I remember watching that hearing and seeing all the sideline stuff going on. I thought to myself that women everywhere would be believed no matter what. Fast forward 5 years with women in Israel being brutally assaulted and raped with hundreds of witnesses. What did we hear from those same people who were screaming at the top of their lungs with very little evidence or witnesses? Crickets. To me, that’s the definition of hypocrisy.
The Kavanaugh hearings were one of the darkest moments in our recent political history. That Ms. Blasey Ford was presented by her enablers as a beacon of truth was a cynical misuse of a human being clearly struggling with a painful past and distorted memory. Parading her in front of cameras and microphones with the simple intent of destroying Mr. Kavanaugh, with no concern given to the consequences to her, him, or our national interest, was the meanest and most vile result of Saul Alinsky's influence on our political processes.
"[T]hat even the most powerful man might be toppled if credibly accused."
There was never any time when the accusations were credible. Mr. Kavanaugh is a human being and thus sinful and flawed, as we all are, and Ms. Blasey Ford clearly has painful memories of some sort. But the nakedly false and self-serving rhetoric of the Democrats desperate to deny Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation was worse and more damaging than whatever either of the main players in the drama ever did.
It was sadly predictable that Ms. Blasey Ford would be abandoned by those who used her years ago. If she is bitter about that, and if she wants to be truly heard, who can blame her? If Justice Kavanaugh is bitter, he seems to have kept it out of his judicial rulings and arguments, even as his life and his family's remains under threat from those who bought the lies and vitriol of his hearings.
"It was, in hindsight, a ridiculous time—but an exciting one, too, with a heady sense of possibility in the air. Even if we couldn’t ultimately derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court—and maybe we could?—we could certainly spoil the moment by publicly humiliating him. Democratic politicians and media commentators alike gleefully pronounced that Kavanaugh might ascend to the court, but it would always be “with an asterisk next to his name.”
This might be the most embarrassing thing I've read at the FP. Kat - read what you wrote. You took glee at the opportunity to destroy a person because it would fit your cause. There was no evidence - she couldn't remember when, where, or who was there but who cares, right? As long as it allows us to publicly humiliate him. There was nothing credible about her testimony - nothing. It's possible to be sympathetic toward her and acknowledge her testimony was the equivalent of a 6 year old complaining about the bogeyman in the closet . Screw due process (or common sense) - there's an opportunity to take down the scary conservative so let's get him! Would you be so glee if someone made an accusation against your husband or child? No evidence, can't remember where, when, or who but so what, in the name of the movement he must be destroyed.
"or those pink pussy hats—which we all participated in gamely enough but now find vaguely embarrassing. " No, we did not all wear pussy hats or acknowledge Linda Sarsour as a woman's empowerment leader. Sarsour, the woman who organized a march where women wore pussy hats was accused of enabling sexual assault and threatening the victims of the assaults, is not a vaguely embarassing moment., but a life lesson in understanding what and who one follows.
"Consider that the power of #MeToo in 2018 stemmed not from our sympathetic feelings toward victims of sexual assault, but from a sense that allegations could be used to political advantage, that even the most powerful man might be toppled if credibly accused."
Sounds like scheming to snatch your neighbor's cow and meadow by accusing him of witchcraft. Are there other unprincipled power grabs posing as justice that we should be on the lookout for?
This sordid saga is also tragic for the corollary effects that remain. I've spent my life in a profession heavily dependent on mentorship to bring its practitioners to competence. Men in my profession have, as a direct result of the #MeToo excesses, pulled back hard from mentoring young women out of dread that all academic and professional personal interactions with women carry an intrinsic risk with limited potential for mitigation. To put one's livelihood and reputation at risk every day in thousands of interactions with hundreds of individuals whose agendas you cannot know is too much to ask. Consequently, many young women get only the bare necessity of interaction from those who would love to feel safe giving much more.
At the time of the Kavanaugh hearings I had two thoughts:
1. Do people not remember the recovered/false memory scandals of the early 1990's?
2. Are the notes of Christine Blasey-Ford's therapist being withheld by Blasey-Ford because they would reveal that her recollections of Kavanaugh came back to her as a result of "recovered memory" work she did with her therapist?
In her book, does Ms Ford address Leland Keyser’s statement that she doesn’t have confidence in her story? Leland Keyser is Ms Ford’s friend from high school who she identified as a corroborating witness.
It is to Trump’s eternal credit that he stood by Kavanaugh in the face of such a coordinated left/MSM assault. Dubya or Jeb! or McRomney would have bailed on him at the first sign of trouble. Rather than another #MeToo moment for the left, it was instead a glorious #FuckYou moment for the right: we don’t believe you, we don’t believe this crazy woman you dredged up, and we’re not going to let you pull this bullshit anymore.
