That’s what I thought: Senators don’t care about sexual assault, but they might about perjury

I’ve been talking for the last few days about how I consider Kavanaugh’s likely history of sexual assault to be disqualifying, but that his perjury potentially foreshadows even greater threats to justice in SCOTUS, and also that it is more likely to cause Senators to vote against his confirmation.

Jeff Flake (R-I don’t give a shit) has now affirmed exactly that latter view on 60 Minutes when he and Chris Coons were interviewed together. From RawStory describing and quoting from the interview:

In an interview beside Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), the two men also agreed that there’s no way they’ll be comfortable confirming if Kavanaugh was found to have lied.

“Nomination’s over?” they were asked.

“I would think so,” Coons said at the close of their interview.

“Yeah,” Flake agree.

I think it’s pathetic that so many Senators think that credible allegations of rape and sexual assault should not even be investigated, but there you are. The real hope for stopping the nomination is making sure the FBI seriously investigates the accuracy of his testimony.

Don’t stop talking about the sexual assault, but the next time you call your senator, make sure you also mention Kavanaugh’s plentiful perjuries.

 

Dishonest or Incompetent?

I’ll make clear again from the outset that I believe Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegation of an attempted sexual assault by Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I further believe that this is entirely sufficient to deny him confirmation to SCOTUS.

That said, I think that the more effective tactic to take in the media if one wants to get the sexist Republican Party senators to vote against his confirmation is not to stress Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony more than it has already been stressed. No, it should continue to be covered at similar levels to now, but what needs to be ramped up isn’t that. It’s the argument that Kavanaugh’s testimony is by itself also sufficient reason to deny his confirmation. The Intercept (a publication for which my respect declined in proportion with the decline in my respect for Glenn Greenwald, but which nevertheless does publish some – perhaps many – good things) has taken a similar tack. In a recent piece, Intercept authors Briahna Gray and Camille Baker attempted to demonstrate to non-lawyers and non-law students just how damaging Kavanaugh’s testimony on its own ought to be:

KAVANAUGH’S APPARENT WILLINGNESS to perjure himself over accusations of underage drinking or sexual innuendo — which, alone, don’t necessarily bear on his suitability for the bench — is troubling both because of what it implies about his integrity, and because of what it suggests about his reasoning as an adjudicator.

How should we judge someone who, during his testimony, repeatedly misrepresented facts and dissembled when pressed for detail? Should we understand these moments as lies, or as misinterpretations rooted in substandard analytical rigor? And given the importance of the position at hand, which is worse?

Note that here, if you’re not certain since they weren’t explicit, they’re trying to say that the excuse of misunderstanding a question does not save Kavanaugh. If he can’t parse the meaning of the questions as asked because of his own filters, then he won’t be able to parse other questions or statements that are necessary to resolve the questions at issue in cases that come before SCOTUS. Back to the Intercept:

Some of this may seem like parsing hairs, but the law, in large part, is parsing hairs. Easy questions don’t make it to the Supreme Court. Slam dunk cases settle out. Outside of constitutional issues, the Supreme Court only agrees to hear cases that are so subject to interpretation, they’ve been inconsistently decided between states or federal circuits. Analytical precision, therefore, is a big part of the job.

That being the case, it was concerning to hear a federal judge clamor for “due process” as he sidestepped an opportunity to call witnesses, hear evidence, or have his name cleared by a federal investigation. How should we view a federal judge who seems not to understand, or who for political reasons ignores, that he is not, in fact, on trial, but at a job interview? Who, either due to a lack of understanding or a surfeit of political ambition, emotes as though the stakes were that of a criminal proceeding where the high burden of proof would militate in his favor?

“DUE PROCESS” MEANS fair treatment under the law — that an accused person has notice of the proceedings being brought against them and an opportunity to be heard before the government takes away their life, liberty, or property. The fundamental goal of due process is to prevent the state from depriving people of their most precious freedoms. But Kavanaugh isn’t threatened with any of those deprivations. He’s not facing jail time, a fine, or any confiscation of personal goods. The stakes are these: whether he will go from sitting on the bench of the second most prestigious court in the land, to the first.

What matters, then, is whether Kavanaugh is of sufficiently fit character to fairly and ethically interpret the law. Thursday’s hearing, perhaps as much as the allegations against him, has thrown that into serious doubt.

