Sexual assault is a heinous crime, and falsely accusing someone of committing it is abhorrent. So whenever this subject rears its ugly head, we ought to, in the words of columnist Michelle Malkin, “believe evidence” and not automatically the accuser or the accused.
But, as Democrats elongate Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing ever further with two unverified allegations of sexual abuse, celebrities are piling all the emotion they can onto the scales of public opinion so that any evidence will inevitably be outweighed and ignored.
Joining the fray now is actress Alyssa Milano, who has recently become synonymous with the #MeToo movement. On Sept. 21, Newsweek’s Emily Zogbi brought to light a tweet of Mlano’s that harshly (and, as you might have guessed, obscenely) chides President Trump for a simple request of documentation. Specifically, she tells him to “Listen the f*** up.”
Hey, @realDonaldTrump, Listen the fuck up.
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) September 21, 2018
I was sexually assaulted twice. Once when I was a teenager. I never filed a police report and it took me 30 years to tell me parents.
If any survivor of sexual assault would like to add to this please do so in the replies. #MeToo https://t.co/n0Aymv3vCi
Any assault that Milano experienced should not be trivialized. But she makes a dangerous assumption by suggesting that people who claim trauma or retaliation as reasons not to report ought to be believed without question, even in the face of contradiction from witnesses and lack of evidence.
Despite the flaws of her response, Zogbi decided to prop Milano up and even pulled in Fox News presenter Jesse Watters randomly for a bash: “Jesse Watters … accused Ford of not acting like a ‘true victim.’ However, the many assault survivors replying to Milano’s invitation on Twitter show that there is not a singular narrative for a victim of sexual assault … ”
There aren’t many “singular narratives” to any human reaction. But nobody is entitled to level an accusation and expect to be vindicated without anything resembling evidence.
Sexual assault is terrible. But Milano’s tweet adds to the cacophony of voices who want fairness to be forgotten.
