Apparently not. It’s about crazy ass book bans in schools to begin with. This seriously creepy fuck just gratuitously tacked on his coworker’s name as though she was part of the narrative, but the original effort goes on:

The sponsor of the bill, Republican Sen. Joni Albrecht, apologized to her colleagues on Monday. “I’m so sorry that your name was injected into it,” she said. "That is absolutely, I will be the first to stand up and say I’m sorry.

But then, in the SAME SENTENCE, without a breath between, she adds,

This is in our schools. This is what’s going on. And I don’t want to see this elevated to any level."

I absolutely do NOT believe a person with a working conscience (!!!) would narrate a passage of graphic sexual violence out of a book as an example of what is being read by kids in schools and then ADD THEIR COWORKER’S NAME to the retelling as though she was a participant in the events described, whether as a joke or a come-on or for whatever perverted reason. That’s the difference between knowing right and wrong.

But what I’m getting from the article is that some (most?) of those present were fine with it, no one stopped him while he was doing this, and at least one of them (Albrecht, above) apologized only to try to rescue the book banning effort from this perv’s “one twist too far” efforts to use fear and loathing to ban more books.

So pointing out this asshole’s new low, as justified as it is, is almost like trying to find the worst protagonist in the last chapter of The Lord of the Flies, IMO. Because in the end, all this seriously warped bastard did was manage to shoehorn some very open and tightly targeted workplace sexual harassment into their concerted group workplace effort to harass the entire student population of Nebraska.

Which is the worse crime?

I honestly don’t know. I only know I would not be caught dead participating in either, and no one I know with an operating sense of human empathy would either: if you’re already lying to ban books, killing women by criminalizing pregnancy, demonizing people of color, and openly embracing other equally repugnant fascist principles, why would this further misbehavior against a woman shock and horrify you so much?

Also, consider that whatever justification he comes up with, it only has to work for his fellow Republicans, and that’s a bar low enough to turn an average cockroach into an Olympian.

But a male Republican state senator openly sexually harassing a Democrat female state senator on the floor of the Nebraska state senate? As horrific and gratuitous as that performance was, as much of an open sexual act toward his coworker as it was, nothing will be done, except the female senator will be pressured to “forgive” and let it go. Why? Because the doer is a man, a Republican and a state senator in Nebraska.