"#MeToo depends on the credibility of the journalists who report on it."

This is an excellent WaPo column by Megan McArdle.

McArdle says she was ready to write "It's now clear that Brett Kavanaugh's nomination cannot go forward" if another sexual assault allegation came out, but she changed her mind when she saw that New Yorker article about Deborah Ramirez. McArdle had thought that "a second allegation would be stronger, not weaker, than the first." She's "frankly surprised the New Yorker ran the article."

And so I'm writing a different column than I expected, about something I hadn't fully understood until I watched that seismic shift [toward expediting the process lest after nominee would go down to a string of unverifiable allegations]: the extent to which the success of #MeToo depends on the credibility of the journalists who report on it.

We hear the slogan "believe women" a lot, but even its strongest media proponents can't really mean it literally, because journalists know how often people tell them things that aren't true....

As #MeToo has grown, mainstream media outlets have generally been scrupulous about getting that confirmation before they publish. It's hard to overstate the dangers when that filter fails. When Rolling Stone failed to check allegations about gang rape at the University of Virginia, the magazine both smeared innocent young men and caused other victims to be treated more skeptically. And when a weak story breaks into an already raging political conflagration, it not only creates skepticism under which future abusers can shelter but also threatens to turn #MeToo into yet another divide in the culture wars.

In the #MeToo movement, it has seemed that multiple accusations have been crucial in taking down prominent men. And now here is a prominent man who began as the target of a desired takedown.  The first accusation inspired credulity because of the built-up strength of the believe-all-survivors ethic, but the second one felt so weak that it not only failed to strengthen the attack, it roused suspicion about the first accusation.

If only the authorities would do their work, then we could rely on them, McArdle seems to say. They've been "generally... scrupulous" in the past. Oh? Somehow I rankle at that idealized image. And I resist the complacency about professionalized journalism and its alliance with a political movement. It's up to us, the citizenry, to maintain our vigilance. No shortcuts. You can't "believe all women" or trust the "mainstream" press. Pay attention and sharpen up, or we are lost.

NOTE: This is the fifth in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

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"Anita Hill Says Kavanaugh Accuser Hearing 'Cannot Be Fair.'"

That's the headline at NPR (with audio). What's unfair about the Senate hearing? Hill says:

"In a real hearing and a real investigation, other witnesses would be called, including witnesses who could corroborate, witnesses who could explain the context of the experiences of Dr. Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh during that period in their lives, as well as experts on sexual harassment and sexual assault."

I think Hill is using the idea of corroboration very broadly, since there are no other witnesses for the incident Blasey alleges nor are there witnesses to her contemporaneous hearsay about the incident. Hill is, I think, talking about witnesses who heard Blasey tell her story after Kavanaugh became a Supreme Court prospect, decades later, as well as general experts on how to understand and interpret the behavior and testimony of those who tell of sexual victimization.

Hill goes on to reject the Senate as the investigator. The Senate, she says, is not a "neutral body." And, speaking of her own experience before the Senate Judiciary Committee, there is "an inherent power imbalance."

The Senate has the constitutional role to decide whether to confirm the nominee. I resist the idea that it "cannot be fair." It must be fair, and if it is not, it still makes the decision. It makes a lot of decisions, and many of them are unfair or believed to be unfair. Yell and scream about that. I guess that's what people, including Hill, are doing. The Senators are responding to the political pressure, and whatever they do, they'll be criticized. Delay or don't delay. Vote yes or no. And there are lots of elections in 6 weeks, so we the people who think the Senate is unfair/fair will have our say.

NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

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"I know that lying to the Senate is a crime just like lying to the FBI, but, culturally and politically, people do think the FBI actually is the super-serious police..."

"... and since doing background checks is part of its portfolio, having the FBI do a seventh or add an addendum to the sixth background check of Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t seem crazy to me. Lots of people reject all of this and say that the GOP should stop the circus and just vote right now.... But if [Christine Blasey Ford] passes the threshold of sounding believable enough, it seems likely that the only choice will be calling the FBI."

Writes Jonah Goldberg in "Is It Time for the FBI?" (National Review). He puts a link on "super-serious police" and it goes to this September 18th tweet by his National Review colleague Charles C.W. Cooke:

The FBI is not The Super Serious Police. It’s an agency that is tasked with investing alleged violations of federal law, and even then with a limited remit. The Kavanaugh case, whatever the details, does not qualify. Feinstein knows this. Maybe most journalists do not.

Goldberg is citing that not for the stated proposition — "The FBI is not The Super Serious Police" — but for the background premise people believe the FBI is the super-serious police.

