Gillibrand—a senator and friend of Franken’s who was repeatedly grilled about her colleague’s conduct as eight allegations against him mounted—gets no equivalent presumption of well-meaning awkwardness. Her positions are qualified with quotation marks, calling the sincerity of certain claims into question (“donors sympathetic to Franken have stunted her fund-raising and, Gillibrand says, tried to ‘intimidate’ her ‘into silence,’ ” for instance, or “Gillibrand has cast herself as a feminist champion of ‘zero tolerance’ toward sexual impropriety”). Things Gillibrand does are coded as not merely insincere but calculating and cruel: She “added insult to injury” by sponsoring that bill Franken asked her to sponsor. A former donor calls her “opportunistic.”

By contrast, Franken—an intelligent man—is widely understood to have no intentionality whatsoever. Gillibrand may “cast” herself as a feminist, but Franken is so regretful and confused and upset and supportive of #MeToo that it seems impossible to imagine him “casting” himself as anything at all. That’s a little weird considering he literally cast himself as a creep in the sketch the first allegation is about, so he presumably has some grasp of how self-presentation works (and doesn’t). His defenders cast him as well-meaning and lacking anything like guile or political cunning or even pride. His successes aren’t omitted, but they don’t register as hubris because others narrate them for him (feminists liked him, he was “talked up” as “a possible challenger to President Donald Trump in 2020,” etc.).