290
UPDATE:
Transferred to new manuscript
So suggests Jess Zimmerman in a very perspicacious and thought provoking piece at Slate.
“The salient feature of now-seated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony during the hearing that was intended to assess whether he had committed sexual assault in his youth was, as many have noted, his anger. It was anger that made him lash out inappropriately, anger that contorted his face in a way that made many viewers feel sick. He thought this anger would substitute for integrity, and he was right, or right enough anyway; he didn’t fool everyone, but he did at least shout them down. Meanwhile, the salient feature of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony was her calm, measured, deferential demeanor, complete with tension-defusing apologies and jokes. I am not the first person to point out how heartbreaking this was to witness: that even while talking about an experience that traumatized her for decades, she obeyed the unwritten cultural injunction that women must manage not only their own feelings but the feelings of everyone around them. This has been laid bare in the past few weeks in America, even as it’s a replay of something we’ve all seen before.”
“What I haven’t seen discussed, though, is the way these same restrictions have constrained the entire Democratic Party. The left—even the moderate left—is feminized in this country to a degree that I have come to believe actually restricts its avenues for acceptable self-expression.”
“Everyone is mocking Lindsey Graham for expressing the kind of outrage Democratic Senators should’ve been expressing daily over Merrick Garland,” tweeted writer Isaac Butler after the hearing. He’s not wrong, but it’s worth imagining a similar tweet reading, “Everyone is mocking Brett Kavanaugh for expressing the kind of outrage Christine Blasey Ford should have expressed daily since this debacle began.” What would “should” even mean in this case? She would have been justified, yes, but she absolutely never, ever could have. Crying, screaming, blaming, complaining—Brett Kavanaugh can get away with it. She can’t. This thought experiment isn’t just sophistry; the pressures are the same on the party at large, and for similar reasons. Lindsey Graham can get away with it; Kamala Harris would be pilloried. Even Chuck Schumer would be pilloried. The gender of the legislator is significant, but so is the gender, if you will, of the party. And though we don’t really discuss it, the Democratic Party is a girl.”
In other words the Democratic party is a girl-even the male Dem politicians have to behave like nice girls. Jerry Falwell Jr recently declared tellingly ‘nice guys finish last.’ Many reacted in the vein that it sure is ironic this alleged man of God-and Jesus Christ-basically saying ‘screw meekness; meek rhymes with weak and it doesn’t only rhyme’ but perhaps you could say the Democrats are more than just the party of nice guys but of nice girls.
One of the major observations of this book is that myths of the ‘liberal media’ notwithstanding, the media is much harsher in its judgment of Democrats behaving badly than GOPers-whose bad behavior is criticized to an extent but its sort of expected and many in the media seem to feel that belaboring it too much looks like ‘piling on.’
The media is not liberal but thanks to the GOP’s very successful campaign of working the refs, is extremely sensitive about in any way appearing to be liberal-sort of like Comey’s FBI circa 2016 as we cover in great detail in (Part X).
To speak in general terms, girls are expected to behave better than boys and normally do behave better than boys but when they do misbehave they tend to be punished more severely for the same misbehavior. And the same holds for the parties. You can replace ‘girls and boys’ with ”Democrats and Republicans’ in this sentence and it be just as accurate.
As this book argues there’s the Trump Rules where what would be a felony for a normal politician is treated like a misdemeanor for Trump and what would be a misdemeanor for a normal politician is treated like a felony for the Clintons.
But you can quite persuasively draw the analogy between the Clinton Rules and the Trump Rules and the rules for boys and the rules for girls.
Look at the recent Kavanaugh fight where the media took Mitch McConnell’s faux indignation over the timing of when Christine Ford’s accusations against the now so-called “Justice’ came out seriously. The media bought into McConnell’s canard hook, line, and sinker. The media failed to point out either:
1. McConnell has totally and forever forfeited his right to indignation and sanctimony over process after what he did to Obama and Merrick Garland full, stop. Yes, some pointed out the history of Garland but none related it to the fact that post Garland #MoscowMitch has no right to beat his breasts over process.
2. In any case, Kavanaugh himself knew about the accusations the second accuser, Debbie Ramierz, before Trump officially nominated him. If the media really finds the fact that Ford’s accusations came out in September rather than July somehow ‘outrageous’ then it should have been at least as outraged that Kavanaugh himself knew of Ramirez’s accusations before he was even nominated-which tells you that both Trump and McConnell knew about the accusations long before they came out in September. Indeed, there is really actually more reason for outrage in Kavanaugh and the GOP’s case as it strongly suggests the reason they were so adamant about rushing his confirmation through as quick as possible and were so resistant to an FBI investigation until they had no choice-and the actual investigation was woefully insufficient-is that they knew of Ramirez’s accusations-and perhaps more accusations that have not even become public yet-and wanted to ‘plow him through’ before the public knew about it.
