No one posts seven notes on anything, right? You have to go for the full decalogue, like David Letterman. So:
8. It's probably wrong to refer to the Whelan fiasco as a "sidelight," as I did in (7.) above. He's too highly placed for freelance work. More likely, he is an adjunct to the White House team working to get Kavanaugh confirmed. Suppose the team's basic problem is that Kavanaugh really did assault the woman at the party. How to work around this unfortunate fact? Well, what if you admit that an assault occurred, but advance the theory that the victim, in her trauma abetted by the passage of time, is confused about the identity of the perpetrator? Mistaken identity! But it's too risky for Kavanaugh to put it out there himself, because it might blow up in his face and sink his nomination. Whelan therefore floats the trial balloon. This would account for how he settled on the identity of the Kavanaugh double: he didn't have to page through old school yearbooks looking for a doppelganger, Kavanaugh supplied the name himself. It also explains how Whelan, who has a reputation for sobriety, could concoct such a harebrained scheme. He's not that stupid, but he is a team player, and the team is desperate.
9. A current right-wing talking point concerns how everyone that the victim places at the party has said either that they don't remember such a party or that nothing happened at it. But of course there is a perfectly good reason that the two people who were at the party, but not in the bedroom where the assault allegedly occurred, would not remember anything. It was around 35 years ago. The victim herself would not remember the party but for having been assaulted in an upstairs bedroom while two people who remember nothing drank beer in the family room downstairs. The other two people at the party, according to Kavanaugh's accuser, were Kavanaugh himself and his friend, Mark Judge. These two would know if the assault occurred, but, if it did, it's also easy to see why they'd lie about it. Why would the victim lie? And why are Republicans on the Judiciary Committee determined to limit testimony to accuser and accused when the accuser says Kavanaugh's crime was witnessed by his friend, Mark Judge? Bring him in, put him under oath, cross-examine him. That's what Team Kavanaugh doesn't want. Why should we not draw the obvious conclusion?
10. I admit that I have an animus toward Kavanaugh and his fellow prep school twerps at Georgetown Academy, or whatever it's called, their sly inside jokes about their boozing and screwing in their yearbook bios, "what happens at Georgetown stays at Georgetown," and the other artifacts of their snobby, self-satisfied, privileged entitlement. I guess it costs almost seventy grand a year to attend, only about forty grand if you don't board there and just go to the school. Hard to understand all the ham-and-eggers who think Kavanaugh is "their guy." It's also hard to understand the boys-will-be-boys argument advanced by some Kavanaugh defenders who, on other days, so easily play the part of preening moralists or law-and-order hardasses. Boys will be boys? Swap out the parents' brokerage accounts for some extra melanin and--voila!--the new cliché is zero tolerance.
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