EXTRA: Degrees of boorish behavior? or, Are we still acting like high school?

Let’s be honest. When now-Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., groped that broadcaster by her breasts (and had someone take a picture of the moment), he was being a boor.

FRANKEN: A first-class boor?

That was just tacky, acting as though he were in a frat house with a girl who passed out from too much liquor consumption. LeeAnn Tweeden, the woman who didn’t realize at the time what was being done to her, is justifiably p-o’ed.

SHE’D BE JUSTIFIED if she were to walk up to Franken and give him a smack across the jaw. Or maybe a knee to the groin!

But for those people who are trying to use this incident as a way of downplaying the significance of the Senate candidate from Alabama, that’s just disgusting. The fact that President Donald J. Trump himself is going out of his way to bash Franken while saying as little as possible against Roy Moore merely shows just how ridiculous such a stance is.

The fact is that they’re two separate issues. LeeAnn Tweeden has every right to be upset about her encounter with Franken just over a decade ago when both were participants on a USO tour in Afghanistan and the now-senator (then former Saturday Night Live entertainer) used the moment to get kisses she otherwise wouldn’t have given him – and that moment later when she was asleep and got “felt up” by Franken.

I’m inclined to believe Franken’s claim that he thought it was a “funny” thing to do. Although in retrospect, it was more tacky than humorous.

MOORE: Should have known better

BUT MOORE’S BEHAVIOR with teenage girls, particularly the one who was only 14 at the time of the incident nearly 40 years ago, is much more despicable. And the fact that Alabama state law thinks there are circumstances in which girls as young as 12 can consent to sexual behavior doesn’t make it any less creepy.

By comparison, Tweeden is now 44, which would have put her in her early 30s at the time of the incident. She has a right to be upset. But she was capable of defending herself in a way the 14-year-old wasn't.

Moore, who at the time was a criminal prosecutor and most definitely should have known better, did something more repulsive – even though some of those of Republican partisan leanings seem to want to believe that Moore is somehow forgivable whereas Franken needs to have the long arm of the law sicc’ed on him.

Is title why some think Franken worse?

Seriously, some want Al prosecuted (at the very least, Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Illinois Democrats, are getting calls by GOPers to give away any campaign money Franken ever helped them raise), whereas they make excuses as to why talking about "statutory rape" with regards to Moore is wrong!

PERHAPS IT IS because they have read the reports of Moore’s actual actions with the 14-year-old girl. One such report indicates he undressed her to her underwear, then groped her. Almost like a stumbling teenage boy who doesn’t really have a clue what he’s doing when with a real-live girl!

Does that make him the equivalent of a teenager at heart? Which ought to bring up the question of whether he’s mature enough to be a public official.

Then again, Franken’s behavior is reminiscent of those moments when I was in junior high school when we thought the most awesome thing to do to a girl is pull through her blouse on her bra straps.

Which may be the ultimate problem – too many people behaving in boorish ways that you’d have thought they’d have given up on after leaving the halls of high school. For those of us with sense, we realize that was the moment real life began.

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