Aside from the terrible phrase “parsing hairs”, Gray and Baker are dead on here. I expect the Republicans to ramble on about how bitches dems be lyin, and I think that they’ve frankly committed themselves to the fallout of their overt sexism and their overt stand against the idea that committing sexual assault might make one less fit for a seat on SCOTUS. However, I don’t think they’ve yet taken a stand to the effect that dishonesty under oath should not make one less fit for a seat on SCOTUS, nor do I think they’ve even thought about the ramifications of attempting to deploy the excuse of Kavanaugh misunderstanding questions.

Hammer your senators on the import of Blasey Ford’s testimony. However, if you’re calling your senators, I think you should also hammer them on these important issues of Kavanaugh’s dishonesty and his inability to parse important questions when the stakes are high.

[h/t to Mano for bringing the Intercept piece to my attention. I don’t normally read the website except when another outlet links to it and would never have found it without the writing of my FtB colleague.]

 

 

 

Horrible Jokes

So my best friend and I were having a conversation sparked by that most recent post of mine. We were discussing whether it was acceptable, even as a cathartic joke, to talk about burning (fictional and/or non-specific) people and scattering their ashes on the wind. We concluded that it could be acceptable in some contexts. But that brought up another joke, that was subtly different:

Q: How many men does it take to wallpaper a bedroom?

A: Only one if you slice him thin enough.

Now, my best friend is actually the same person who first told me this joke 20 years ago, so I was a bit surprised to hear her say that this joke was never acceptable. She went so far as to say she should never have told it. On the other hand, I think it’s completely unacceptable to tell such a joke for laughs in any public context you could find in Canada today – and likewise in any public context you could find in the US today – but that when she first heard it in the 1980s the context was sufficiently different that it could be (and was) acceptable in at least some contexts. Where she first heard it was during an ongoing anti-war protest. It was a women-only camp that was set up to protest and to monitor activity related to the Pershing II missiles (nuclear tipped missiles with a range that shifted during development and production, but was ultimately ~1000 miles or 1500-1800 km) designed to be deployed in Europe. Everyone at the camp being seriously committed to non-violence contributed, I believe, to the context that made the joke acceptable in the time and place originally told. It also matters (to me, anyway) that “humor” about violence against women was still not merely acceptable, but financially rewarded. this is, after all, long after “To the moon, Alice,” and still before Andrew Dice Clay would sell out venues to thousands of people eager to hear “jokes” like:

I give [women] what they want. Pull their hair, rap ’em in the head a few times, say all the little things they want to hear, like ‘Fuck, pig, howl, skank.

Emphasis added.

For me, although the discussion at the peace camp wasn’t this context, the joke would also have been acceptable when told in a way that was designed to provoke a reaction (“hey, that ain’t fair to men!”) and then to use that reaction to make society better (“But you accept that unfairness from men comedians … if you interrupt and question this joke, are you going to interrupt and question misogynist jokes?”).

Although there is certainly a wealth of sexist/misogynist humor out there, I think there’s enough of a new social context for us to leverage other arguments or employ other tactics to fight what still exists. There’s simply less need for a “slice ’em thin enough” joke to make the point. While the possibility of telling such jokes for catharsis still exists, I don’t believe that telling them publicly (including in almost any manner using the internet) is necessary for such catharsis. I think it’s good if people don’t tell such jokes for cathartic laughs in private with their best friends, but if people conduct themselves well publicly, I won’t condemn them for using humor privately for reasons such as catharsis that would not be acceptable publicly.*1

I make a distinction between this joke and the “people who make me angry” joke in the previous post because the previous post’s joke targeted “the people that inspire my rage” where “my” is a pronoun standing in for a particular, but fictional, person. Thus the targets are specific, but undefined. The targets of the wallpaper joke are non-specific, but well defined (all men). There’s much more reason and justification, then, for some individuals hearing the wallpaper joke to believe that they devalued, that they are socially or psychologically injured by the joke. Nor do I think it saves the wallpaper joke that men benefit from sexism. It’s arguable, but I think in the 1980s men’s privilege and the context of misogynist humor might very well have saved the joke. Today? No.

What do you think? If told in the comedy club nearest you (as a joke, not dissected for its social meaning and effects and morality), would the wallpaper joke be acceptable? Could it ever possibly be? Would it matter if it was a special event night (e.g. “feminist humor night” where the violence and sexual prejudice of the joke are more likely to be interpreted ironically)? What about the burning/scattering the ashes joke? Would it be acceptable at your local comedy club? Could it ever be?

Although I find the latter much more acceptable than the former, I’d love to hear any disagreement.

