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":
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.
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.
"... 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.”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.
“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.”
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.
