Trouble with judging judge

Americans are not like us. They don’t get irony, for one thing. Their idea of comedy is insulting each other, or describing real or imaginary, solo or accompanied, sexual exploits in detail, because that’s blunt enough to find hilarious.

And then, as with Billy CK, who turned out to be as creepy as his stage persona, they back away from the revealed truth in shock. The Puritan part of them wants to believe we’re virgins for ever, but the jock part likes its sleaze, which is why their president is such a hit.

Porn star Stormy Daniels only gives Donald Trump more oxygen when she describes their skin contact, though I gather her new book delivers a sharp jab below the belt.

I puzzle over the conflict between these attitudes and the running American drama with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, 53, accused of groping a girl of 15 with intent decades ago, when he was a 17-year-old. This will possibly play out in a few days’ time at a Senate committee hearing.

Such teenage behaviour is a mainstay of American films and TV. They can’t get enough of attractive adolescents ripping their gear off in tedious frat house narratives as predictable as porn.

Kids pass, in their entertainment industry, from being precocious little creeps endowed with deep natural wisdom to being eye candy bouncing about on each other like sex robots. Which is what adolescents are.

To be a teenager is to be a child given a fighter plane to fly, with no manual and no pilot’s licence. It is to be curious, bewildered, instinctive, gross, obsessed, and inevitably, to crash. Today the process is channelled through online porn into tributaries I’d rather not think about, but back when Kavanaugh is accused of drunkenly mauling the girl, now a university academic, there was a lot less of that.

Iwant to take sides in this conflict of memory – she remembers, he doesn’t (as if he’d admit it) – but what holds me back is that the ‘‘stumbling drunk’’ incident would be universal. Something like it has played out in all our lives, surely. That doesn’t make it right, but what is it exactly?

If it’s light entertainment one minute, can it be a crime the next? Is it only a crime if you’re nominated for a top job?

And if a posse of 65 women say they know you well and you’re a good boy, is it true? How well does anyone really know anyone?

I don’t like the look of Kavanaugh. He looks like a sleek and rather wet product of private school, Ivy League university, and money, an unattractive otter.

I don’t believe in Mr Perfects, least of all when Trump describes him as one of the finest people he knows. How often have they met? If they have anything at all in common, I’d reject Kavanaugh on principle.

As for Christine Blasey Ford, she remembers him trying to pull her swimsuit off on a bed he’d dragged her to at a dumb teenage party with no parents on the scene.

The part of her story that resonates is when she says she tried to scream, but he shoved his hand firmly over her mouth.

That takes things up a notch. It’s the detail you’d remember, and that needs underlining; the sign that he – whoever it was – knew he was doing wrong, even blind drunk.

In true frat house comedy style, Kavanaugh’s equally drunk friend, also allegedly in the room, jumped onto the bed, knocked them all to the floor, and she made a run for it.

Roll credits. To be continued.