Cosby, Kavanaugh and #MeToo: A teachable week
In a darkly amusing irony, Bill Cosby’s menu for his first week in prison includes pudding. No, it’s not the pudding of the Jell-O Pudding Pops that Cosby memorably hawked in television commercials back in his 1980s heyday.
Locked up last week for three to 10 years as a sex offender, Cosby is receiving plain off-brand prison-style pudding, according to reports. There’s just enough of a resemblance to free-world pudding, I imagine, to remind him of the free world he used to know, before the law and his dozens of accusers caught up with him.
I can only imagine, as some comedians suggest, that his new prison mates will nickname him “Pudding” or “Fat Albert” or something else appropriate. But I still am too shocked and dismayed to get even a chuckle out of the sight of the once-great entertainer brought low by the worst sort of unlawful behavior that he used to warn us against.
Like many other Americans, my shock over Cosby’s sentencing was distracted by a newer and similarly surprising drama involving alleged sexual offense, the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. University professor Christine Blasey Ford testified that a drunken Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a party when they were in high school.
A lot of men are furious that Kavanaugh’s nomination was held up while the FBI investigated Ford’s charges. His boosters, including President Trump, say he’s been getting a raw deal. I sympathize. I can hardly begin to imagine how tough it must be these days for a middle-aged white male judge with two Yale University degrees to get an even break.
On a more serious note, I hold to the presumption of innocence for all accused until they are found guilty through due process. Too many men and women, a disproportionate number of them black or Hispanic, have been wrongfully accused for me to drop my healthy skepticism too quickly, even when the testimony is as compelling as Ford’s.
Unfortunately for Kavanaugh, he damaged his own case by losing his cool in his defense of himself. With shouting, red-faced contortions and sarcastic partisan attacks at Democratic committee members, he showed everything but the restrained judicial temperament we usually expect on the high court.
Imagine, I wondered, what the response would have been if nowSupreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had behaved similarly as he answered sexual harassment charges by Anita Hill during his 1991 confirmation hearings.
But Thomas kept his cool. You could easily tell from his grimly serious and determined face and voice that he was angry about the accusations. But even when he got to his unforgettable and controversial description of the affair as a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks,” the risky remark had its desired effect. It knocked his Democratic critics off-balance and emboldened his Republican supporters.
And it sparked a backlash that led to a record surge in female members of Congress in what became known as “the year of the woman.” The high profile of the Thomas-Hill hearings brought new prominence to the charge of sexual harassment and ultimately today’s #MeToo movement and the groundswell that demanded investigation of the charges against Kavanaugh.
With the Kavanaugh hearings and another midterm election only weeks away, that movement has come to a significant crossroads. Even President Trump, himself accused by multiple women of sexual offenses, sounded notably sanguine and complimentary of the woman now charging attempted rape by his high court nominee.
Yet at a news conference Monday, he seemed to go out of his way to let his inner anti-feminist show itself with female reporters. In one egregious example, he called on journalist Cecilia Vega of ABC News during the Rose Garden event with a shot at her intelligence.
Trump: “She’s shocked I picked her, she’s in a state of shock.”
Vega: “I’m not, thank you, Mr. President.”
Trump: “I know you’re not thinking, you never do.”
Vega: “I’m sorry?”
Trump: “Go ahead.”
Trump and the mostly men standing around him made quite a smiling, sarcastic sight, suitable for somebody’s campaign ad. Maybe Trump just wasn’t thinking either.
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