Let's watch the Kavanaugh hearing.

1. It's about to start. I'll update this post as we go.

2. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has taken her seat. She's nervously looking around, getting patted on the back. She's wearing a dark blue jacket over a dark blue top and has her hair done in a way that allows it to fall over her face and to need to be pushed back. Senator Grassley begins by apologizing to both Blasey and Kavanaugh for the incivility to which both have been subjected. He says he intends to preserve civility in the hearing and to make it "comfortable" for both witnesses.

3. Grassley criticizes Democrats for sitting on the allegations, allowing them to leak out belatedly, and failing to resolve matters in a bipartisan way. Democrats, he says, are to blame for the pain that "Dr. Ford" has suffered in recent days. He praises himself for doing he could to accommodate her. (I put "Dr. Ford" in quotes to indicate that's what she is being called here. I had switched to calling her "Blasey" after reading in the NYT that she preferred that name. From here on, I'll write "Dr. Ford" without quotes.)

4. Dianne Feinstein: "She wanted it confidential, and I held it confidential, up to a point..."

5. Feinstein casts an aspersion on Grassley: He didn't introduce Dr. Ford. Grassley, angered, interrupts to say that he didn't forget to introduce her. He was going to introduce her at the point when he was inviting her to begin speaking.

6. Still waiting for Feinstein to finish reading her intro statement. Dr. Ford seems to be struggling to keep her composure. After Feinstein, I presume we will hear Dr. Ford read this statement, already released to the press.

7. "I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified...." she begins, in a creaky voice.

8. Sorry, but I got an hour and a half behind. Will resume.

9. Now, I've watched the entire opening statement by Dr. Ford. She seemed very credible to me. Though she was reading, she seemed to be reliving a real, traumatic experience. It's hard to imagine that she could be infusing her speech with that kind of emotion phonily. Even an excellent actress would have difficulty affecting that kind of emotion.

10.  Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor brought in to ask questions for the Senators, receives 5 minutes of time from Senator Grassley. Mitchell's use of the time is awkward, because she begin with documents that Ford must read and comment on, and Ford takes her time and makes small corrections to the documents. Grassley interrupts to say his time is up, and shifts the proceedings forward to the next Senator, Dianne Feinstein,

11. Feinstein takes her turn and focuses on the difficulties Ford experienced as her name became known. This material bolsters Ford's credibility, especially to the extent that it seems that Ford knew how painful this exposure would be before she decided to go public. Feinstein's time runs out quickly and Mitchell gets another 5 minutes to continue where she left off.

12. Mitchell's approach enables Ford, just by being careful, to slow everything down. The time will run out. The day will end. Maybe Kavanaugh supporters wanted it to play out like that, but Ford is a credible person, and I think the Republicans chosen approach, including the use of Mitchell, will backfire on them, and Kavanaugh will not be confirmed. I'm saying this at 11:06 ET in my recording, that is, an hour before I'm writing this update.

13. At 11:13 ET, Ford speaks of the "indelible" memory of Kavanaugh and Judge laughing — "having fun at my expense." "I was underneath one of them, while the 2 laughed, 2 friends having a really good time with one another."

14. At 11:56 ET, during the questioning by Senator Whitehouse, I exclaim aloud: "The Democrats are winning by a lot here." Whitehouse is talking about the lack of an investigation.

15. Grassley gets angry and yells — about why there is no new investigation — but it feels so wrong that he's yelling in the presence of Dr. Ford. She's the allegedly traumatized victim — don't yell around her! The Republicans are either too bland — operating through Mitchell — or irksomely angry — through Grassley. Do they know how badly they are losing right now? I wonder how Brett Kavanaugh is doing.

