Wasted

Mark Judge on the phone with his lawyer or his agent?

It seems like the one person who might benefit from the Bart O'Kavanaugh Show is Mark Judge.  His book Wasted: Tales of GenX Drunk may finally be reprinted.  It's pretty hard to find a copy and you will have to pay top dollar if you do.  I imagine there will soon be scanned copies available on-line.  In the meantime, we have to make do with excerpts.

Seems like he was influenced by The Basketball Diaries.  The movie came out in 1995.  Judge was looking to turn his experiences at Georgetown Prep into something profitable.  His buddy "Bart" would have been working with Kenneth Starr at the time, doing his damnedest to dig up dirt on the Clintons, which eventually put him on the fast track for a federal judgeship.

You can't blame Judge, but you have to wonder what "Bart" thought of this tell all book?  It picked up unfavorable reviews from the New York Times and Mother Jones, and failed to capture the public imagination the way The Basketball Diaries did, which was fortunate for the man who would be judge.  No one really knew who Brett Kavanaugh was back then anyway.

To read Mark Judge's wiki bio, he was a liberal who grew into a conservative, which he chronicled in If it Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture.  Apparently, he owed his conversion to swing music.  He got into the Lindy Hop craze following the movie Swingers, and decided he was a grown-up now.  The funny part is the movie was about a group of guys who refused to grow up, hitting the LA clubs, which were heavy into Swing at the time, and trying to get their friend over a bad break-up.  Great soundtrack and the kind of hip fast-talking crowd no doubt Judge longed to be a part of.

Neither book survived much scrutiny by the press, but Judge kept plugging along.  The most interesting piece comes at the end of his "career" section where someone added a clip in wich he celebrated the "awesome power ...  of uncontrollable male passion" mixed in with his views on "LGBT people," making it appear he might be gay himself.  This would help explain the infamous "Devils Triangle," which "Bart" tried to pass off as a drinking game similar to quarters.

Like "Bart," Mark was single and fancy free at the time.  Still is apparently.  He could never find that perfect woman or man to settle down with and have perfect kids, which Bart did in 2004, when efforts were being made to get him a federal appellate court judgeship.   Mark was content penning for on-line mags like The Daily Caller, becoming a minor celebrity in the right-wing conservative world.  Along the way adding a few more books to his personal shelf, including an even harsher account of  his booze-laden days at Georgetown Prep, as if the first wasn't enough.  Sadly, God and Man at Georgetown Prep is also out of print and is fetching an eye-popping $500 on amazon.

To hear "Bart" and Judge himself, he struggled with drinking and drug addiction, starting in high school, which doesn't make him the most reliable witness.  However, there are enough nuggets in Wasted  and God and Man that Democratic senators are pouring over these books, and no doubt the FBI is following up on the many references.  This does not put our prospective Supreme Court Judge in a favorable light.

Nevertheless, Republican senators are plowing ahead.  Unless the investigation reveals something truly damning, Jeff Flake will have a very tough decision to make.  He will have to show if his John McCain moment was real or simply a stall tactic to appease Democratic senators.  Every decision seems difficult for Sen. Flake these days, as if he is having to endure hemorrhoids.

Whether "Bart" gets through the Senate or not, the stain is permanent, much like it has been for Judge Clarence Thomas, whose biggest sin was dirty talk at the water cooler.  Kavanaugh will forever be known as the rapist, or attempted rapist in this case.  This is why the America Magazine of the Jesuits wants Trump to withdraw his nomination.  Sure it sucks, but it also sucked that Kavanaugh urged Starr to reopen the probe into Vince Foster's death, long after it had been ruled a suicide.  He didn't seem to care about the fallout then, so why should we now.

You play fast and loose with the rules, you can expect it to come back to haunt you, which is why he was so adamant in trying to make these sexual abuse allegations look like a vendetta by the "Clinton people."  He figures if nothing else he can animate the right wing.  So much for an even temperament.  What we have is a partisan hack who is a vote away from the Supreme Court.

Well, Mark Judge will certainly have enough material for a new book after this stinking mess, and it is sure to be a bestseller.