More generally, a 30+ y/o hitting on a 19 y/o or a 17 y/o has roughly the same levels of cringe. The only difference is one is legal, the other is not.
The difference is one's in high school, and one's in university or the work force. Those two years comprise a MASSIVE amount of psychological maturation, typically corresponding to a period in which a person starts living on their own and takes on some degree of financial responsibility (I guess that latter bit's a foreign concept to the trust fund kids that comprise the GOP's upper echelons, but meh). As much as the magic line of 18 is "just a number," it's a number that's been chosen because of how radically one's life usually changes around there. That's approximately when teenagers start becoming adults.
Zeus posted...
Active tense implies that he's still engaging in those kinds of behaviors. 40 years ago, he hit on girls who were a bit too young. At the time, it would have made him a bit of a creep. However, that was 40 years ago back when he was single and at a time when he could have legally married many of those girls. The only real issue is the 14 y/o's allegation which, if true, should have put him in jail for a few months. However, again, all of that was 40 years ago. If he was a creep then, he's apparently not one now.
That's a bit of a stretch, given that he hasn't actually owned up to any of the allegations. Hitting on somebody who would have been legal to marry at the time isn't particularly deplorable if you contextualize it, yet he's not doing that. Instead, he's gone on this ridiculous, unhinged tirade, and left his colleagues to use such ridiculous justifications as "Mary was a teenager Joseph married her." That leads me to suspect there are more recent skeletons hiding in that closet that can't be so easily justified. That, or he sucks at damage control, which is kind of an essential skill for a politician and that should be a major red flag that he sucks at his job.
Revelation34 posted...
It isn't evolving. That's going backwards.
Evolution is non-directional. It's simply change over time, whether think the change is beneficial or not. And again, if you've got an alternative, speak up, otherwise you don't get to complain that the niche is being filled by something you don't like.
Revelation34 posted...
Definitions exist for a reason.
And that reason is to standardize the meanings of words so that people know what other people are talking about when the word is used. That means the vernacular definition (as in the one that's most commonly used) is far, far more important than anything you'll find in a dictionary. I guarantee you've used dozens of words in the past week that don't mean the same thing now that they did a hundred years ago.
The most commonly wrong word isn't an actual definition or correct way to use a word. ---