16. I'm skipping ahead, looking to see if Kavanaugh's testimony has begun. It has not. I talk with Meade for a while about what Kavanaugh might say if he were asked if he is 100% certain that Ford is wrong when she says she's 100% certain that Brett Kavanaugh did what she remembers. Here's what I imagined Kavanaugh saying: I cannot be 100% certain. I know that I drank far too much on some occasions when I was an immature teenager, and though I've said that I don't remember ever suffering alcohol-induced amnesia, I cannot know for an absolute certainty that it never happened. Watching Dr. Ford testify has been a horrific experience for me. What if there is a blank, dark spot in my memory where drunken young Brett Kavanaugh did what Dr. Ford describes? I pray to God that's not true, but I cannot say 100% that it's not true, and if it is, I am so terribly sorry. I beg Dr. Ford's forgiveness. I hope for God's forgiveness. I hope that my life's work as a sober adult makes up for what I may have done all those years ago. I still believe I have devoted and useful service to give to my country, and I humbly submit myself to your vote, Senators. And I thank all of you for considering my case, and I want Dr. Ford to know that my heart goes out to her, and my heart goes out to every victim of sexual assault. Thank you.

17. I picture Trump watching the hearings with Ivanka. Somehow I imagine Ivanka reacting like me. I wonder what they are saying to each other. Remember that Trump said at his press conference yesterday that he would watch and judge Dr. Ford for himself, that he had an open mind about it, and he could "believe anything."

18. I've been listening to Kavanaugh for a long time without stopping to write anything. Let me quickly say that I'm finding his opening statement extremely powerful and persuasive.

19. It was a long day! Let me try to wrap up this post. I thought Kavanaugh did really well in his written statement, expressing strong outrage and real emotion. In the questioning, this demeanor sometimes felt too strong. He interrupted and shouted back and seemed to show some hate and contempt for some of the Senators. He said more than once that his family had been "destroyed," and yet his wife is his "rock." The rock is not destroyed.

20. This was the ultimate he said/she said. Both were tremendously strong and they told diametrically opposed stories. If I had to decide, I would not go by who's more likely to be telling the truth, but how everything we've heard weighs on the question whether or not to confirm. In view of everything we know about Kavanaugh, does he deserve confirmation even with the degree of doubt we have about something terrible he might have done when he was 17 (and a couple of other, much weaker allegations)? I suspect most people will end up in the same position they had on him anyway, because it's a matter of weighing. But when I think about how BK and CBF could be so far apart, I have 3 explanations: 1. BK has some alcohol blackout holes in his memory, and what CBF remembers is in one of them, 2. CBF has a false memory and really believes it (caused by some genuine trauma), 3. BK has no route but forward, and he knows he did it, but feels entitled to what he's worked all his life to attain. Since there's no way back to his old life, he must force his way through this obstacle. And he's barreling ahead to save his life and save his family. Cornered, he had to fight like hell, and that includes lying.

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"What exactly is Saint Laurent saying about female sexuality and empowerment here?"

I'm reading Robin Givhan in the Washington Post. The post title is the headline. There are lots of photographs of glamorous clothes with an edge of trashiness. I clipped out part of one photograph. Not randomly selected. It's what caught my eye as I scanned the page with the idea of "female empowerment" foremost in my mind. I've left out what Givhan calls the "teeny-tiny shorts" (which are what we used to call "hot pants").

Let's see how Givhan answers the question posed in the headline:

Yes, the female form is beautiful, but is it made more beautiful by borrowing clothes from the boys, by wrapping it in a cloud of debauchery, by having parts exposed in a way that makes a woman “all legs” instead of full human?

This is not to say that the collection was bad or offensive or improper, only that it raised questions. And raising questions is good, particularly in this moment when the culture, both here and in the United States, is considering its male and feminine norms....

I guess I'm not going to get an answer to the question, only more questions. Questions good. Why not a column full of questions? Maybe we women writers should be all questions, just like the runway models are "all legs."