Here's Joe Biden to yell at you about what the FBI isn't:

My Democrat friends might want to consider this from then-Judiciary Committee Chairman JOE BIDEN (D-DE) In 1991: The ‘FBI Explicitly Does Not, In This Or Any Other Case Reach A Conclusion, Period’ pic.twitter.com/NvAI3RqevL

— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) September 25, 2018

I think the FBI has taken a lot of credibility hits lately. There's no good reason to palm off responsibility to them as though they're some sort of oracle of truth. Maybe you think there should be an authority that could be deferred to, but there isn't one, and, in any event, the authority in place in the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee is the U.S. Senate. I know they're awful, partisan, and ridiculous, but it's their job and they need to step up to it and do what they can. And we can judge them as they do their constitutional work, and we've got a constitutional check on them coming right up in 6 weeks. It's only as good as it is, this democracy. But don't give up!

NOTE: This is the third in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

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"It’s like any witness preparation times 2,000. You come at them with the worst version you think the antagonists are likely to ask them..."

"... and you probe for their emotional stability: Can they take it?... This is pressure like you’ve never seen. … That’s why they call it 'murder boards.'"

Said Georgetown lawprof Emma Coleman Jordan, quoted in "Democrats in the dark on eve of historic Kavanaugh hearing/Senate Democrats have had no apparent contact with Christine Blasey Ford — and have no idea how she'll hold up" (Politico).

Also:

Asked whether she has confidence in Ford’s prep team, [Senator Dianne] Feinstein said that "I have no idea” and insisted that “we’re not getting involved in any of that. I assume her own lawyers are prepping her. We’re not. Let me make that very clear."

NOTE: This is the second post in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

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"Kavanaugh’s ‘choir boy’ image on Fox interview rankles former Yale classmates."

WaPo reports on the inner feelings of a large group of human beings.

"... rankles former Yale classmates." There should at least be a "some" in that headline: rankles some former Yale classmates.... 

They're purporting to talk about a set of persons that includes thousands. I'd say "hundreds" if it was only Yale Law School, but this is about Kavanaugh's college years. Within such a large group, of course, you're going to find people who are rankled by Kavanaugh's self-presentation as a paragon of virtue. That would naturally happen even if this weren't a situation where many — most? — people are motivated by larger political goals.

I'm torn between wanting to say how can the Washington Post know what's going on in the nervous system of the set "former Yale classmates" and thinking it's completely obvious and unspecial for almost anyone to be annoyed or suspicious about anyone who tries to put himself across as good to the core. I've said the same thing myself a couple times: When someone relies heavily on his own purity, it makes me wonder about the dark side. Surely, if Kavanaugh were a fictional character, he'd be a secret monster. What's he hiding behind his humble visage?

The WaPo article quotes, first, Liz Swisher, "who described herself as a friend of Kavanaugh in college":

“Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him. I watched him drink more than a lot of people. He’d end up slurring his words, stumbling,” said Swisher, a Democrat and chief of the gynecologic oncology division at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “There’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. . . . But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”

She's a doctor, and there's no "medical way" to say he had blackouts, but she says it anyway, in the form of saying that he can't say that he didn't. Swisher swished that around nicely, not putting her medical credibility at risk at all.

Lynne Brookes, who like Swisher was a college roommate of one of the two women now accusing Kavanaugh of misconduct...

Whoa! I'm surprised that this roommate-of-an-accuser status is revealed only after I've digested Swisher's semi-medical diagnosis.

... said... “He’s trying to paint himself as some kind of choir boy,” said Brookes, a Republican and former pharmaceutical executive who recalled an encounter with a drunken Kavanaugh at a fraternity event. “You can’t lie your way onto the Supreme Court, and with that statement out, he’s gone too far. It’s about the integrity of that institution.”

What's the lie? Kavanaugh admitted he drank. But Brookes is "a Republican," but her assertions are intemperate. The lie in question I infer, reading on, is that Kavanaugh denied ever suffering memory lapses from drinking.

I'm looking to see if there are any other classmates in the set of those rankled by the choir boy image. No. And really, only Brookes spoke in those terms.

Finally, I get back to Swisher and Brookes. Both were roommates with Deborah Ramirez (the woman who told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed his genitalia near her face during a bout of drinking).

The key question, I infer from the text, is not whether the "choir boy" imagine rankled, but whether these women have any evidence of Kavanaugh suffering memory blackouts. I can see the WaPo reporters must have pressed these 2 women on the subject. How could they know? One way would be if they heard Kavanaugh say that he couldn't remember. We're told Swisher "could not recall a specific instance" like that.

But Brookes, Ramirez’s roommate for a year, said she was present one night when Kavanaugh participated in an event with his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. Brookes said she believes there was “no way” he remembered all of the behavior she observed that night, when fraternity brothers pushed pledges to get “ridiculously drunk” and do “ridiculous things.”

Why is there no way he remembered? It seems to be just another way to say he was really really drunk:

Brookes said she remembers seeing Kavanaugh outside the Sterling Memorial Library, wearing a superhero cape and an old leather football helmet and swaying, working to keep his balance.

He was ordered to hop on one foot, grab his crotch and approach her with a rhyme, Brookes said. He couldn’t keep balanced, she said, but belted out the rhyme she’s remembered to this day: “I’m a geek, I’m a geek, I’m a power tool. When I sing this song, I look like a fool.”

