressed similar statements.”
Yeah, I’m just gonna stop you riiight there while I plan my escape, k?
*reads rest of post*
Gross. So gross.
They believe that humans come in natural pairs. Because surely God wouldn’t allow anything else – that would be cruel, wouldn’t it.* Further, they believe that whether two people belong to such a pair is so self-evident that nobody in their right mind could even doubt it; logically, then, nobody even needs to ask.
Then the misogyny comes in. She’s already married to someone else? Must’ve been some kind of marriage of convenience that she must be rescued from, for which she’ll be thankful ever after. (No agency for women.) Or perhaps she’s simply mistaken; perhaps she was Young And Naïve, in which case she must be rescued as above, or she’s still naïve because she doesn’t know her real soulmate well enough yet. (No intelligence or knowledge for women.)
* See also: the 18th-century controversy on whether God would ever allow a species he created to go extinct.