[Male designers at Saint Laurent] have told women that it is empowering and satisfying to wear teeny-tiny snakeskin shorts with towering heels, to splash through shallow waters with breasts bared on a night chilly enough that guests were swaddled under blankets. They have told them that the ideal female form has the spindly legs of a filly — so immature and scrawny that one half expects the model to collapse in a heap from the sheer exhaustion of having to walk upright....

Yes, the female form is beautiful. It’s inspirational. But what has it inspired? And has that been empowering to women or simply satisfying to men?

So, yeah, we do end with more questions. I was going to say it's the same old questions I've always seen about fashion designers, but really the questions have evolved. What I used to see (half a century ago) was the question whether the designers hated women. This idea was typically tied to the observation that they didn't sexually desire women at all: The designers are gay and that's why the clothes are hostile to women. What we see in this new column is the idea that male sexual desire for women is driving the designs. Are the designers not gay anymore? Why would expensive clothes be designed to "satisfy" men? The women are the clients. What's the logic here?

Oh, I see I'm doing questions, even as I want Givhan not to proceed in the form of question-asking. All right. I'll posit some answers to her questions. Why shouldn't I take the power to say what's what? I will! The clothing is designed to call out to women. It looks the way it does because that has been working to sell clothes. The women who buy those clothes think those clothes will benefit them, and the perception that this is what heterosexual men desire in a woman is a perception that needs to take place in the mind of the woman, and that is the perception the designer is trying to stimulate. If the woman buys clothes that she perceives as satisfying male desire, she is seeking sexual power over men.

And I suspect that one reason Robin Givhan doesn't say that is because it criticizes the woman. The question "has that been empowering to women or simply satisfying to men?" leaves women in the down position, where we can muse MeTooishly. That's a politically advantageous place to stop. And how much of the advertising in The Washington Post comes from the fashion industry? That's another reason to end with musing questions and not rough critique — economic interest.

Raising questions is good, particularly in this moment....

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A NYT illustration scoffs at the very idea of empathy for men... Is heartlessness now required to demonstrate #MeToo good faith?

What could justify this embarrassingly crude and desperate propaganda?



The illustration reminded me of the sarcastic childhood rejoinder "Oh, boo hoo hoo" — aimed at someone whose tears are not worth sharing. It is a proper accompaniment to the column, which offers the coinage "himpathy," to refer to empathy for men. The column-writer Kate Manne is a philosophy professor (at Cornell).

She defines "himpathy" as "the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior." So... it's only himpathy and deserving of our resistance if it's "inappropriate and disproportionate." In which case, we're just restating the question: How do we respond to accusations against a person? What is appropriate? What is disproportionate?

A charitable reading of Manne has her saying merely: Take care that your empathy isn't skewed, as it very well may be in a system in which men have so much prominence and women have traditionally been kept from speaking out about sexual subordination.

In that light, let me try to give a sympathetic reading to the illustration: The man is gigantic, like a movie star on a big screen, and the woman is tiny, so his tears fall like buckets of water on her tiny head. We see his pain because he's so big, but what about her? We need to see how she feels. This shows, the sympathetic reading says, why our empathy gets skewed: He's so big his pain is plainly visible, and she's so inconsequential, we're tempted to indulge ourselves and keep our own lives simpler by not seeing her.

Newspaper illustrations are often hastily done and not successfully expressive of the idea the artist hoped to convey. This one particularly bothered me because I, subjectively, perceived it as expressing hate, the way a gang mocks a cowering victim. That might be me and my "himpathy," and I suppose I'm meant to worry that the #MeToo movement will hate me too. Me, the big traitor. (But I'm okay. I learned how to live with that internalized intimidation a long time ago.)

But let's look at the text of this column. It's the column that drives the illustration, not the other way around:

Once you learn to spot himpathy, it becomes difficult not to see it everywhere....

You mean, you become skewed in the other direction? Template in hand, how do you know when your ideas are inappropriate and disproportionate?

