Social Circles
As I mentioned late yesterday to a contributor who is as sick of all this as I am, I started watching a British mystery series to escape the day's realities. It didn't work. When the fictional detective Vera goes to interview a posh lady who might shed some light on the victim's activities, the posh lady tells Vera, “Yes, I knew her, but I didn't know her well. We didn't travel in the same circles.”
So right away, I thought of Brett Kavanaugh. As Josh Marshall wrote yesterday, “Kavanaugh rested his aggressive defense on the claim that he and [Christine] Blasey Ford weren’t even in the same social circles and that he didn’t even attend parties like the one she describes in the summer in question.” Kavanaugh's exact testimony in regard to Blasey Ford was, “She and I did not travel in the same social circles.” Philip Bump of the Washington Post demonstrates, based on young Brett's 1982 calendar that Kavanaugh's assertion isn't true. His “gang” included a boy whom Blasey dated at the time. (Not coincidentally, the boy Blasey dated was the person Ed Whelan tried to finger as the "real rapist." Marshall suspects Kavanaugh himself had a hand in inventing this red herring.)
But it is also true that Christine Blasey was two years behind Kavanaugh in school,* and that does make a difference to teenagers. I can remember as a sophomore thinking that seniors were rarified gods and as a senior thinking sophomores were “kids.” The girls & boys in my “circle” were in my class. This seems ridiculous now, but it seemed like “proper order” to a teenager.
Kavanaugh was and is far more tribal than I ever have been. As Avi Selk of the Washington Post points out, Kavanaugh's tribalism was such a serious character flaw that in 2006 the American Bar Association downgraded his qualification rating because of it. At the hearing Thursday, he let fly the lunacy:
Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation…. When it was needed, this allegation was unleashed and publicly deployed over Dr. Ford’s wishes…. This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit…. pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election…. revenge on behalf of the Clintons…. millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.
In other words, grown-up Brett thinks it is fine to viciously and falsely attack, to their faces, people who are not in his “group” – even as those despised “outsiders” are interviewing him for a job.
I think it's fair to take Kavanaugh at his word on this one point: that as a teenanger he did not think of Christine Blasey as part of his “social circle” even if she was dating someone who was. She was two years younger, a “kid” who was a “hanger-on,” like “Judy's little sister” Carol (played by Mackenzie Phillips) in “American Graffiti.” And, given Kavanaugh's lifelong disdain for outsiders, it's also reasonable to suspect that young Brett thought it was all right – in fact, hilarious – to attack a girl whom he perceived as an outsider, someone who was not part of his “social circle.”
Rather than providing evidence that he did not physically attack Blasey, Kavanaugh's effort to distance himself from her supports the likelihood that he did attack her. As an outsider, she was fair game, just like the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee whom he repeatedly insulted.
Whether Kavanaugh planned to rape Blasey or to just give her a scare for the fun of it, as Kevin Drum hypothesizes, his attack on Blasey affected her for life. He did not care then, and he does not care now. In the tribal worldview of Brett Kavanaugh, the feelings, the dignity, the rights of those of us he has “otherized” do not matter. Kavanaugh's world is a narrow one, far too narrow for him to grant justice to any "outsider" who would come before him.
* Oops, I was wrong about this. It looks as if Blasey was only a year behind Kavanaugh in school. She is about 18 months younger than he.
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Reader Comments (2)
Type casting?
"In the midst of an endangered job interview for arguably the most prestigious job in America, Kavanaugh seemed — when he wasn’t yelling into the microphone like some kind of Will Ferrell caricature — Noreen Malone wrote in an online New York magazine piece : "I went to an elite high school down the road from his. Here’s what I saw. " "....such a Brett"
"“He seemed stuck in the high-school mind-set of women as accessories, and most palatable when they were in a position to adore him, be impressed by him, bossed around by him.."
Made me think of the visuals from the D.C. hearings and seeing the long-haired blondes seated in the front row behind Kavanaugh. And then there's the September 27 story in the Portland Press Herald about a Yarmouth, ME woman who who wrote an opinion piece favorable to Kavanaugh that he cited during the hearings saying the Supreme Court nominee was a "'quiet and encouraging force to female members' " of the staff. Ms. Yates, by the way, is a long-haired blonde.
Christine Blasey Ford is a long-haired blonde.
Yes, but he didn't marry a long-haired blonde. He married the boss's (Dubya's) secretary. So then the boss rewarded Brett with a federal judgeship, and he's reportedly been working behind the scenes -- even after Christine Blasey came forward -- to make sure Brett gets the top job.
I would feel sorry for Ashley Kavanaugh, married to that jerk and probably stuck with him since she's likely a good Catholic girl & they have kids, but she was Bush's secretary, so that's two major strikes against her. Maybe she's drawn to jerks.
On the other hand, she seems kind of meek, so maybe she thought Brett was the best she could do. In that case, I'll feel sorry for her again.
My advice: get out, Ashley! There's more to life than standing by that creep.