Above Photo: wolfkann/Flickr
While people continue to fight to stop the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, the Republican Party continues to rush through his confirmation fearing any delay could bring more stories of sexual abuse and drunkenness. Senator Jeff Flake, the lone potential ‘no’ vote from a Republican in the Judiciary Committee came out in favor of the nomination.
Flake was confronted by sexual survivors before his vote. A conflict caught on camera by CNN.
A sexual assault survivor just confronted Jeff Flake (who just announced he’s voting for Kavanaugh): “Don’t look away from me! Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land” pic.twitter.com/Jix2BI090B
— David Mack (@davidmackau) September 28, 2018
Jeff Flake hiding in an elevator while a female aide shields him from having to perform the most basic act of representative democracy – explaining his position to the people it will affect – is an avatar for this era, and his political movement. Profiles in venality. pic.twitter.com/MtMuLvyBUT
— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) September 28, 2018
I talked to Maria Gallagher, who demanded Flake look her in the eye as she told him of her sexual assault. She had never told ANYONE before. Her mom discovered it on cable news. https://t.co/cynOSKsT4H
— Sam Stein (@samstein) September 28, 2018
In the he hearing, Flake said he wanted a one-week delay for the FBI to investigate the allegations. A motion calling for an FBI investigation would very likely have passed 11-10 along party lines with Flake joining the Democrats. He said that was what he wanted but never made such a motion. Roll Call reported “Ranking member Dianne Feinstein could be heard on a still-hot microphone questioning whether they had voted on the Flake proposal. Grassley insisted, because of committee rules, ‘we had to be done with this by 2 [p.m.].’ Staff then cut the microphones.”
Flake still could slow the nomination. On Friday afternoon it was reported that after a dramatic series of closed-door meetings with senators from both parties, he said that he would “only be comfortable” voting yes in the end after the FBI investigates a sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh. “I think it would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to but not more than one week in order to let the FBI do an investigation, limited in time and scope,” Flake told fellow senators on the Judiciary Committee. Flake indicated that other Republican senators could be open to joining him in his demand that the FBI investigate. If Flake, Murkowski Susan Collins and other Republicans say they will not vote for Kavanaugh without an FBI investigation, the nomination would fail. It would be unlikely for McConnell to go forward knowing the nomination would fail. Roll Call reported “‘I support the FBI having the opportunity to bring some closure to this,’ Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters before joining a Friday afternoon huddle in McConnell’s office.” The Republican leadership was forced to delay a final vote until after an FBI investigation.
In the early evening on Friday Trump reopened the FBI investigation saying“I’ve ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file. As the Senate has requested, this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week.” The Hill reports“Republicans are set to hold a procedural vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination on Saturday, though a final vote set for early next week is likely to be delayed to allow the FBI investigation to wrap up.”
There are many reasons why Brett Kavanough should not be on the Supreme Court. We have discussed them in previous articles about the nomination. The allegations of sexual assault were poorly handled by the Republican majority. There should have been an FBI investigation. Other people making assault allegations should have been called to testify along with witnesses who could shed light on Kavanaugh’s drinking habits and how drinking affected his personality as well as those who had information about the specific incidents. His close friend, Mark Judge, who was allegedly in the room when Kavanough attacked Christine Blasey Ford should have been subpoenaed to testify. A letter signed by his lawyer not under oath was insufficient. The reaction and process shows the US Senate still has a lot of work to do in order to deal with sexual assault. The timing of this nomination and the allegations coming when the country is facing up to long-term issues involving sexual harassment and abuse of women is crystallizing issues where a lot of transformation is necessary. KZ
Anger, like laughter, really can bring men together at women’s expense.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testified Thursday about allegations dating back to his days as a high schooler. And he really got into the role — in the hearing room he was that arrogant white prep school boy, grounded before Beach Week and fuming. It wasn’t hard to imagine a younger Brett, all prickly entitlement, barking to his parents about the injustice of being told he can’t go boofing on the shore with Squi.
During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the allegations of sexual assault made against him by Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh harangued the committee in a plaintive squawk. He seemed perpetually on the verge of tears ― especially, for some inscrutable reason, when he lovingly recalled how well-organized his father’s daily calendar was ― yet also incandescent with partisan fury and petulance about the injustice being done to him.
And Republican men, from pundits to the president, apparently reveled in it. Those in the room, such as Sens. Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch and Ben Sasse, used their questioning time to apologize fulsomely to the judge and to shout imprecations against government overreach, Democratic perfidy and the great cruelty being done to Kavanaugh by investigating credible assault allegations against him prior to confirming him to a lifetime seat on the highest court in the nation.