*1: The reason I don’t think it’s a good idea even privately is that I think it reinforces certain types of thinking, which then makes harmful actions more likely later when one reenters public space. In theory it’s possible to tell jokes that target people based on gender or race or dis/ability in private while behaving generously and without prejudice in public. In practice, I don’t think it’s possible. But since without telepathy it would be impossible to know about the private jokes and (more importantly) impossible to know exactly what role private jokes played in shaping public behavior, I’d rather focus my criticism on the unacceptable public behavior.

The Incomparable Corrupting Influence of Judy Blume (Also: Call Your Senators)

It’s Banned Book Week! And I haven’t written anything about it yet! You must therefore read my Blume babbling! Let’s get started, eh?

So I recently wrote about a new cartoon, Human Kind Of, produced by Facebook. I love that cartoon in part because the pilot takes on the topics of periods generally and menarche specifically with anything but subtlety and sideways reference. Although I was happy to share the cartoon, and happy as well to be informed my link led to pop-up madness (something I’d missed from having 3 ad blockers in constant use), I was disappointed that no one seemed to comment on the ambiguity in the post’s title An Unholy Pit of Horrors Coughs Up Something Amazing.

[Read more…]

Rage and Sickness

It’s hard to know what to say this morning, after Kavanaugh’s nomination to former Justice Kennedy’s seat on SCOTUS received the endorsement of the Republican-controlled US Senate Committee on the Judiciary. I feel rage. I feel nausea. But merely expressing those feelings isn’t nearly enough. Even voting this November, while necessary, isn’t nearly enough. The Republicans have most blatantly betrayed the principles they claim to espouse and at the same moment betrayed the people they represent, the traditions of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and even the more abstract course of – and frankly possibilities for -justice in the USA. We must understand both the magnitude of the Republican betrayal as well as its motivations and its methods.

This can’t be the post that does that. There will be many books written about those topics by persons far more knowledgeable than I. But I know enough to appreciate some of the magnitude, motivations, and methods, and even something as lowly as a pseudonymous blog post can be part of the initial efforts to understand these things. This post won’t do much in that department. I will write more later today and certainly even more over the weekend. But right now I encourage you to think not of my rage or sickness, but of that of Republicans generally and Republican Senators specifically.

Lindsey Graham has been called out, most appropriately, for his outbursts in yesterday’s Republican debacle. His rage is quite visible, quite audible. If like mine your skin tightens and your hairs stand while listening to his wounded aggression, his rage is palpable. But what is the content of that rage? It is most certainly complex (in ways future books will show), but the lions share is visible to all: he rages at checks upon his powers and prerogatives. I submit that much of the Republican Senatorial rage is similar. He takes personally the idea that he must pay a political cost in voting to confirm the nominees that will enact his anti-woman, anti-abortion agenda. With Republicans the majority in the Senate, he expects to be able to pack SCOTUS. With Kavanaugh rendered obviously unfit due to the petty lies in his testimony that would make him a perjurer even were he entirely innocent of the assault on Dr. Blasey Ford and also by the partisan temper and conspiratorial thinking on display in yesterday’s testimony, there is little time left for Trump to nominate anyone new before the midterms. He has the majority right now, but his power to do as he wills to the future of the US Constitution, its judiciary, and its practice of justice is hedged, impinged. It is not even eliminated, as shown by the committee’s vote this morning, but it is made both difficult and politically costly by the nation’s witness of Blasey Ford’s testimony and Kavanaugh’s pettiness, dishonesty, and entitlement.

The sickness, well: there’s never been a time when the Senate hasn’t been sick. Classism, sexism, and racism (just to name 3) have plagued the Senate since its inception. Yet the Senate has made progress. Now instead of simply dismissing the idea of a woman Senator of south-east Asian dissent, we actually have a couple! We just don’t let them use the private elevator. With so much distance between 1789, cultural as much as temporal, it’s easy to imagine that change as gradualist. But the change in Senators’ votes and positions over time, while constant, differs vastly in rate at different times. Sometimes the change does seem to move us toward a better society. Other times it moves us distinctly backwards, undoing positive changes that came before. But more frequently than moving backwards, it does neither of these things: changes move us towards a worse, more unjust society, but not the same unjust society as years before. When I can better organize my thoughts, I’ll talk more about the sickness I see today that is different from the sickness I saw 27 years ago when the Senate tormented Anita Hill. But for now, I will satisfy myself by saying that I believe this is one of those times. The Senate is developing new symptoms of disease rather than merely re-experiencing some that had been in remission.

