We will probably never know whether Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape Christine Ford 36 years ago at a high school party, but we do know that it’s very difficult to ascertain guilt or innocence based on televised testimony. I personally think he is guilty. But what if it’s another situation like Gary Condit?
What If It’s Another Gary Condit?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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If the Kavanaugh case is like the Condit case, then it is unsolved and will remain so.
From the wikipedia article on Gary Condit (edited):
“However, on June 4, 2015, D.C. Superior Court … granted a motion for the retrial of” the person (not Condit) initially found guilty of Levy’s murder “after it was revealed that the sole witness against him, a jailhouse informant … had lied about prior jailhouse testimony. Prosecutors dropped all charges … after an associate of” the jailhouse informant “came forward with secret recordings in which he admitted to falsifying testimony about the murder of Chandra Levy. The murder of Chandra Levy therefore remains unsolved.”
While we need to have this conversation, and while I share Ted’s concerns and intuitively side with dissidents, I’m not sure if that is the best way to have this conversation. To be fair, there is some nuance, if hyperbolic, in the final panel.
1) It is the #1 Republican scam to conflate vetting by job interview with criminal court proceedings (complete with that female prosecutor they dug up and kettled behind a kiddie desk). This is not necessarily all about whether K is guilty beyond reasonable doubt (inconclusive by evidence-based standards), but e.g. how he handled himself under pressure (“Do *you* drink beer?!?”). The stakes are not one’s personal freedom, but being “cheated” of a top position. Ted’s message cuts awfully close to the vile talking points of the right wing confusion machine – and so is in unnecessary danger (again ;-)) of coming across as a Republican stooge rather than a thoughtful dissident.
2) Even when we take a legalistic frame: What is the difference between a) “innocent until proven guilty in a state courtroom” and b) “it is always wrong to use violence except in immediate self-defense unless sanctioned by the state”? I am a confused why Ted who supports breaking with b) – i.e. striving for social justice by taking matters into one’s own hands – under some conditions, is is stoutly defending a), even where breaking with a) is but an instance of breaking with b).
Having walked the streets all my life without fear of being molested, I choose to side with the legalistic norm that it is better to let 10 assailants slip (who are unlikely to bother me) rather than wrongly jailing one innocent man (who might conceivably be me). Clearly I can hardly claim a universal high-ground for my opinion: someone else who cannot walk down a street without fear of being molested may well prefer trying an arrangement where having the odd innocent put in jail, though wrong, on balance is still worth the price of making the streets safe. (Note that they are not actually going to jail, only losing a position of super-privilege, see point 1).
As Ted usually points out when he argues against reflexive non-violence, most cultural change is violent or backed by the threat of violence: You can’t make an omelette without retiring some eggs which smell like they may be rotten even though they might not be? 😉
Man, you’re playing with fire, and a bit cavalierly. Danger.
Why is your post so much shorter than mine when we’re saying pretty much the same thing? 😉
andreas5 – with all due respect, you might ask yourself that same question. While I often find what you write to be interesting, it’s often far longer than I’m willing to wade through.
andreas5 – with all due respect, you might ask yourself that same question. Even when I find your posts interesting, they are often too long to wade through.
‘course, double-posting wastes bandwidth as well. 😀
Dunno how that happened …
Thanks. I enjoy and am educated by your well-thought-out and argued pieces, what CH is talking about, I do not know.
Let’s practice empathy and assume that he’s just having a rough day.
Peace be unto thee, CH
aaron/andreas – my comment about andreas’ posts was not meant as an insult, merely editorial advice.
I’m not the first to note that they tend to be longer than necessary to get the point across.
Peace, love & groovy, y’all.
It is more than theoretically possible. Booze, trauma, time and the quirks of the human mind can confuse someone’s memory. I know of two incidents in which the girls were attacked but had identified the wrong guy as the assailant.
First one involved a good friend that was accused of rape. He met a girl at a party. They were kissing and petting. He wanted her go home with him. She refused but they swap phone numbers. A few days later she calls him, and asks him to go to a party. He can’t because he has to work. She attends the party, and gets very drunk. Then she gets raped. She reports it, and gives his name to the police. He was dropped as a suspect after the police verified that he had worked a 10 hour shift that started at 4:30 pm.