Kavanaugh’s testimony stemmed from accusations of a male bonding session gone too far. On Thursday, the nation saw another one, of another kind, in progress.
The torrent of allegations and recollections about Kavanaugh’s high school and college days has been a grim reminder of how cruelly girls and women suffer at the hands of boys and men who bond by laughing at their expense. During Kavanaugh’s testimony, we saw an equally ugly mirror image: men bonding through performative anger and hostility ― again, at the expense of women.
Where Blasey, soft-spoken and gracious, assiduously courted the goodwill of both Republican and Democratic senators ― laughing at their jokes, patiently allowing them to complete questions and graciously asking for clarification when she didn’t understand them, apologizing to them for any inconveniences or misunderstandings ― Kavanaugh burst into his testimony with a pout screwed to his flushed face, the look of a man who has just discovered his S-Class has been keyed. He was ready to brawl ― elementary-schoolyard style, with gratuitous sniffling and eye-rolling. He accused Democrats in his opening statement of executing “a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” perhaps as “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”
When Democratic senators ― four of them women ― questioned Kavanaugh, his physical reactions were bizarrely juvenile; he squirmed and grimaced and made wounded eyes much like an aggrieved 8-year-old denied a long-awaited trip to Dairy Queen because he shoved his sister. He interrupted their questions to complain, in tones rising nearly to a shout, that these allegations were “sprung” on him at the last minute, or to ask them forlornly if they also liked beer.
In one particularly insolent exchange, he responded to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s question as to whether he’d ever drunk so much that he couldn’t remember the next day what had happened by turning the question back on her ― twice. Needless to say, whether the Minnesota Democrat has ever been blackout drunk bears no relevance to Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court appointment, nor was it Kavanaugh’s place to ask her questions during the hearing. (After a brief break, having perhaps been informed that the optics on this were spectacularly poor, he reopened the hearing by apologizing to her.)
But Kavanaugh, like Blasey, was courting the goodwill of his audience ― at least of the audience that mattered to him. Where her anger would have irritated and alienated them, his braced them. Robin Lakoff, professor emerita of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, characterized his behavior as “hostile, angry, bullying, uncooperative,” and noted in an email to HuffPost that “when a man, especially a powerful and entitled one, acts that way, it strengthens him in the eyes of many: he’s manly, strong, and credible.”
President Donald Trump, a summa cum laude graduate of this particular school of masculinity, reportedly disliked Kavanaugh’s restrained, anodyne interview Monday on Fox News. The judge’s little-boy-in-a-big-suit tantrum was transparently pitched toward the president, and reports indicate that it worked.
Meanwhile, from the hearing room, the men were whipped into a himpathetic fury. “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020,” Graham hissed at his Democratic colleagues, his lip curling in a sneer. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy.”
“This is worse than Clarence Thomas. I didn’t think it could get any worse than that,” Hatch said to Kavanaugh. “This is a national disgrace, the way you’re being treated.”
It seemed that witnessing visible anger on his behalf from Republican senators was the only thing that could bring Kavanaugh any measure of equanimity. Afterward, he was able to briefly smile or even joke during questioning. Their anger validated his own quivering rage; it clarified his apparent conviction that he is a victim.
“You’re right to be angry,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Kavanaugh repeatedly during his questioning.
The hearing was a celebration of male anger ― the power of anger to bring men together, to reinforce their certainty about what is owed to them as men and, of course, to sweep women’s anger and pain to the side. Kavanaugh and the Republican senators rarely addressed Blasey or her credibility directly; rather confusingly, the party line was that she, too, was a victim, and that they bore no ill will toward her.
During Blasey’s own testimony, she described in agonizing detail how she recalled Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughing as the future judge lay on top of her, covering her mouth with his hand and attempting to wrench off her clothes.
“You’ve never forgotten them laughing at you,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said as he questioned her.
“They were laughing with each other,” she replied, making a precise distinction. “I was underneath one of them while the two laughed. Two friends having a really good time with one another.”
The assault and their laughter were indeed at her expense, but for those two boys, it wasn’t about her. On Thursday, Kavanaugh and the Senate Republicans tried to get righteously angry without attacking a very sympathetic and credible accuser. Instead, they revealed that their anger, like that laughter 36 years ago, isn’t even about her. Like everything else, it’s all about them.