To say what must be said will take us years, so let us act first, even as we are uncertain of the details of any necessary solutions, even as we are uncertain of the details of all the present problems. Contact your US senator, if you have one. Do what must be done even if it seems all hope is lost. Do your Dylan Thomas. Learn your Edmund Burke. Together we will become our Margaret Mead.

 

Hold My Beer: Lindsey Fucking Graham

I would think it was bad enough that your own party is defending as appropriate to promote to the Supreme Court someone credibly accused of attempted rape. I can understand an argument that it’s inappropriate to punish someone criminally for their 1982/3 behavior in the year 2018. Those arguments led to our statutes of limitation, and though we can debate whether they’re appropriate in every jurisdiction in every instance, in general they’re a good thing. But the issue is not whether or not Kavanaugh goes to jail. The issue is whether or not we confirm someone credibly accused of  getting off scot free with the attempted rape of a 15 year old girl after that person was nominated by someone who made this statement reveling in the fact that rich men get away with the sexual exploitation of teens:

“Before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it,” he said. “You know, I’m inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good.”

“You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’” he continued. “And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.”

So I cringe – or worse – hearing various incarnations of the GOP’s assertion that the rules that apply to criminal prosecutions also apply to confirmation hearings. That’s bad, and the GOP has been doing it for a couple weeks now. But Lindsey Graham just wasn’t satisfied that the GOP’s message was bad enough.

From Raw Story:

“All I can say is that we’re 40-something days away from the election and [the Democrats’] goal — not Ms. Ford’s goal — is to delay this past the midterms so they can win the Senate and never allow Trump to fill this seat. I believe that now more than ever.”

“I don’t know who paid for her polygraph, but somebody did,” he continued, raising his finger into the air. “The [Democratic] friends on the other side set it up to be just the way it is.”

“I feel ambushed as the majority!” the senator added.

ZOMG: Lindsey Graham thinks that he is the victim.

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t nearly the only crappy thing Graham has said today. WeHuntedTheMammoth has a roundup of many crappy things being said…about half of which are by Graham. Yeesh.

Girls Ruin Everything

The Guardian is telling me that Tennessee has given us yet another example for our ongoing examination of school dress codes and the sexism and racism found therein.

The evidence is, of course, subtle, but for those with a devil-worshipping, anti-christian, misandric bias, you can probably find reasons to believe there is a bit of sexism in the statements of Jared Hensley, athletic director of Soddy-Daisy High School:

I know, boys, you’re thinking, ‘I don’t understand why, it’s not fair, athletic shorts go past your knees’ … If you really want someone to blame, blame the girls. Because they pretty much ruin everything,” said Hensley. “They ruin the dress code, they ruin … well, ask Adam. Look at Eve. That’s really all you really gotta get to, OK. You can really go back to the beginning of time. So, it’ll be like that the rest of your life. Get used to it, keep your mouth shut, suck it up [and] follow the rule.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the Guardian also reports that the sexist educator is now on administrative leave. Maybe also, too, we’ll find certain other individuals that have gotten media attention for their sexist, misogynist behaviors will also, too find themselves officially not working sometime soon!

There’s a video of it, in case you want to watch:

An Unholy Pit of Horrors Coughs Up Something Amazing [Ed: Updated Link!]

I am not on Facebook. I believe the company is pretty horrible with their disrespect for their own users. yet there’s something called “Facebook Watch” which apparently funds the creation of videos. This is the first one I’ve ever come across and it is AMAZEBALLZ.

You’ll have to watch it at Kiss Cartoon or on Facebook, if you do that kind of thing (I won’t judge), but if this is your first experience with the cartoon Human, Kind Of, race back here and tell me what you thought. Won’t that make a nice distraction from the Kavanaughcalypse? Of course it would. Go watch it right now.

Each episode is only 5 or 6 minutes. There are only 6 eps available at Kiss Cartoon, and only 6 listed at Wikipedia, but IMDB says that the first season (which started this month) is 21 episodes long, so it looks like this is a slow-rollout like a network show, rather than a mass upload like a Netflix series. So it looks like we’ll get to look forward to drips of deliciousness for months to come. Ah, Facebook, you have gone and made me so conflicted that now I’m thinking about … pirating all your content, stealing all your profits, and funding awesome shows like this without the attached evil.

What. Have You. Done!?!

Update: I changed the link to a youtube link found by ridana. Turns out that my adblockers made me fail to notice that kiss cartoon is a riot of pop up ads. Hopefully that will be a much friendlier link for folks!