Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Degrees

“Not Morgan.” I thought. “He’s also part of this Me Too  shit?”
The CNN article posted on my FB feed said eight women had accused him, seven of these for lewd comments and inappropriate stares. Employees at his production company, described him as thecreepy uncle. Hell, I thought when I read this; I’ve been dealing with the creepy uncles since I was eight or nine. Grown ass men, some old enough to me my granddaddy, would leer and say the most disgusting things to me when I ran to the store on a hot summer day in shorts. Was I easily able to forgive Morgan for this because I’d been dealing with it all my life? Hell southern women my age had a name for it, “men who talked up under your dress.” We laughed about it and moved on. But I remembered how I felt the first time one of them said something about wanting to get in-between my magnificent thighs. Girls shouldn’t have to experience that, women either.
One woman accused Morgan of unwanted touching. Although he never succeeded, she asserted, he would touch and/or rub her lower back and try to lift up her skirt, asking, are you wearing underwear?Unacceptable. Not of the Harvey Weinstein magnitude but not okay.
Higher on the not okay spectrum was the allegation (2006 National Enquirer) that Morgan had a romantic relationship with E’dena Hines, his step-granddaughter, which alleged began when she was a teenager in his household. This allegation periodically resurfaced, most recently during her murder trail, E’dena was stabbed to death in 2015, by her boy friend Lamar Davenport. 
It is hard for me to believe this about Morgan. Someone I met, during his Electric Company days, more than once. My perception was, nice man. But you’d probably think the same thing after you met a sexual predator? They would be charming, right? Cosby was, I’d met him.
And if it was true, that Morgan had had an inappropriate sexual relationship with his step-grand daughter, does that automatically make him a sexual predator? Where’s the line?
Generationally the line is different. Most of us baby-boomer women take the talking up under your dress shit in stride. I’d learned to deflect with some smartass response by the time I was twenty. Sometimes I think millennials are too thin skinned and then feel guilty for having that thought. Since the goal of my generation was to make it easier for our kids, consequently doesn’t that make them softer?
 A conundrum cycle, one question leads to another.