At the time, I’d argued-as the link above documents-that this information was a ‘game changer.’ Ok it most certainly didn’t turn out to in any way change the game but it should have and the reason it didn’t was the media’s spectacular failure to follow up on the story that was reported by the New Yorker.
UPDATE: A year later the MSM has caught up to the way in which the FBI investigation was inusfficent-Trumpland didn’t even bother to speak to Ramirez-or Dr. Ford herself or 50 other relevant witnesses. No wonder the Trump guys leading the fake investigation into Kavanaugh got an award from Trump.
The media knew about this story but somehow didn’t ‘realize’ that this totally discredits McConnell’s faux outrage. Instead they ignored it while continuing to give McConnell’s faux indignation a respectful hearing. And in fact, Feinstein clearly wasn’t playing hardball politics-I sort of wish she were. To the contrary, she was simply respecting the wishes of Dr. Ford. Then the GOP would pour it on even thicker pretending to be outraged on her behalf that it did become public. This too was a canard as she didn’t want her identity to come out but she also didn’t want her story buried simply so Kavanaugh and McConnell had a glide path at plow through.
FN: To be sure we now know that Feinstein held back the information in July not out of any political hardball but she was actually going to let it go-allow Kavanaugh to be confirmed without Dr. Ford’s accusation ever coming to light-see Ryan Grim’s book for more.
Overall Feinstein played it like a nice girl should-yet got accused of being Machiavellian. But to Ms. Zimmerman’s point the ‘nice girl rules’ also often apply to male Democratic politicians and Schumer certainly was very nice in the way he pulled his punches-neither he nor Feinstein really wanted a tough fight-but Dr. Ford’s accusation would become public against their will
3. Beyond that, not for nothing but what difference would it possibly have made if Grassley and McConnell heard about it in August rather than September? To paraphrase a famous anti war song from the 1960s the answer is: absolutely nothing.
It would have made no difference. Do you really believe if it came out in July McConnell wouldn’t still have wanted to ‘plow through’, Trump wouldn’t have made fun or Dr. Ford in front of thousands of vile Deplorables, that Susan Collin would have developed a conscience? No this outrage was faux outrage as they were always going to ram through this accuses sexual assaulter, serial perjurer, partisan hack, who was only selected to protect the faux ‘President’ from the Russia investigation.
Trump bragged in the campaign he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it-no doubt even if Kavanaugh shot someone the GOP would still have plowed him through.
Yet the media took this fake outrage at face value while pillorying Diane Feinstein even though she’d only wanted to do the right thing-or the timid thing?.
After the ram through the media came up with the narrative that ‘the Democrats have overplayed their hand’-if not for that maybe Kavanaugh would not have been confirmed. What utter snake oil-the GOP was always going to use its partisan power to ram him through the only thing that might have changed was the pretext.
Since then we’ve gotten some more examples of the false equivalence and the way that the media judges Democrat misbehavior-real or imagined-much more harshly.
No question there hasn’t been many slow news days in the Trump Era but seeing what the media does when there is apparently less going on-in truth there are plenty of things it should be reporting that it isn’t-reminds me that I hate slow news days. The Beltway press has managed to get itself all riled up because of Elizabeth Warren’s recent stunt to answer Trump’s despicable race baiting about Native Americans-calling her ‘Pocahontas’ and insisting-without knowing anything about it-that she has no NA ancestry.
She recently provided documentary proof and the media freakout over that is revealing. Again that’s why I hate a slow news day because this is the sort of pap they choose to get exercised about. The Beltway pundits have all decided that her attempt to troll Trump is an utter fail of simply monumental proportions. For some reason they think that not only will it not get Trump to stop calling her which admittedly is quite possible-but that somehow she has possibly seriously damaged the Democrats chance of success on the November 6 Congressional elections.
A few thoughts. First of all, it’s typical of the worst of Beltway tics to treat everything like a horse race where they all put on their political strategist hats and speak authoritatively about how it will effect the next election-as if they have a clue.
UPDATE: This prediction was hit out of the park, not that it was going out on much of a limb as the Democrats had the biggest absolute margin in history even greater than the Watergate Congressional Democrats of 1974.
If I were to guess, it likely won’t have any effect on November 6-good or bad. I don’t get at all the faux concern that somehow this is going to mortally damage the Dems chances or has somehow thrown their message into disarray. It seems clear that she was sort of looking forward to 2020 and looking to troll Trump a little bit.
As to the political efficacy of what she did, I don’t think it was so bad: she was clearly piggybacking on what Obama did in 2011 with his longform birth certificate and it was very effective for him at least. It ended up being the immediate catalyst for the end of Trump’s 2012 Presidential ambitions and the birther issue which had been quite ‘mainstreamed’ around that time was driven back down to the swamps. It wasn’t something that had any mainstream credibility after Obama’s gesture.
