CNN has an unbelievable opinion piece by Scott Jennings on their website this morning. He is trying to prove a point that the Dems’ objection to Kavanaugh is “all politics” by blundering through a slew of badly reasoned conclusions and false equivalencies displaying a ridiculous lack of understanding of the issue. I’m sure he sees himself as an astute political commentator, but he rather comes off as a cartoonish depiction of a man’s man, with no attempt to understand a woman’s perspective, trapped in a bubble where politics is merely a game and everyone is playing it.
He quotes a letter from Dr. Ford’s lawyer, stating "crucial facts and witnesses in the matter" must be assessed "in a non-partisan manner." , and concludes that this means the lawyer is open to the possibility that Dr. Ford’s statement is not true. (The obvious conclusion being that since the committee has already shown deep partisanship on the issue, having the FBI investigate would be preferable to subjecting Dr. Ford to a clearly partisan “he said she said” hearing which would accomplish nothing)
The contortions Scott Jennings needed to reach this conclusion demonstrate a laughable partisanship, given the subject of his opinion piece.
He states that some ex-FBI acquaintance of his says the investigation would be difficult, misinterprets that to mean “impossible and fruitless”, and goes on to imply that since there were 3 people in the room, the accusation is 2 against 1, and leaves it to the reader to infer that by the mathematical property of something-or-other, 2>1 so Kavanaugh wins.
If he had thought this point up first, do you think he’d still have written the first one? With more potential witnesses appearing every day, how unreasonable is it to want to investigate this and avoid Mr. Jennings’ 2>1 version of a kangaroo court?
He goes on to claim that “Democrats couldn't care less about Ford or her story because they are consumed with politics”, and attempts to show a double standard, citing, among others, Bill Clinton, while conveniently leaving out the example of Al Franken. Here is a man who does not understand the difference between consensual sex and attempted rape. He is a man who thinks that a Democrat must resign a senate seat for participating in a gag photo or putting his hand on a woman’s waist for a requested picture, yet if a candidate for the supreme court is accused of attempted rape, even asking for an investigation is just a political stunt.
No assessment of this needed. This is pure idiocy.
The rest of the piece is mostly odd conjecture about how the incident has been handled, the timing of the information release, and some extremely bogus sympathy for what he considers as harm being done to Dr. Ford by the Democrats. He concludes by saying “If she doesn't show, the GOP is well within bounds to favorably report Kavanaugh out of committee and send him to the floor.”
Yes. Never mind the fact that his records are made mysteriously unavailable, that he’s clearly been caught lying to congress, that he’s been accused of attempted rape and his history as a drunk with a gambling problem are beginning to leak out. Surely any attempt to look into any of these things is just some sort of game, right? Nothing to see here, move along now.
But even after pointing out all the individual idiocies in this OpEd, it has to be said that the entire premise of this piece is insultingly off base and tone deaf, because of course this is political, just not in the way he thinks.
Politics is not a game to women. It is not some sort of team sport. Women are not granted the most fundamental human right —the right to own their own bodies. This becomes all too clear when we have a candidate for a lifetime appointment on the supreme court with a history supporting the repression of women and an accusation of attempted rape. Politics is the arena in which we’ll either win or lose this fight. It takes a massive amount of privilege to declare that caring about Dr. Ford and fighting the political battle are mutually exclusive, when for many of us, Dr. Ford’s battle is the perfect description of the political battle of our lifetimes.