“It’s a funny, drunk college story that you remember — at least, I remember,” Brookes said. As she tracked his career over the years, and his rise in the federal court system, she said, “I thought it was so funny to think that’s the Brett who sang that song.”

Yeah, it's funny. But it doesn't mean he had a memory lapse. Or even that he was that drunk. He hopped on one foot, didn't he? All Brookes can say is that he wasn't "balanced." If you were so drunk that you'd necessarily suffer memory loss, wouldn't you fall if you tried to hop? Wouldn't you forget the lines of the rhyme? The inferences to be made from this story are not, I think, that he was blackout drunk, but that he was in thrall to some fraternal hazing.

The Post contacted Brookes and Swisher last week because they lived with Ramirez at different points during their undergraduate years. Neither returned calls or emails until Tuesday. Ramirez previously told neither of them about her allegation... but Brookes and Swisher said they believe her account.

Oh! So the real news here is that Ramirez's roommates won't corroborate her story! They say they believe her, but they were in a position to hear the story close in time to when it allegedly happened and they did not. Back before The New Yorker broke the story, they would not respond to calls and emails seeking to corroborate it. Only after The New Yorker's publication did they answer some questions, and they seem to have been led into bolstering the blackout drunk theory of why Kavanaugh is contradicting his accusers.

NOTE: This is the first post in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

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I'm about to put up a series of Kavanaugh posts.

There are so many bloggable Kavanaugh headlines right now. I was going to collect them all in one post, but I want to react to them separately, so I'm going to string them out to avoid one long post. And this post is just a place-keeper to tell you that's what I'm about to do.

So when you see the first in the series, don't see it as a signal to dump everything you currently have to say about the ongoing Kavanausea.*

As these posts go up, please react to the specific post and, especially, please don't initiate discussion of another article that I haven't gotten to yet. If you're seeing an article you'd like to see in this forthcoming series of posts, you can drop the link to that on the comments on this warning post.

This is, I think, the first time in the 15-year history of this blog that I've ever done a post like this.
__________________

* I was going to ^TM that word but I see that ZeroHedge noticed the portmanteau potential yesterday.

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I want to see how this looks....

I knew after last night, they were a half game out, but I wanted to gaze on the graphic depiction.

ADDED: The season could end in a tie, and we'd have to play the Cubs to see who wins the division. Then the loser will be the first wild card in the National League, and if Cubs/Brewers win the wild card game, the Cubs and Brewers will play again (because the winner of the wild card game will play the winner of the Central Division).

ALSO: It was a rough night last night for the Cubs: "Racial slurs hurled in bleacher brawl at Wrigley on Hispanic Heritage Night" (Chicago Sun Times):

The incident began following the Cubs’ 5-1 loss to the Pirates. The game featured specially priced tickets, which included t-shirts saying “Los Cubs.”

Danny Rockett — who hosts a Cubs podcast called The Son Ranto Show — began videotaping.... In a second video posted by Rockett, the same man from the first video can be more clearly heard yelling slurs at other fans.

“You threw the first punch,” he yells. “You threw the first punch! You threw the first punch.” He then cups his hands around his mouth and hurls two racial slurs for hispanics.

The man who used the slur immediately saw Rockett videotaping and says, “Don’t record me!” and comes toward him. Security can be seen pressuring Rockett to put his phone away: “You’re on private property. You don’t have permission to videotape anyone.” The video then ends....

When asked on Twitter what started the fight, Rockett responded with one word: “Racism.” However, after being contacted by the Sun-Times, Rockett said, “I really don’t know. Probably just drunks going back and forth. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary really until it was a melee.”

Cubs spokesman Julian Green said... denied a claim made by a woman in the video in which she accused security of taking the “white people’s side,” saying everyone involved was removed. Green did say the security guard was “incorrect” about fans filming — there’s no policy against recording video at Wrigley. “People film every time they come to games,” he said. “We will brief our staff about that.”

Part of bleacher fighting. pic.twitter.com/5i0p8PwhsN

— Danny Rockett (@SonRanto) September 25, 2018

PLUS: Another tweet from Rockett: "To all the people who followed me because of that fight I hope you like the #Cubs. Cause that’s all I tweet about. #Nofightinginthebleachers"

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The World's Trains in Real-Time

A number of interactive maps now allow you to watch the train networks of entire countries in real-time. These incredible maps show all the trains across a whole country moving at the same time.

A good example is Belgium's Train Map, which shows all of Belgium's trains moving in real-time on top of an interactive map. The map shows inter-city trains (IC), peak hour trains (P) and slow trains (L

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At the Tuesday Night Cafe...

... talk about anything.

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The Australian Cancer Atlas

The Australian Cancer Atlas is a new interactive map showing the incident rates of different cancers and their survival rates across Australia. The map makes it easy for people to see where in the country incident rates of different types of cancer are higher or lower than the national averages.

Among the interactive map's many excellent features is a 'Tours' facility which provides more

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