Wether or not Warren’s gesture has similar success who knows-because the media are all piling on her perhaps not-it won’t be the first time that the pack mentality of the media becomes self fulfilling-just see Clinton’s 2016 popularity numbers for proof of that. But the idea that Trump has basically bullied this woman for years and now the media is panning not him but mocking her attempt to defend herself based on style points is quite vile not to put too fine a point on it. Meanwhile Melania claims to be against bullying but apologizes for the world’s worst bully.
FN: Warren and her recent apology
So Warren’s gesture certainly didn’t have the success Obama’s longform certifcate did. The MSM treated it like a huge scandal on the level Clinton’s emails. A major criticism was that her DNA test showed her with only .85 of 1% Cherokee blood. From what I understand that doesn’t necessarily make her claim to Cherokee heritage frivolous-that’s not necessarily how Cherokee people judge it. She was criticized by some Cherokee activists but others defended her. However she ultimately decided to apologize-though it’s clear her belief of having a Cherokee heritage was based on what her family had told her not any intentional attempt to mislead.
However, while MSM pundits had thought that somehow this issue would weigh down her campaign-because Trump’s racist insults aren’t the problem but her off key response in the mind of pundits-she has completely transcended this phony scandal. She has soared in the polls-correlating with her first calls for impeachment after the release of the Mueller Report-and led the futures markets for months and if the betting market is now to be believed Warren now has an over 44% chance at being the Dem nominee-more than double Biden’s chance at just over 21%.
One of the real problems with the media is its attempt at trying to game the political effects of everything-of course, as how else can they impress us with how savvy they are? A case in point is the latest-quite genuine-outrage over the way Trump insults women-the latest was calling Stormy Daniels a vile, unflattering name that I don’t even want to repeat-why give him even that? The rest of the media will repeat it ad nauseam, so I don’t need to.
But the way they framed it was notable-I saw this on everyone from Stephanie Ruhle to Hallie Jackson, et al. They’d open the segment rightly expressing concern over the way he continues to insult women, and especially making fun of their physical appearance. So far, so good. But then they completely cancel out everything they’d just said by adding ‘But will it matter in November?’
In saying that they’ve already confined the discussion to a debate over speculating on what impact it will or won’t have on the election. The clear message is then, that unless it does matter in November it doesn’t matter at all. It’s already nothing more than an amoral speculation rap session on what it will or won’t mean to Trump’s supporters. Because nowadays when the media says ‘voters’ they mean Trump voters, GOP voters. None of the rest of us are worth their time.
So unless this upsets Trump’s base-which it won’t, rather it will delight them-then it doesn’t matter as far as the media is concerned.
Ok, there are so many examples of the way in which just like girls are better behaved yet punished more harshly for when they do misbehave, I could be here all day-I have other chapters to write!
But one more example-Stephanie Ruhle again: this morning on MSNBC the allegedly ‘liberal’ network, she complained that there’s no space in American politics for reasonable people anymore -if you praise Trump, she complained you’re called a sexist and a racist. She complains that after she criticized Hillary Clinton for not, I guess demanding that her husband retroactively resign 20 years later, many on Twitter called her out for relitigating this all again. Well, in fairness to Ruhle it hasn’t been relitigated all that much. LOL
She dismissed this criticism by arguing that she wasn’t ‘relitigating it’ as Hillary Clinton is the one who brought it up. Actually she didn’t,, CBS did. So the CBS anchor relitigated it, and Ruhle’s attacking Clinton for the 1000th time on this was Ruhle relitigating the CBS’s anchor’s religitation…
But here’s the problem for Ruhle. In her kvetching about ‘reasonable people’ not having a place in today’s politics, she contradicts herself. Her two examples of what a reasonable person says is:
1. That sometimes ‘President Trump’ is right and it’s unfair to call me a sexist for pointing this out.
2. Hillary Clinton is morally obligated to state in 2018 that in 1998 her husband should have resigned due to a consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky.
In these two positions held by ‘a reasonable American’ she lays out an aggressively different standard for Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Bill Clinton should have resigned due to his affair with Lewinsky and the allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Trump has had many extramarital affairs and has been credibly accused of sexual assault by at least 20 different women. Yet Ruhle thinks it unfair to assume anyone who praises Trump is a sexist. Implicit in this is that such a ‘reasonable person’ accepts Trump as a legitimate President. But based on 2-that Bill Clinton should have stepped down and Hillary is also guilty for not demanding it retroactively-for this reasonable person to be consistent they should also demand that Trump and Kavanaugh step down.
That they don’t highlights the fact that they hold the Clintons to a much higher standard than Trump/Kavanaugh-ie, they aren’t all that reasonable.
P.S. Left out of this account is that Clinton isn’t in office anyway, in which case the constant relitigating by Ruhle and her MSM friends is even less defensible-and even more absurd.