Kavanaugh hearing news dominated this week, including testimony by Christine Blasey Ford. Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver analyzed it all.
It’s been a long week, one filled with grim and intense news that practically forces both us and Last Week Tonight to focus on one thing: the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh and the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
That means we have to skip other news, such as the premiere of “Gritty,” the new and deeply disturbing mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers. Even Philly newscasters seem to hate Gritty, a creature so utterly compelling and disgusting that you really should look into him/it/our eventual overlord — after we talk about Brett Kavanaugh.
Ford, a professor of psychology, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, detailing her sexual assault by a man that she said was, with “100 percent certainty,” a high-school aged Brett Kavanaugh.
Ford’s testimony affected many senators and other witnesses to her time in the Senate that day. Some were, uh, affected differently that you may expect. Or not, if you know Republican senators all too well.
“I don’t think she’s uncredible. I think she’s an attractive, good witness,” said Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. When asked to clarify, he said, “Oh… in other words, she’s pleasing.”
Kavanaugh testifies
Despite that misstep from Hatch, many people began to think that Professor Ford’s testimony was seriously harming Kavanaugh’s chances and the Republican party. Then, there was Kavanaugh’s testimony and the whole rest of the week to undermine Ford’s words.
Unlike Ford, Kavanaugh was emotionally volatile, crying, sniffing, and occasionally yelling in anger while speaking to senators. “I’m starting to think that men might be too emotional for the Supreme Court,” observed Oliver. “Also, he’d be really pretty if he just smiled more.”
Kavanaugh alleged that he is the target of a large conspiracy — “a long series of false, last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing began.”
His behavior was, according to Oliver and others, strange even while reading from a prepared statement. Kavanaugh’s responses were perhaps even odder when answering questions without the aid of a written page in front of him. Sure, you could argue that Kavanaugh was emotionally vulnerable, defending his chance at the highest Judicial assignment in his country against some pretty heinous charges.
Then again, remember Ford giving her own testimony while clearly frightened and upset herself. She did that, yet had to control her own emotional reactions like nearly all women must do endlessly throughout their lives, lest they be rendered “too emotional” and therefore easily ignored.
Kavanaugh talks back
Kavanaugh was arguably not so controlled. “We drank beer, we liked beer,” Kavanaugh said in a rambling non-answer to questioning regarding his drinking habits during high school. “Senator, what do you like to drink?” he asked Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who seemed ready to move on even as Kavanaugh interrupted him.
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) asked Kavanaugh if he’s ever gotten blackout drunk. He refused to answer immediately, instead asking Klobuchar if she’s ever gotten so drunk she’s forgotten the events of the night. “Have you?” is hardly the answer you would expect to be given by an innocent person.
“That surly tone was emblematic of Kavanaugh’s behavior throughout the hearing,” said Oliver. It was the tone of someone who feels “entitled” to a seat on the Supreme Court.
To support his testimony, Kavanaugh brought a calendar from 1982, using it as a piece of evidence to show that he hadn’t attended any parties like the one Dr. Ford had described. Except, well, for when it did show gatherings that included some people also described by Ford when she was talking about the night in question.
That tendency to bend the truth, if not break it to pieces entirely, came back during the questioning segment of Kavanaugh’s testimony. Take questions posed by senators regarding Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, for instance.
There’s the page where Kavanaugh and others were listed as “Renate alumnius,” referring to a fellow classmate. Kavanaugh said it was a show of platonic affection, yet Renate Schroeder Dolphin herself only just now learned about it. She said that “the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue.”
Earlier in this saga, Dolphin was one of the women who signed a letter defending Kavanaugh’s behavior during and after high school.
Odd yearbooks
The whole spectacle of having an “alumni society” for a single person is, frankly, pretty darn weird. So is a “Beach Week Ralph Club,” or at least the spectacle of a senator asking Kavanaugh about barfing at the beach. So, too, is Kavanaugh’s assertion that the “Devil’s Triangle” line in his yearbook refers to a drinking game. Okay, sure.
Is all of this too petty? wondered Oliver. Remember that this is at least partially, if not entirely, a way to determine who is more trustworthy: Ford or Kavanaugh. It was largely a “he said, she said” situation presided over by some of the highest-ranking lawmakers in the entire country.
Yet, quite a few senators had already made up their minds before the hearing. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that Kavanaugh’s treatment was a “national disgrace.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) put on a show of being angry and perhaps also of being a showboating cowboy. Oliver called him the “least intimidating sheriff” in the Old West.
Sen. Graham isn’t technically wrong – the whole process was indeed deeply flawed, as he claimed. Then again, it’s hard to avoid a “he said, she said” situation when you only call two witnesses. With a Republican-controlled Senate and similarly controlled Judiciary Committee, where does the blame for that misstep fall?
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 27: Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is sworn in by chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Capitol Hill September 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. A professor at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Ford has accused Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during a party in 1982 when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. (Photo By Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
What they really want
Let’s take a step back and look at what we’ve learned about Kavanaugh’s character, at least as it was shown in this hearing. He spoke over senators, misrepresented the truth, and refused to answer questions. He also spoke way, way too much about his calendars and the privileged strangeness of his elite high school.
More concerning still was his own description of the situation. In his opening statement, Kavanaugh — despite stating that the court should be purposely non-partisan — he sounded “Trumpian” when describing a shadowy, unproven conspiracy against him, funded in part by sore-loser Clintons.
“We are supposed to have nine people left in American who do not talk that way,” said Oliver.
With all of his oddness and bias, not to mention the sexual assault allegations that have left a stain on the proceedings, why do Republicans and other politicians still lend their support to Kavanaugh? At this point, he should be political poison. Right?
That’s not necessarily happening, however. Sen. Graham seems to be doubling down on the love, like many of his fellow lawmakers. On Friday, he told reporters that “I’ve never felt better about him being on the bench than I do right now.”
Some people surely want it for ideological issues, like overturning abortion decisions like Roe v. Wade. Why should you care about Kavanaugh’s rich boy excesses or sexual assault charges, as long as he wants to help end legal abortion? However, there are plenty of judges at least as qualified as Kavanaugh, if not more so, who don’t have this strange, shadowed past with sexual assault allegations and a potentially troubling relationship with drinking.
The end goal and what you can do
Ultimately, concluded Oliver, this cannot function as much more than a deep insult. “It feels like they’re doing this just to deliver a [expletive] you to Democrats and a [expletive] you to women.” Lawmakers seemingly want to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as a way to both uphold their modern conservative values and stick it to anyone who opposes them, even if, in the case of many women, by their mere existence and the notion that they might actually want to use their voices.
Ford knew that she could be “personally annihilated” and ignored, yet she testified before the Judiciary Committee anyway. Kavanaugh’s successful confirmation would be a symbolic middle finger to her and the thousands of women like her.
What does the presence of Kavanaugh mean? On the doggy Supreme Court made popular by Last Week Tonight, he doesn’t even deserve the treatment of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who is represented by a lobster (as he took the seat from the rightfully nominated Merrick Garland and therefore doesn’t belong).
Kavanaugh, instead, would be represented by none other than a facsimile of Gritty the Philadelphia Flyers mascot. That is, Kavanaugh should be accorded the respect of being repped by a “mutated carpet swatch that appears to be tweaking on bath salts” and chugging beers.
Just remember that Kavanaugh hasn’t been confirmed yet. Different analysts say that it’s a likely possibility, yet you can still call your own Senators to voice your displeasure and predict your own voting patterns. According to Oliver, “Only continued pressure has even the slightest chance of stopping Kavanaugh’s confirmation.”