Small acts of sexism in everyday life are exhausting as it were, but watching the wildly different standards play out on the highest scale like this (the woman has to be perfect, acquiescing to be taken seriously, the shouty man is forgiven everything) has robbed me of all hope.
— IVA DIXIT (@ivadixit) September 27, 2018
is this how people get to talk if they don't spend their entire lives being scrutinized for tone
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) September 27, 2018
If Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had been angry, self-pitying, accusatory, hostile to half her questioners, she would have been seen as having thoroughly discredited herself. She wasn't like that. She wasn't allowed to be. She was engaging and believable, though she shouldn't have had to be engaging.
Kavanaugh has been ... well, a person I wouldn't want to sit near in a bar, much less put on the Supreme Court for the next 35 years.
We are seeing it. Now add a few beers - and you get a mean a drunk.
— Bettye King (@bettyeking) September 27, 2018
I've been half-expecting him to leap over the table and slug someone -- though if he did, I don't think even half the Republicans in the Senate would abandon him. (Dick Durbin was asking for it!)
Naturally, he's a smash hit among conservatives. Jeet Heer collects the reactions:
President Trump is "riveted" and telling people, "This is why I nominated him," in a positive way, per person close to him. Talking to lots of people inside WH about how he likes how Kavanaugh is fighting back. Admires the defiance.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 27, 2018
I love Kavanaugh’s tone. It’s nice to see a conservative man fight for his honor and his family against a 35 year old claim with ZERO evidence and lots of holes that amounts to nothing more than a political hit job by the Dems.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 27, 2018
Others in the GOP should take notice!
That was simply tremendous—appropriately angry, personal, wrenching, detailed, persuasive. He helped himself immensely
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) September 27, 2018
Self-righteous self-pity worked for Nixon, it works for nostalgic neo-Confederates, and it's working for Kavanaugh, at least with the base. (I'll admit I've never understood why conservatives think whining is manly, at least when it's this kind of whining, but they do.) Kavanaugh's approval numbers among white men and non-college whites overall are probably skyrocketing, even as college-educated women defect.
The pundits will probably declare the whole day a wash. And I fear will be a wash as far as public opinion goes, which means we're probably still on course for Kavanaugh's approval (unless the overnight private polls the GOP is likely to be conducting are simply godawful for Kavanaugh).
America has learned nothing since 1991, and this will probably end the same way Hill-Thomas did. Except that Anita Hill got an FBI investigation and at least some corroborating witnesses heard, and Clarence Thomas never broke down in self-pitying sobs.
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