Knew another guy that was accused of assault (partner abuse – not attempted rape). An on & off girlfriend was drunk, and got smacked around at some party. She reported that he did it. The cops came calling, but he was out of the State. He was in the Reserves, and was on his 2 week deployment at the time of the incident.
This is a problem of conflation. What went on in that hearing was:
1. The Democrats trying to derail a Supreme Court nomination using badly planned tactics.
2. The latest round of the MeToo movement’s life cycle.
3. General loathing of Donald Trump and all things Trump.
4. The Democrats trying to rally the voters before the midterm elections.
5. The whole genuinely excessive obsession this culture has about sex, sexuality, objectification, and so forth.
6. Three or four other parts that I didn’t think of.
So you can’t have a discussion about one aspect of this whole thing without talking about the rest of it because each part of it reinforced other parts of it. A cake isn’t the same thing as eggs, flour, milk and butter on a counter.
The biggest mistake? The Democrats being Democrats. There’s three sides to every issue: the people who already agree with you, the ones who disagree with you and will never change their minds, and the people in between who can be persuaded. The Dems almost always try to convince the first two groups. And going in to the midterms, the Dems are in for a harder fight than they want to admit. From the models I’ve been looking at, the Dems need to sweep all seven battleground states, and even that will only give them a one-seat majority. How many DINOs in the Senate? How many of Group 3 — those who can be convinced — threw up their hands after the Ford-Kavanaugh sideshow and said, “Screw this. I’m done. They can get by without my vote.”
> But what if it’s another situation like Gary Condit?
Considering it’s The Highest Court In The Land – it’s better to be safe than sorry. As Ted’s mentioned more than once – the sumbitch is unqualified on several fronts.
There has to be a better way to confirm or deny a SCOTUS nominee, these type of hearings are woefully inadequate. As has been said before, Kav’s right wing judicial views should have disqualified him but now the only way to derail the process is to bring up past white boy elite transgressions/possible misconduct. We will never know what did happen back in 1982. But is Kav’s judicial temperament good enough for SCOTUS? We shall see.
> But is Kav’s judicial temperament good enough for SCOTUS?
Oh, to be a fly on that wall. K making a complete ass of himself, while the likes of John Roberts put up with it just to advance their abhorrent agenda. I guess we can take some solace in the idea that they’re gonna feel the pain as well.
Or another Gary Dotson.
Gary Dotson was convicted of rape in Illinois based on the testimony of sixteen-year-old Cathleen Crowell Webb.
After conviction in 1979, the next eight years of his life were spent in prison; another four were spent on legal proceedings which led to charges being dropped in 1988 and a full pardon in 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Dotson#Recantation
Gary Dotson is claimed to to be the first DNA exoneration.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/il/gary-dotson.html
Too bad the Democrats couldn’t make arguments based on the real reasons Kavanaugh shouldn’t be on the SC.
But that would have have required their taking a stand, and everyone knows jellyfish can’t stand anymore than can a deboned chicken.
I like your stuff.
Re: Kavanugh’s qualifications.
Kavanaugh is PERFECTLY qualified for those who nominated and confirmed him.
The opinions of those who were in no position to nominate a SCOTUS judge, or not in the mood or state of political smarts/courage to effectively oppose a nominee with whom they ideologically disagree,*** are irrelevant.
*** However, as commentator Rakle2 has noted, the Dems are in similar need of judicial cover for THEIR own crimes – those of the past and those intended “going forward.”
The problem with believing all victims is that it is both imprecise and too easily misinterpreted for convenience. Believe all victims? Okay. That’s fair. IF by “victims” you mean the people who were actually victimized. The problem arises when the implied notion that everyone who claims victimhood is telling the truth about that victimhood is not part of the discussion.
Simply asserting rape/groping/assault/etc. means that you must be believed in all instances? I don’t think any rational person would agree. But the problem is that this is no longer a rational issue. There is a lot of anger and resentment around this issue due to how many (mostly) women were simply ignored or minimized for so long. The victims aren’t interested anymore in being “reasonable” or “rational” and I don’t blame them for finally tapping into that anger and using it. But it’s going to turn around and bite them on the ass very soon if they can’t fine-tune the argument.
Not to worry, Ted – Chinese researchers have made great progress in rendering same-sex parentage possible in mammals ; soon, no doubt, the battle between the sexes will seem as quaint as the Wars of the Roses…. 😉
Henri