That she was a sham was obvious. But the part I actually remember was a fawning NPR reporter apologizing to her when he interviewed her for not calling her “Doctor” since apparently NPR has a policy of only addressing people by that honorific if they can write prescriptions.
There was never any evidence to prove Ford's allegations and no one, to include her friend at the time, supported her. The hearing only proved how ugly and evil the left is.
“Consider that the power of #MeToo in 2018 stemmed not from our sympathetic feelings toward victims of sexual assault, but from a sense that allegations could be used to political advantage, that even the most powerful man might be toppled if credibly accused.”
Bingo. And, eventually, even the less powerful men and their wives and mothers saw this.
If there is an asterisk to be placed next to Kavanaugh’s name, it should be for the fact that, despite those embarrassing (for the nation) hearings, he hasn’t been a spiteful reactionary hack on the bench.
Blasey Ford's main problem was that her story was obviously false, and the spectacle that the Democrats orchestrated demonstrated to everyone just how easy it was for a woman's lies to destroy a seemingly-powerful man who held disfavored political views. This all demonstrated the fundamental falseness of the assumptions at the center of the entire #metoo movement, namely that women are these powerless and innocent victims, helpless against the cabal of evil powerful men. Blasey Ford was an inversion of this. She demonstrated to us, clear as day, how seriously we will take women's accusations, even when they are obviously false. (As long as the accused is a conservative). She did as much as Amber Heard to destroy metoo. It's an election year, so the Democrats don't want to remind everyone about how over-the-top their lying is. So of course they don't want to shine the spotlight on her.
I personally don't really know if Blasey Ford actively knew that everything she was saying was false, or whether she was just another victim of the Democrat machine eager to exploit and then discard people. It seems pretty clear that the recollections that formed the basis of her accusation were "recovered memories," which are, to be generous, extremely unreliable. She originally placed the scene in her college years, but then repurposed it to high school when Kavanaugh came into the picture. To me it seems that she was just a troubled woman dealing with some kind of pain, which she was trying to map onto her politics. If anything, this should show us how damaging the nonstop Democrat hate machine is to those who consume it. That they can be just as much the victims of it as are those that it is nominally aimed at.
I remember watching that hearing and seeing all the sideline stuff going on. I thought to myself that women everywhere would be believed no matter what. Fast forward 5 years with women in Israel being brutally assaulted and raped with hundreds of witnesses. What did we hear from those same people who were screaming at the top of their lungs with very little evidence or witnesses? Crickets. To me, that’s the definition of hypocrisy.
The Kavanaugh hearings were one of the darkest moments in our recent political history. That Ms. Blasey Ford was presented by her enablers as a beacon of truth was a cynical misuse of a human being clearly struggling with a painful past and distorted memory. Parading her in front of cameras and microphones with the simple intent of destroying Mr. Kavanaugh, with no concern given to the consequences to her, him, or our national interest, was the meanest and most vile result of Saul Alinsky's influence on our political processes.
"[T]hat even the most powerful man might be toppled if credibly accused."
There was never any time when the accusations were credible. Mr. Kavanaugh is a human being and thus sinful and flawed, as we all are, and Ms. Blasey Ford clearly has painful memories of some sort. But the nakedly false and self-serving rhetoric of the Democrats desperate to deny Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation was worse and more damaging than whatever either of the main players in the drama ever did.
It was sadly predictable that Ms. Blasey Ford would be abandoned by those who used her years ago. If she is bitter about that, and if she wants to be truly heard, who can blame her? If Justice Kavanaugh is bitter, he seems to have kept it out of his judicial rulings and arguments, even as his life and his family's remains under threat from those who bought the lies and vitriol of his hearings.
"It was, in hindsight, a ridiculous time—but an exciting one, too, with a heady sense of possibility in the air. Even if we couldn’t ultimately derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court—and maybe we could?—we could certainly spoil the moment by publicly humiliating him. Democratic politicians and media commentators alike gleefully pronounced that Kavanaugh might ascend to the court, but it would always be “with an asterisk next to his name.”
This might be the most embarrassing thing I've read at the FP. Kat - read what you wrote. You took glee at the opportunity to destroy a person because it would fit your cause. There was no evidence - she couldn't remember when, where, or who was there but who cares, right? As long as it allows us to publicly humiliate him. There was nothing credible about her testimony - nothing. It's possible to be sympathetic toward her and acknowledge her testimony was the equivalent of a 6 year old complaining about the bogeyman in the closet . Screw due process (or common sense) - there's an opportunity to take down the scary conservative so let's get him! Would you be so glee if someone made an accusation against your husband or child? No evidence, can't remember where, when, or who but so what, in the name of the movement he must be destroyed.
