The Kavanaugh Saga: Did Too Much Virginity Make Him Mean?

Most telling moment of the entire day yesterday was the very last question: Senator Kamala Harris asked Brett Kavanaugh if he watched Christine Blasey Ford's testimony that morning. "No," he answered.

If you were innocent, as he insists, wouldn't you want to watch what she was saying about you in a Senate hearing room?

Clearly, he needed to come in hot. That was the gameplan. That was what Trump wanted. So watching Blasey Ford's testimony might have done something else to Kavanaugh -- especially if it's true. Unimpaired by the sight of his accuser, Kavanaugh marched in there like a thundercloud, complete with lightning bolts and raindrops.

What to make of the tears? And the gulping of water? Gosh, I was beginning to feel sorry for the dude, but then the QandA kicked in, first with the woman sex crimes prosecutor and then with a visibly alarmed Dianne Feinstein, and we watched Kavanaugh literally begin to disintegrate.

He was clearly coached to be aggressive with a self-righteous and self-pitying script. "This is all an ambush. I should have been informed of these charges weeks ago. It's a Democrat plot to get me. Because of the Clinton thing. I was a sterling scholar in school. I was a good boy. I went to the best law school in the nation, and women love me. They really do."

Poking at that façade, the Democratic senators got back belligerence. It was combativeness like on a schoolyard -- "So's-yer-old-man!" "Takes one to know one!" He actually implied that Senator Amy Klobuchar might be a blackout drunk when she asked him if he was a blackout drunk, and he practically hissed at Sheldon Whitehouse, "Whaddya you like to drink, Senator? Whaddya you like to drink?" 

Dick Durban finally knocked him off his script, and Kavanaugh completely collapsed, physically collapsed. It's painful to watch. And it's part of the record now for eternity.

Watching this implosion of their boy, the Republican senators ditched the woman sex crimes prosecutor, and Lindsey Graham volunteered to throw the public hissy fit with the counter-allegations and the finger-pointing theatrics -- the ole Trump counter-punch -- of -- gasp! -- collusion amongst the Democrats and extreme malpractice against an upstanding young man. 

With that hired woman from Arizona out of the way, the Republican men all took turns doubling the charges of ambush against the Democrats or praising the choir boy before them, and thus they rallied their troops, made the Christine Blasey Ford testimony simply disappear, and probably saved Kavanaugh's ass. At least for a day.

(Lindsey Graham was so clearly talking to Senator Jeff Flake when he warned his fellow senators not to be fooled by this whole "farce." Don't even think of voting against "this fine man.")

The Only Child

When Kavanaugh said he was an only child, I sat up straight. In my experience -- and my experience is limited, granted -- only-children can sometimes be spoiled brats, entitled from birth to the best and indignant when things don't work out to their expectations. Aggressively indignant.

I suddenly saw him for what he was.

And I don't think this man belongs in a judge's robes. I seriously don't. The tantrum thrown to get his way -- topped by the tantrum Lindsey Graham threw, but never mind that! -- and the rank partisanship of dragging up Trump's election and the prosecution of the Clintons over White Water -- it all speaks to his tribal mentality. This is a not a good judge of anything.