National Post (National Edition)
FAKE NEWSPEOPLE
THE MOST OBVIOUS CREEPS IN THE KAVANAUGH CIRCUS ARE THE JOURNALISTS
In all the drama and froth of Thursday’s U.S. Senate hearings into sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, there was one vast element missing; not a single, but a whole herd of elephants in the room. Christine Blasey Ford’s 36-year-old charge was, even in the absence of all corroboration and despite its cloudiness (no place, time, or witness), a serious business. However, just the day before, one Julie Swetnick unfolded a story via distinguished pornstar lawyer and future presidential candidate, Michael Avenatti, with an affidavit that read as if torn from the lurid pages of Helter Skelter.
Kavanaugh, she charged, organized full-scale “rape parties,” engaged in “abusive and physically aggressive behaviour toward girls,” which “included the fondling and groping of girls without their consent” and “spiked the drinks of girls at house parties (she) attended with grain alcohol and/or drugs so as to cause girls to lose inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No’ … so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”
The previous day when this broke, the news channels, the newspapers and, ineluctably, the millstones of Twitter went to full grind. Ms. Ford’s accusation, if true, painted Kavanaugh as at least a loathsome creep. But the Swetnick/Avenatti indictment presented the young Kavanaugh as a full, raging psychopath monster — somewhere approaching the border of someday being fit company for Paul Bernado and the lowlifes of full perdition that unspeakably ended poor, sweet Tori Stafford
Swetnick was specific. She was at 10 of this Caligulan rape parties. She was gangraped herself. She witnessed others. She swore on it in an affidavit.
Yet just 24 hours later, amid the Senate hearings into Kavanaugh’s high school past, where was this enormity? What had become of this — forgive the callous, necessary pun — trainstopper of all allegations? Twenty-four hours later it had casually slipped into some vague media limbo, barely glanced at by the fervent evening television panels, a disposable footnote to the contest of the hearings. It had been chewed over, raged at, screamed from the cable studios and headlines, electrifying Twitter just 24 hours earlier, and then, presto, going, going, gone.
Why and how?
I agree with everyone that American politics has entered the surreal stage. I disagree with everyone that the universal explanation for this guttering — the Key to all Progressive Mythology — is Donald Trump.
The news media, I think, instantly recognized the Swetnick saga for what it was: An incredible malicious fantasy, which nonetheless was extremely welcome as a flask of news adrenaline to hype the stage for the next day’s hearings. In a previous time, they would have given such an accusation just bare notice coverage until it was subjected to serious investigative reporting before igniting the scandal storm. Not now. No waiting when there’s juice to be had, oil for the fire. Dissect it now, find out later is the rule.
The media’s conduct during these hearings has been as abysmal and scurrilous as the politicians.
It’s not the internet that’s plaguing traditional American media. It is the now predominant turn of legions in the press to be undeclared and simultaneously blatant activists for what they think — they think — should be the news; to back up covertly or overtly the side of a news story that bolsters their benighted calling to “make a difference.” They are “progressively” infused to the point of coma. They see themselves as the knights of the morning news table, laptop Galahads out to slay the Black Knight Trump and bring home the Holy Grail (quondam et futurus Clinton).
They were extraordinarily, fatally wrong in the biggest event of the new century. Trump, they infallibly pronounced, as a thousand YouTube clips will still show you, was never, could never, would never be elected. He was as dead as Marley’s doornails. The prophets of the six o’clock news bet their reputational lives on it; the stammering clucks of cable news snarled in incredulous scorn at the idea. The sage panels of the journalistic crème de la crème hee-hawed till they wet their well-creased pants.
On the day of the election itself, the high-browed solons of The New York Times had Hillary at 91 per cent to win. Huffington Post, compared to which the National Enquirer is the Times Literary Supplement, was at a more definitive 98 per cent. They had one job — to read the American public, their public. They failed, utterly. They failed because they blinded themselves and went so far partisan that they abandoned judgment, neutrality, dispassion and — in some cases — honesty itself. They covered the election as if all the vast, diverse American public were clones of Joy Behar, Jane Fonda and Michael Moore.
And afterwards, they were angry at themselves that they were facing a truth that could not be admitted; because they were so wrong, so incompetent at telling the story of the most dramatic election of their time.
So it was Trump’s fault he won, and his fault, too, they failed. And out of that, they fashioned a massive specious excuse from the manners of President Trump for adopting “needful” activism — slanted and fully distorted coverage, selective reporting, choosing viewpoints and speakers to air (and not air). The relish, the vigour with which they have abandoned standards and conscience in the profession when dealing with reputation-destroying allegations in the Kavanaugh nomination was — to use their favourite malediction — more Trumplike than Trump.
So when Swetnick’s “story” arrived on the doormat, enough to kill the man’s reputation, and his family’s peace and honour beyond all hope of redemption, they went full bore on the instant. And, as in the whole of this sage jump in with the #MeToo vigilantes, dread Rose McGowan and her ilk, with their spiteful chants of “men are trash” and “men shut up” and all men are rapists and “believe the victim” and “feel her pain.” Of this new, dark liturgy, the greatest anathema of all, however, is the racist and ageist super-cry of “old, white, men.” Believe them? Patriarchists, molesters and liars all. Kavanaugh is one of them — so off with his judicial head.
Thursday in the committee room was only a fragment of this hearing. The hearing, I’d almost say the real hearing, has been also “out there.” It is as much all the frothing panels, the shoddy and irresponsible reporting, the corrosive, numbing extreme hostility to anything or anyone President Trump does or knows. That’s where things really get decided, opinion carved, judgments made, politics calculated. What chance in that forum did Kavanaugh have? No better than in the gang-up from the slander campaign of the leftist Senators. No wonder, finally, he was angry.
The journalism of the Trump era is no better than the politics. But even those who despise Trump even to hating him will admit his one mixed virtue: he does not hide what he is. And in that, even if it is only a sliver of difference, an atom of distinguishment, he may claim to be the superior of so many big names and outlets covering him.