Skip to main content

Time to get that crayon out of our brains




If only it were this simple.  Way back in 2001, The Simpsons nailed anti-Intellectualism in this country, and may have revealed the secret to Trump's debilitating mental powers.  Those nasty Crayola crayons kids apparently love to shove up their noses.

As we watch "Crazytown" unravel, it seems Michael Avenatti is taking full advantage of the situation by offering a third assault victim and witnesses in regard to Judge Kavanaugh's moral character.  Hard to put too much trust in Avenatti, given his propensity to chase ambulances, but it has thrown the Republican confirmation hearings into similar disarray.  Mitch and Chuck were badly hoping to have Kavanaugh seated by the end of the months, but it now it looks like these hearings will stretch into October.

Republicans find themselves in a damned if they do/ damned if they don't situation in their attempt to stack the Supreme Court.  The last president who tried to do this was FDR and the Democrats paid at the polls way back in 1937.  FDR found himself with a much more hostile Republican Congress in 1938.

The court is not something you tamper with, at least not so overtly, and the Republican overreach that began in June with Kennedy's surprise retirement has come to a head in their attempt to stuff Kavanaugh on the bench despite a sketchy judicial record and an even sketchier boyhood.

To be fair, the Democrats tried to point out Kavanaugh's shortfalls in regard to his views on Native Hawaiians, but the Republicans were hearing none of it.  Not surprising that the Dems would use Christine Blasey Ford to try to stall the confirmation hearings.  Republicans are crying foul, but these are the same Republicans who refused to even consider Merrick Garland, another privileged white judge, when Obama nominated him for the seat in early 2016.

Meanwhile, our crayon-lodged-in-the-brain president vents on twitter how nasty the Democrats and Ford are to thwart his judicial appointee, further eroding public confidence in Kavanaugh, whose story keeps changing.  He apparently now claims he was a virgin throughout high school and didn't pursue women, in an interview eerily reminiscent of the one Bill and Hillary had with 60 Minutes in 1992 to deny the allegations of sexual abuse by Gennifer Flowers.  It may have worked then, but in this #MeToo age, it is doubtful it will work now.

Of course, many conservatives see nothing wrong with what Brett did even if he did do it.  Boys will be boys, as legal pundit Jeanine Pirro would tell us, and besides she thinks Ford was hypnotized into telling this story.  This is one of the many crazy conspiracy theories surrounding the sexual abuse allegations as religious conservatives rush to defend Kavanaugh, who they think will help undo Roe v. Wade.  However, Jeanine doesn't think Kavanaugh will give religious conservatives what they most want.  So, it doesn't seem the young judge was properly vetted in a number of ways.

What does all this tell us about Trump and that crayon lodged in his brain?  For a man obsessed with legacy there is no greater legacy than a President packing the Supreme Court.  Within two years, he has had the opportunity to name two appointees.  Gorsuch sailed through.  The Democrats put up a fight, but the dashing 51 year-old judge, who also served under Kennedy, didn't have any ugly skeletons in his closet.

There was something smarmy about Kavanaugh that you couldn't quite put a finger on until Ford came forward, much like the Donald himself.  This is a guy who rose up the ladder purely though white privilege from the Georgetown prep school to Yale law school to his plum role as clerk for Kennedy.  To be fair, Gorsuch was no different in this regard.  He too attended the same infamous Georgetown prep school, graduating two years later than Kavanaugh, before going onto Columbia and Harvard, where he brushed shoulders with Obama no less.

The difference resides mostly in looks, which is probably why Trump wasn't as excited about Kavanaugh as he had been Gorsuch.  Trump is obsessed with looks, but Kennedy had convinced him that Kavanaugh was his boy, so he is forced to accept him as he is his son, Eric.  If Kavanaugh is defeated, Trump will disown him.  Simple as that.

However, Mitch is going out of his way to convince wealthy conservative patrons that it won't reach that stage.  He probably figures he has two or three Blue Dog Democrats in his back pocket if Lisa and Susan jump ship, with Our Man Pence there to cast the deciding vote should it be a tie.

The most bothersome aspect of the whole thing is that intellectualism is brain dead.  People are lining up on either side of this debate purely out of emotion.  Then there's Avenatti throwing a third woman into the mix, presumably a woman anyway, to draw attention to himself.  The same way he rushed down to the Texas border to find some kid to defend against Trump's zero-tolerance immigration policy when he was no longer getting as much airtime with Stormy Daniels.

No one is looking at Kavanaugh's questionable judicial record the way Sen. Hirono did.  This is a guy who similarly looks like he has a crayon lodged in his brain, only in his case retarding all empathy.  It's not just Native Americans he appears to have no regard for, but immigrants and workers as well.  Fact is he barely has a judicial record you can hang a cloak on, having dissented from controversial cases and split the needle on other cases so that no one really knows where he stands on key issues.

We can thank Christine Blasey Ford for at least bringing his boyhood past to light.  What happened at Georgetown prep school doesn't stay at Georgetown prep school, and now the school is having to wrestle with its murky past.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!