They called it a ‘hearing’
One word sums up last week’s riveting hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, featuring Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony describing her terrifying, painful and humiliating experience when she was assaulted by aggressive, drunken high school boys, and the disqualifying, disrespectful and belligerent testimony from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh denying his involvement.
Hypocrisy defines the Republican Party today. Hypocrisy is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform. Hypocrisy was rampant at the hearing, starting with Senator Lindsey Graham’s snarling, incoherent rant, attacking Democrats for orchestrating an “unethical sham.” It was the height of hypocrisy given the Republicans’ refusal to even hold a hearing for Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, effectively keeping the seat open for more than a year until Republicans could fill it with their own nominee.
Republicans claim the mantle of morality and reason, yet Kavanaugh launched his testimony with conspiracy theories and partisan attacks, saying, “This is a circus,” and a “calculated and orchestrated political hit job,” motivated by “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” while offering zero evidence. He was angry, then weepy, nervous, anxious, and—at times—defiant and inarticulate, refusing to answer direct questions. If he were a woman, he’d be dismissed as hysterical and unreliable. Instead, he was lauded as “powerful and honest” by President Trump.
Kavanaugh is currently a federal judge who presumably understands the importance of telling the truth when under oath to a Senate committee overseeing a nomination to the highest court in the land. And yet, his testimony explaining away the yearbook evidence of callous, drunken high school behavior was utterly unconvincing. According to Kavanaugh, the “Renate Alumnius” picture of smug, smiling boys in the Georgetown Prep yearbook expressed friendship and affection for Renate, a young woman from a sister prep school, and not an immature sexual innuendo. His claims that he never blacked out from excessive drinking despite his own drinking references in the yearbook as the treasurer of the Keg City Club and the memoir documenting drunken antics written by his close friend Mark Judge—Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk—were thoroughly unbelievable. And it was laughable when he said his dubious status as the “biggest contributor” to “Beach Week Ralph Club” was due to a weak stomach rather than binge drinking.
Kavanaugh’s arrogant, indignant and disrespectful responses to senators who questioned him about reports of his heavy drinking in high school were disturbing. It’s inconceivable that those kinds of outbursts would be tolerated in our own state Legislature, where any committee chair would admonish a witness who dared to treat its members with such disdain and disrespect. The silence of Chair Grassley endorsed this incivility and lack of judicial temperament.
Republicans probably don’t yet understand the furious anger they’ve unleashed from women of all ages. After watching the hearing, a young mother messaged me, saying “I used to take pride in saying that I tried to always vote for the most qualified candidate so long as we shared the values of civility, caring for one another, caring for country, etc. even if they were an R. After yesterday, I am DONE. I will never vote for another Republican in my lifetime. More than that, I want out of the back office. I am done being fairly silent because of what people might think about me. This is about my country, my family and protecting everyone’s rights. You don’t have to say he is guilty to say that his behavior makes him manifestly unfit to be a Supreme Court Justice! No woman or Democrat for that matter would have ever been allowed to act like that—entitled, rude, angry, belligerent.”
Hypocrites beware. You’re going to be held accountable, in November and beyond.