Different Takes: Totally Wrenching To Watch Anita Hill History Play Out Again With Christine Blasey Ford
Opinion writers weigh in on the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.
The New York Times:
Sick To Your Stomach? #MeToo
It has been almost exactly 27 years since the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, and we are still defensively explaining — including to our troglodyte president — why women do not always tell the authorities about verbal and physical sexual assaults, why they bury episodes or try to maneuver past them. We are still watching a bookish university professor from the West, who tried to anonymously report an alleged blight on the character of a man about to ascend to a lifetime of power, get smeared as a demanding, mixed-up, uptight, loony fantasist. (Maureen Dowd, 9/22)
Chicago Tribune:
Trump, GOP Handle Kavanaugh Case With Predictably Patriarchal Idiocy
But Trump and the GOP have now taken an issue that could have been handled carefully and respectfully and cast it into the fever swamps of patriarchal idiocy.High-profile conservative activist Ed Whelan, a friend of Kavanaugh, cooked up an outlandish conspiracy theory suggesting Ford is mistaking Kavanaugh for another classmate. The details are too ludicrous to describe, but it wound up pinning the alleged assault — which Republicans have been strongly suggesting never happened — on a man who is now a middle school teacher in Georgia. South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman acted like sexual assault is comedic fodder: “Did y’all hear the latest late-breaking news on the Kavanaugh hearings? Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out that she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.” And President Trump, a man we’ve all heard bragging about how he liked to take women and “Grab ’em by the pussy,” thought not about the country as a whole, not about the untold numbers of sexual assault victims deserving of sensitivity and respect, but only about himself, his Supreme Court nominee and men in general. (Rex Huppke, 9/21)
The New York Times:
The Long Year Of #MeToo On Capitol Hill
The past year has brought some validation to female Senate aides. “We never thought there would be any kind of accountability, so to see it happening feels like you can finally exhale,” Ms. Keefe said, speaking about the general #MeToo movement. But the scrambling over Judge Kavanaugh has reawakened old traumas while creating some new ones. It’s not just the daily stress of filtering, as one aide described them to me, the “horrible” calls to Senate offices, including threats of rape against the young women answering the phones. For Democratic women, there’s also a simmering outrage over Republican treatment of Dr. Blasey. Many of the women I spoke with identify closely with Dr. Blasey and her slow and unwilling creep into public view. (Britt Peterson, 9/22)
Boston Globe:
Even In The #MeToo Era, Can Anything Stop Kavanaugh’s Appointment To The Supreme Court?
Despite the #MeToo movement, pedophile priests, sexually predatory coaches, TV star rapists, congressmen with secret sex settlements — and a president multiply accused of sexual assault who brags about his ability to get away with it and apparently pays hush money to a porn star and a Playboy playmate — we don’t just doubt sex crime victims, we eviscerate them. So now a respected and upstanding woman says Kavanaugh nearly raped her when she was but 15. Trump and his Republican enablers clearly don’t care if he did, or did not. (Margert Eagan, 9/24)
The New York Times:
G.O.P. Leaders Can’t Even Fake Respect For Christine Blasey Ford
Poor Republicans. They’ve tried so hard to be subtle, to seem respectful of Christine Blasey Ford, even as they’ve maneuvered to undermine her. They would hear her accusations that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her in high school, they wanted us to know, if only she’d testify on their terms. They wanted Americans to think they had evolved in the 27 years since Anita Hill accused another Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, of sexual misconduct. Leave it to Donald Trump to strip away the mask and reveal the troglodyte beneath. Administration officials reportedly labored to keep him from going on the attack against Dr. Blasey, but after a few days, the presidential id once again rose up and overwhelmed them and their message. (9/21)
Chicago Tribune:
Just Because She Didn't Report It, Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen
I remember those parties. I remember the fear that my parents would find out I was there. Do not underestimate fear of parents as a reason for a teenager not to reveal an assault. But Blasey’s explanation of why she didn’t report her allegation back then hasn’t satisfied many people, most notably the president of the United States, whose tweet on Friday morning triggered the Twitter backlash."I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says,” he tweeted, “charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.” I have a lot of doubt that Dr. Blasey, as she prefers to be called, would have done any such thing. (Mary Schmich, 9/21)
