The big Senate Judiciary farce
Bill Press: We have seen how far #MeToo has come and how far it still has to go >>
Today’s #MeToo movement is probably the most powerful force we’ve seen in our country since the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And this week we saw a stark contrast between how far the #MeToo movement has come and how far it still has to go.
In a Pennsylvania courtroom, the #MeToo movement was vindicated. After a 50year record of sexual assault, Bill Cosby was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in state prison. For more than 60 women who filed charges against Cosby, after years of being ignored or attacked as liars, justice was finally done.
Meanwhile, 120 miles away, in Washington, D.C., the #MeToo movement was trampled on. The president of the United States — who has zero standing to comment about sexual assault, having bragged about doing so himself — dismissed all charges of sexual assault leveled against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh — and, by extension, any allegations raised by any woman against any man — as “political” and “a big, fat con job.” He even called the entire #MeToo movement “dangerous” and “unfair to men.” And Senate Republicans pulled out all the stops to rush Kavanaugh onto the court before the midterm elections.
From the beginning, Republicans basically ignored the substance of the charge of sexual assault raised by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, as well as other allegations from Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick. Instead, they focused on other issues: This happened so long ago. Why didn’t she call the cops at the time? Why’d she wait so long to come forward? Why’d Sen. Feinstein sit on the letter for over two months? Why wasn’t this issue raised before, when Kavanaugh was confirmed for the District Court of Appeals? All interesting questions, perhaps, but none of them relevant.
Consider the many examples of sexual assault we’ve seen over the last couple years: Les Moonves, Charlie Rose, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Bill Cosby, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore, and others. In each case, the assault happened years, even decades earlier. In each case, female victims did not report the abuse to authorities. In each case, victims waited years, and sometimes decades, before coming forward. And in each case, the women were telling the truth and the men charged were guilty. The lapse of time between the assault and public knowledge of the assault means nothing.
And if anybody still doubts WHY more women don’t immediately come forward to report any case of sexual assault, all they had to do was watch Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the personal attacks she’d already received from Republican senators prior to the hearing. Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, opened the hearing by issuing a call for civility, then immediately proceeded to attack Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, for not releasing Dr. Ford’s letter earlier — in effect, blaming her that they even had to hold the hearing. God forbid they should do their job under the Constitution.
Then Grassley, in effect, turned the entire hearing over to a prosecutor who spent most of her time, unsuccessfully, trying to poke holes in Ford’s memory — even though Ford admitted she couldn’t remember many details about the night in question. She then wondered why Ford, in addition to contacting Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-California, didn’t also contact a Republican congressperson. And tried to undermine Ford’s professed “fear of flying” by noting she had flown to Washington. Who cares?
The only value of the hearing was to show the entire nation what a farce the whole Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process is. Unlike Chairman Joe Biden’s response to Anita Hill in 1991, Grassley refused to ask the FBI to investigate the charges of the three women. Why not? What were they afraid of learning? Republicans also refused to allow the testimony of Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s high-school drinking buddy, reportedly the only eyewitness to the alleged attempted rape, even though Ford admitted the FBI could help her nail down timing of the event.
Clearly, Republicans aren’t interested in learning the truth. Knowing they could lose control of the Senate on November 6, they just want to get the process over as soon as possible so they can meet their goal of installing a new associate justice who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, repeal Obamacare, undo affirmative action, protect a corrupt president from having to answer a subpoena and make it easier to fire LGBTQ Americans.
In the end, the judiciary hearing did accomplish one important thing. Christine Blasey Ford came off as real, unscripted and credible. Brett Kavanaugh came off as smooth, polished and wellrehearsed. But there’s no doubt which one’s telling the truth.