What the Kavanaugh case has revealed this week is that himpathy can, at its most extreme, become full-blown gendered sociopathy: a pathological moral tendency to feel sorry exclusively for the alleged male perpetrator — it was too long ago; he was just a boy; it was a case of mistaken identity — while relentlessly casting suspicion upon the female accusers. It also reveals the far-ranging repercussions of this worldview: It’s no coincidence that many of those who himpathize with Judge Kavanaugh to the exclusion of Dr. Blasey are also avid abortion opponents, a position that requires a refusal to empathize with girls and women facing an unwanted pregnancy.

In the context of seeing what is big and not seeing what is very small, Manne brings up abortion. All of the above paragraph strikes me as straining exaggeration, but I'm stunned that it ran headlong into the problem of abortion. Can we coin a word that means the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy born individuals often enjoy in cases of violence against the unborn?

What makes himpathy so difficult to counter is that the mechanisms underlying it are partly moral in nature: Sympathy and empathy are pro-social moral emotions, which makes it especially hard to convince people that when they skew toward the powerful and against the vulnerable, they become a source of systemic injustice. So, for those for whom himpathy is a mental habit prompted by biased social forces, and not an entrenched moral outlook, the first step to solving the problem is simply learning to recognize when it’s at work, and to be wary of its biasing influence.

Is that "himpathy" specific or is Manne saying that we should always examine our empathy and analyze whether we are just shallowly doing what works in going along to get along or whether we really have deep roots in morality? There are many ways to be shallow. We could be in thrall to the patriarchy, but we could also be hoping to catch the upsurge of the #MeToo movement.

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At the Twitter Prison Café...

... you're free to talk about whatever you like.

The photo shows a storefront on the east side of Madison.

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Julie Swetnick "said she witnessed Judge Kavanaugh... lining up outside a bedroom where 'numerous boys' were 'waiting for their "turn" with a girl inside the room.'"

"Ms. Swetnick said she was raped at one of the parties, and she believed she had been drugged. None of Ms. Swetnick’s claims could be independently corroborated by The New York Times, and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, declined to make her available for an interview.... Unlike two other women who have accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, one who went to college with him and another who went to a sister high school, Ms. Swetnick offered no explanation in her statement of how she came to attend the same parties, nor did she identify other people who could verify her account.... In her statement, Ms. Swetnick said that she met Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge in 1980 or 1981 when she was introduced to them at a house party in the Washington are... She said she attended at least 10 house parties in the Washington area from 1981 to 1983 where the two were present. She said the parties were common, taking place almost every weekend during the school year. She said she observed Judge Kavanaugh drinking 'excessively' at many of the parties and engaging in 'abusive and physically aggressive behavior toward girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, "grinding" against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts. I also witnessed Brett Kavanaugh behave as a "mean drunk" on many occasions at these parties.'"

The NYT reports today.

If the allegations are true, there must be many, many other witnesses. Where have they been all these weeks? And why would she go to "at least 10 house parties" if they were as she described?

The NYT suggests there's a gap in the account because Swetnick doesn't say how she got to go to the same parties as Kavanaugh. We're told Swetnick grew up in Montgomery County, Md., and graduated from Gaithersburg High School — a public school — in 1980 and attended the University of Maryland. That puts her in a less elite crowd. She's also 2 years older than Kavanaugh and graduated from high school 3 years before he did, so it makes it a little hard to picture them at the same parties. Did older, state-college women go to parties with prep school boys years younger than them? If they did and the boys raped them, repeatedly and systematically, how could the boys get away with it, and why are there not many more women coming forward with the same allegations? And why are we getting this through Michael Avenatti?

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Tracking Nobel Scientists

Physics Today has tracked out the lifetime movements of every Nobel Prize winning physicist. Nobel Physicists on the Move allows you to watch an animated track showing the significant movements of any of the 206 Nobel physics laureate on an interactive map of the world. Select a Nobel physics laureate from the map's drop-down menu and you can view an animated map which shows where they were born

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"#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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