"or those pink pussy hats—which we all participated in gamely enough but now find vaguely embarrassing. " No, we did not all wear pussy hats or acknowledge Linda Sarsour as a woman's empowerment leader. Sarsour, the woman who organized a march where women wore pussy hats was accused of enabling sexual assault and threatening the victims of the assaults, is not a vaguely embarassing moment., but a life lesson in understanding what and who one follows.
I don’t believe that woman for a second. The whole thing was a partisan hack job - it was disgusting.
Read between the lines in the NYT review and it sounds like even her father and older brothers don't believe her.
Maybe if she had remembered more than "the laughter" in detail, she would have had a shred of credibility.
"Consider that the power of #MeToo in 2018 stemmed not from our sympathetic feelings toward victims of sexual assault, but from a sense that allegations could be used to political advantage, that even the most powerful man might be toppled if credibly accused."
Sounds like scheming to snatch your neighbor's cow and meadow by accusing him of witchcraft. Are there other unprincipled power grabs posing as justice that we should be on the lookout for?
This sordid saga is also tragic for the corollary effects that remain. I've spent my life in a profession heavily dependent on mentorship to bring its practitioners to competence. Men in my profession have, as a direct result of the #MeToo excesses, pulled back hard from mentoring young women out of dread that all academic and professional personal interactions with women carry an intrinsic risk with limited potential for mitigation. To put one's livelihood and reputation at risk every day in thousands of interactions with hundreds of individuals whose agendas you cannot know is too much to ask. Consequently, many young women get only the bare necessity of interaction from those who would love to feel safe giving much more.
At the time of the Kavanaugh hearings I had two thoughts:
1. Do people not remember the recovered/false memory scandals of the early 1990's?
2. Are the notes of Christine Blasey-Ford's therapist being withheld by Blasey-Ford because they would reveal that her recollections of Kavanaugh came back to her as a result of "recovered memory" work she did with her therapist?
Wow!
It takes a lot of fucking words for leftists to just say one simple thing:
We were wrong.
This was a long way to get to the bottom of what should be easy for children as old as three... When you're wrong, just say so.
In her book, does Ms Ford address Leland Keyser’s statement that she doesn’t have confidence in her story? Leland Keyser is Ms Ford’s friend from high school who she identified as a corroborating witness.
It is to Trump’s eternal credit that he stood by Kavanaugh in the face of such a coordinated left/MSM assault. Dubya or Jeb! or McRomney would have bailed on him at the first sign of trouble. Rather than another #MeToo moment for the left, it was instead a glorious #FuckYou moment for the right: we don’t believe you, we don’t believe this crazy woman you dredged up, and we’re not going to let you pull this bullshit anymore.
That she was a sham was obvious. But the part I actually remember was a fawning NPR reporter apologizing to her when he interviewed her for not calling her “Doctor” since apparently NPR has a policy of only addressing people by that honorific if they can write prescriptions.
There was never any evidence to prove Ford's allegations and no one, to include her friend at the time, supported her. The hearing only proved how ugly and evil the left is.
“Consider that the power of #MeToo in 2018 stemmed not from our sympathetic feelings toward victims of sexual assault, but from a sense that allegations could be used to political advantage, that even the most powerful man might be toppled if credibly accused.”
Bingo. And, eventually, even the less powerful men and their wives and mothers saw this.
If there is an asterisk to be placed next to Kavanaugh’s name, it should be for the fact that, despite those embarrassing (for the nation) hearings, he hasn’t been a spiteful reactionary hack on the bench.
Blasey Ford's main problem was that her story was obviously false, and the spectacle that the Democrats orchestrated demonstrated to everyone just how easy it was for a woman's lies to destroy a seemingly-powerful man who held disfavored political views. This all demonstrated the fundamental falseness of the assumptions at the center of the entire #metoo movement, namely that women are these powerless and innocent victims, helpless against the cabal of evil powerful men. Blasey Ford was an inversion of this. She demonstrated to us, clear as day, how seriously we will take women's accusations, even when they are obviously false. (As long as the accused is a conservative). She did as much as Amber Heard to destroy metoo. It's an election year, so the Democrats don't want to remind everyone about how over-the-top their lying is. So of course they don't want to shine the spotlight on her.
I personally don't really know if Blasey Ford actively knew that everything she was saying was false, or whether she was just another victim of the Democrat machine eager to exploit and then discard people. It seems pretty clear that the recollections that formed the basis of her accusation were "recovered memories," which are, to be generous, extremely unreliable. She originally placed the scene in her college years, but then repurposed it to high school when Kavanaugh came into the picture. To me it seems that she was just a troubled woman dealing with some kind of pain, which she was trying to map onto her politics. If anything, this should show us how damaging the nonstop Democrat hate machine is to those who consume it. That they can be just as much the victims of it as are those that it is nominally aimed at.