Today’s Mo offers a chance to update yesterday’s comments on the limited social skills of Catholic prep-school alums.
The parallel between Kavanaugh and Thomas still holds up, but, now that Kavanaugh’s accuser has come forward and elaborated on her story, the specifics have made the parallel less direct.
While I’m not going to get into the debate over whether every instance of sex without specifically stated consent constitutes “rape,” I’m quite sure that repeated requests for dates, unwelcome discussions of dirty movies and the telling of dirty jokes in the workplace don’t qualify.
Including the pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can joke Telnaes references here.
And I’ll continue to argue that, had Thomas explained that his recent divorce had put him into a temporary tailspin during which he behaved very, very badly, I’d have been okay with that.
It was his denial that, IMHO, made him unacceptable for the Court.
So now comes Brett Kavanaugh, whose alleged behavior is not just tacky and not even simply appalling but potentially criminal.
Holding down a woman and trying to tear off her clothing is a much deeper hole to climb out of, though his alleged partner in the event has apparently written a lengthy confession of hard drinking and bad behavior.
It is possible to earn at least some element of redemption if you are willing to go through your own dark night of the soul and admit to having dwelt in that level of hell, and left it.
In fact, I’m not sure I wouldn’t welcome a repentant alcoholic with a horrific background to the bench. It might be nice to have somebody up there who knows what it’s like to have been in the deepest trenches of compulsive behavior.
But Kavanaugh denies it, and Senator Grassley can line up a thousand women whom Brett Kavanaugh never attempted to rape and it won’t have any more meaning than if an attorney were to produce a thousand people an accused drunk driver didn’t run over.
Still, the Senate is not a court of law, and he won’t even have to take an Alford plea.
An OJ plea will probably do the job.
The parallel that remains between Kavanaugh and Thomas is that the woman who came forward will be slimed and I wish I thought it would be worth her sacrifice.
We’ll see.
And today’s Non Sequitur could have almost been paired with Mo as a Juxtaposition of the Day.
I endorse what the cartoon says about our diminishing moral standards, though I object to the overalls.
It’s the fat-cat collaborators in three-piece suits who bother me, and the college boys in nice, preppy polo shirts who carry tiki torches and chant anti-Semitic slogans.
The old Mother Goose rhyme was about tax collectors, but the basics still apply.
I was already planning to stop at the National Comedy Center and the Lucy/Desi Museum on my way home from CXC later this month.
Maybe I should stay in Jamestown a little longer and visit the Robert Jackson Center. the museum commemorating the judge who wrote:
But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the … principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.
That’s a fellow I’d like to see back on the bench.
(He didn’t seem to think there were a lot of good people among the Nazis.)
And for more stupidity
Presented for your consideration, this cartoon by Graeme MacKay, noting that the American authorities are proposing to permanently bar anyone engaged in the legal (in Canada) business of marijuana, as well as anyone who has been smoking weed or who lies about having ever smoked it.
Apparently we hadn’t done quite enough yet to convince our northern neighbor that we are governed by imbecilic power freaks.
And if that weren’t frightening and depressing enough
People often ask why reporters use the word “allegedly” so often.
We seem to have a distressing example in a case well-explained at The Comics Journal, which begins thusly:
Cody Pickrodt, a small-press comics publisher and cartoonist — who has been accused of rape, sexual harassment, anti-Semitic remarks, and withholding payment of royalties to artists whose work he’s printed — has filed a defamation lawsuit against 11 individuals who either made those allegations or denounced Pickrodt while commenting on them.
Pickrodt is suing them for $2.5 million, claiming their accusations are false and have cost him his career.
This GoFundMe is to help them defend themselves, and Johanna Draper Carlson has more on it, including that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund can’t help out because of limits in their charter.
It’s a worthy cause, and I find it depressing that it hasn’t gone over the top, in part because I doubt even the full $120,000 would get them through, but also because so many far more trivial comics-related projects get so massively over-subscribed.
I suppose the problem may be that no comic superstars have thrown in special collectible incentives, but that doesn’t diminish the impression that people would rather watch the monkeys dance than fret over their health and well-being between shows.
It’s also an object lesson in why the mainstream media treads carefully: You won’t be sued for reporting that Susan Jones has accused John Smith of rape, and or for writing that John Smith was arrested on a charge of rape or even that John Smith allegedly raped Susan Brown, unless you simply made it all up.
But your ass can damn well go into the shredder if you say John Smith raped Susan Brown, unless you’ve got witnesses, a video and DNA evidence.
In fact, you’re wise to say that “John Smith was convicted of raping Susan Brown” rather than asserting that he actually did so.
Even then, you may end up stuck with huge legal bills if he sues, even when you win.
Something to ponder before you dive into an on-line public shaming.
Judges often compare themselves to umpires.
Perhaps this one.