Raising a voice against an ugly day in the Senate
Thursday morning, as I watched Christine Blasey Ford give her testimony before the Senate, the most jarring note was her voice. After hearing about Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser for the past two and a half weeks, it was a revelation to finally see her face and hear her voice. She looked pretty much as I expected, from the photo in sunglasses that kept appearing in the news. But her voice was alien to that face and to her resume and training. It was a young girl’s voice, and not simply because of the timbre and tone. She spoke haltingly, sometimes ingratiatingly, sometimes apologetically. It wasn’t a strong voice. It wasn’t accusatory. It was the voice I’d heard so many times among classmates from my Catholic girls school and the young female students I used to teach. It was shocking to hear that voice coming from a 52-year-old woman.
It might seem strange to focus on the sound of the words as opposed to their substance, but that’s because we already knew most of what we needed to know about that substance. Dr. Ford had already said that Brett Kavanaugh, in a drunken stupor, assaulted her in a room with witnesses. She didn’t provide many more details that changed the narrative on Thursday morning.
But that voice was distracting, and my natural predisposition not to believe what she was saying after so many years and with so many gaps, made it difficult to see how this hearing would serve any purpose other than make a mockery of the confirmation process. When the Democratic senators were questioning Dr. Ford, especially Diane Feinstein, Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, they were supportive and solicitous with her, and hostile toward their Republican colleagues. They did everything they could to buttress her story and were particularly intent on destroying the possibility that she’d mistaken the identity of her attacker. If they were attorneys in court, their questions could be objected to as leading. Of course, we weren’t in a courtroom because if we were, Brett Kavanaugh would already be a confirmed justice. The “proof” against him is so far below a “reasonable doubt” standard that a prosecution would be dismissed with a swift hit of the gavel.
The sex crimes prosecutor chosen by the GOP to question Dr.Ford was the only party that acted like an adult in the proceedings. Rebecca Mitchell cared about eliciting facts and not making political jeremiads on the floor of the Senate, and she alone had no personal interest in the outcome. The GOP cared about defending the reputation of a man who had been chosen to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and cementing a conservative majority. The Democrats cared about making a public service announcement for abused women (who were watching closely before they went off to vote in the midterms.) Christine Blasey Ford cared about telling her story, which, of course, she subjectively believed. Brett Kavanaugh cared about rescuing both his nomination and his shattered reputation from the dustbin of revisionist feminist history.
And what did the rest of us care about? I can only speak for myself, as a woman who has been very outspoken against the excesses of the #Metoo movement. I wanted someone to give me a reason why these allegations should be believed, since they were sprung upon us at the 11th hour and filled with gaps and inconsistencies. Still, I’m glad Dr. Ford was allowed to speak. It underscored the political nature of the Democrats’ agenda. I started out resenting Christine Blasey Ford for making this guerilla attack on the nomination, but after hearing her speak I felt sympathy for the way that she was being used by a party that doesn’t even give a damn that one of their own, Keith Ellison, is accused of doing much worse than Brett Kavanaugh ever did. That was only reinforced by the hesitancy in her voice. This woman asked to remain anonymous, which is wrong because the accused should always be able to confront his accuser. But it was the Democrats who stripped her of that right, not the GOP. Their righteous indignation on behalf of this woman who represents abuse victims was hollow.
The GOP might be wrong on many things. They are wrong in the way they allowed this farce to play out.
But I realize, now, why Dr. Ford’s voice made such an impression on me. It was as insubstantial as the allegations being raised against Judge Kavanaugh.
Next week, we will focus on the judge, and see if, after the witch hunt, er, FBI investigation, the tone of Christine Ford’s voice matters anymore.