s********t
发帖数: 4150 | 1 For the first time since Donald Trump entered the political fray, I find
myself grateful that he’s in it. I’m reluctant to admit it and astonished
to say it, especially since the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford in
his ugly and gratuitous way at a rally on Tuesday. Perhaps it’s worth
unpacking this admission for those who might be equally astonished to read
it.
I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the
slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents
of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I’m grateful
because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life, and never
more so than in the face of sly moral bullying. I’m grateful because he’s
a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.
A few moments have crystallized my view over the past few days.
The first moment was a remark by a friend. “I’d rather be accused of
murder,” he said, “than of sexual assault.” I feel the same way. One can
think of excuses for killing a man; none for assaulting a woman. But if that
’s true, so is this: Falsely accusing a person of sexual assault is nearly
as despicable as sexual assault itself. It inflicts psychic, familial,
reputational and professional harms that can last a lifetime. This is
nothing to sneer at.
The second moment, connected to the first: “Boo hoo hoo. Brett Kavanaugh is
not a victim.” That’s the title of a column in the Los Angeles Times,
which suggests that the possibility of Kavanaugh’s innocence is “
infinitesimal.” Yet false allegations of rape, while relatively rare, are
at least five times as common as false accusations of other types of crime,
according to academic literature.
Since when did the possibility of innocence become, for today’s liberals,
something to wave off with an archly unfeeling “boo hoo”?
A third moment, connected to the second: Listening to Cory Booker explain on
Tuesday that “ultimately” it doesn’t matter if Kavanaugh is “guilty or
innocent,” because “enough questions” had been raised that it was time to
“move on to another candidate.”
This is a rhetorical sleight of hand in three acts: Elide the one question
that really matters; raise a secondary set of “questions” that are wholly
the result of the question you’ve decided to ignore; call for “another
candidate” because it will push confirmation hearings past the midterms,
which was the Democratic objective long before most anyone had ever heard of
Blasey’s allegation.
Fourth moment: Watching Julie Swetnick, the woman who accused Kavanaugh of
attending parties decades earlier where women were gang raped, change key
details of her story in an interview with NBC News.
Swetnick’s claims border on the preposterous. They are wholly
uncorroborated. But that didn’t keep Kavanaugh’s opponents, in politics
and the press, from seizing them as evidence of corroboration with Blasey’s
allegation, which is not preposterous but is also largely uncorroborated,
and with the allegation of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez —
uncorroborated again.
Uncorroborated plus uncorroborated plus largely uncorroborated is not the
accumulation of questions, much less of evidence. It is the duplication of
hearsay.
Fifth moment: Reading about a 1985 bar fight at Yale — a story that
involved Kavanaugh throwing ice, resulted in no charges against him, and
should never have been reported. Or reading a 1983 handwritten letter by
Kavanaugh, in which he says of his gang of friends that “we’re loud,
obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us” — adolescent boasting now
being treated as if it is a crucial piece of incriminating evidence. Or
hearing from Yale classmates who claim to have seen Kavanaugh drunk, which
somehow is supposed to show that he’s a demonstrable perjurer and possible
sex offender.
Will a full-bore investigation of adolescent behavior now become a standard
part of the “job interview” for all senior office holders? I’m for it —
provided we can start with your adolescent behavior, as it relates to your
next job.
Sixth moment: Listening to Richard Blumenthal lecture Kavanaugh on the legal
concept of falsus in omnibus — false in one thing, false in everything —
when the senator from Connecticut lied shamelessly for years about his
military service. And then feeling grateful to Trump for having the simple
nerve to point out the naked hypocrisy.
Seventh moment: Listening to Dianne Feinstein denounce Kavanaugh for failing
to reflect an “impartial temperament or the fairness and even-handedness
one would see in a judge.” This lecture would have gone down more easily if
Feinstein hadn’t gamed the process for her own partisan purposes, and at
huge personal cost to Kavanaugh and Blasey alike.
Eighth moment: Being quizzed in recent days about my teenage years at a New
England boarding school — the subtext being that I must know something
about elite prep schools and the mentality of the boys who attend them.
I do. It was at boarding school where I first formed lasting friendships
with kids of different races and economic backgrounds, and where liberal-
leaning teachers showed us how to think critically, keep an open mind, and
value tolerance and respect. I have no idea if Georgetown Prep was anything
like that, but the facile stereotype of “white privilege” that keeps
cropping up in discussions of Kavanaugh’s background is yet another ugly
tactic in the battle to defeat him.
We will learn soon enough what, if anything, the F.B.I. has gleaned from its
investigation of Kavanaugh. If the Bureau finds persuasive evidence of
Blasey’s charge, the judge will have to step down and answer for it. Until
then, I’ll admit to feeling grateful that, in Trump, at least one big bully
was willing to stand up to others. | y*******3
发帖数: 636 | 2 你读一下下面的comments，就知道NYT的主要读者是群什么货色了。
完全不能接受不同意见。 | S*******i
发帖数: 2018 | | D********r
发帖数: 135 | 4 这话说得在理。
【在 S*******i 的大作中提到】
: 能登这篇文章算可以了。
| l*****g
发帖数: 525 | 5 这是decent的liberal写的文章。民主党现在是自毁状态，不仅仅是中间派，搞不好有
很多liberal都会选择不投票，甚至反水 | y*******3
发帖数: 636 | 6
我一直觉得NYT不算很糟糕，是个很左的媒体。但至少是个媒体。
其他的WAPO,HUFFPOST就只能算是主宣部了。
【在 S*******i 的大作中提到】
: 能登这篇文章算可以了。
| b*****d
发帖数: 61690 | 7 应该是个温和保守派。
【在 l*****g 的大作中提到】
: 这是decent的liberal写的文章。民主党现在是自毁状态，不仅仅是中间派，搞不好有
: 很多liberal都会选择不投票，甚至反水
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