A HYMN TO HIM

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”  All over the internet, conservatives, without a hint of irony, are asking Professor Henry Higgins’ famous question about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.  They’re full of opinions about things she shoulda and coulda done thirty years ago.  “Why didn’t she, as a young woman of 15, do what I, as an old man of 71, would have done in her place?  Or at least what I fantasize I would have done in her place.  Not that I would ever have been in a place like the one the young hussy found herself in, of course.”

The problem with this ancient argument is that in “he said, she said” situations, “he said” almost always outweighs whatever “she said.”  Republicans are doing their best to sell variations on that theme.  It’s very clear that Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans knew there were red flags in Kavanaugh’s background.  They did at least that much preparation, and they thought they’d be ready when if a hint of scandal surfaced. 

Plan A was the infamous “Behold a list of 65 women Kavanaugh definitely didn’t rape” testimonial, which had obviously been prepared ahead of time for release at the first sign of trouble.  The logic was tortured – “because we can prove that Kavanaugh didn’t try to rape everyone, you must believe that he didn’t try to rape anyone.” 

John Dillinger could probably have come up with a long list of banks he never robbed, but in those days, opposition to bank robbery was pretty bipartisan.  Today’s Republicans view attempted rape as little more than a youthful indiscretion.  Boys will be boys, they argue.  The real problem is the 15-year-old girls who lead them astray, just as Eve did to Adam.

That sort of straw man attack is harder to sustain when the victim has a face and a name, and when Dr. Ford identified herself as Kavanaugh’s accuser, his defenders had to change tactics.  No problem, they thought.  Our Plan B will be ready in a day or two.  Plan B conceded that an attempted rape probably happened, but insisted that the perpetrator couldn’t have been the swell guy we want on the Supreme Court.  Mistaken identity, that’s the ticket.

Kavanaugh pal and prominent Republican attorney Ed Whelan built an elaborate (though evidence-free) theory to bolster the mistaken identity defense, which fooled some gullible wingnuts.  But Whelan’s lust for the kill clouded his judgment.  He named one of Kavanaugh’s high school classmates as the likely culprit.  An unproven theory is one thing, but a potentially libelous unproven theory is quite another.  Senate Republicans immediately began scrambling to disassociate themselves from Whelan’s work.    

With both prongs of the pre-emptive defense strategy rendered inoperative, Kavanaugh supporters were forced to freelance.  Despite having a fair amount of experience with sexual assault charges himself, the best Donald Trump could do was to trot out predictable clichés blaming Dr. Ford for not reporting the assault at the time.  North Dakota Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer got a little more creative, trying to spin Kavanaugh’s inability to remove Ford’s clothing as an act of chivalry – a recognition, albeit through a drunken haze, that no means no.  Professional hypocrite Franklin Graham offered a similar opinion: “She said no, and he respected that.” 

It was left to Florida Republican Gina Sosa to say what most Republicans were really thinking: “Tell me, what boy hasn’t done this in high school?” 

Well, me, for one.  But I was always a rebel.  Sosa’s blunt analysis – he probably did it, and we don’t care – may well carry the day.     

There are a lot of reasons not to let Kavanaugh anywhere near a Supreme Court seat.  He has an unblemished record as a partisan hack, and he’s been living way beyond his means.  There’s something fishy about the way he ran up large credit card debts, which suddenly went away when a seat on the Supreme Court beckoned.  There are conservative jurists waiting in the wings who have none of Kavanaugh’s baggage, but Senate Republicans seem to be taking this one personally.  It’s almost as though they resent the fact that obscure women can hold powerful men accountable for their past misdeeds.  

Male entitlement is one of the cornerstones of Republican philosophy.  Boys will be boys, after all.  If you’re a Republican, that’s just the way it is.  The only utility that the Republican Party has these days is that it embodies a lot of negative character traits.  Want to know what male privilege looks like?  Behold Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his sponsors. 

If you’re a guy, male privilege is easy to ignore.  A lot of it is simply the absence of barriers that non-men have to deal with.  Men don’t have to learn to dance backwards in high heels, or wonder if anyone would believe us if we reported that we’d been assaulted.  Women (and minorities) don’t have a pocketful of Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards to help them through life.  Justice, for them, is always contingent on whether white males recognize the barriers they face. 

I obviously don’t know what happened at that drunken high school party in Maryland back in the 80s.But when Person A asks for a full investigation while Person B and his powerful friends do their best to stop such an investigation, I feel entitled to believe that Person B may have something to hide.Brett Kavanaugh is acting like he has something to hide.