I'll take the Randy Rainbow version of the story--it's the likeliest. Salt in the Jeff Flake elevator moment and what do you get? I'll play it safe and say I don't know, but I made sure, long before I could hope that Bill Cosby would serve time, that my fourteen-year-old daughter and my sixteen-year-old son knew never to take a drink you don't open yourself. Before I said another word, my sixteen-year-old added, "And no means no." We raised him right. We raised them both right. Their big brother got the same talk, and set a good example.
What goes through the minds of the entitled, the privileged--the Chase Finlays, the Bill Cosbys, the Brett Kavanaughs? What goes through the minds of their defenders? Maybe the last question is the easiest to answer: fear. I think these women, the holdouts of the cult of domesticity, believe their protectors will vanish if certain crimes are acknowledged. It's much easier to say boys will be boys, look forward, not back, pretend it didn't happen, or if it did, it happened so long ago that we should all forget about such things. Distasteful to mention, distasteful to think about. This stance encourages Chase Finlay to call Alexandra Waterbury a "career ruiner" and to send his goons to threaten her. This stance allowed Cosby to stay free far too long. In an ocean of evidence, he kept his head way above water. This stance--it allows Kavanaugh to whine: "No fair, Mommy!" say the tears spouting from his eyes. The cynicism pouring from his sentimentality is nauseating. He would have done better to concede at the outset, to say: "Yes, I behaved wildly as a young man, I drank too much, I had blackouts, this vision of me presented by Ford rings true--but I'm no longer that man. I've reformed." He might have lost his chance sooner, but he could have walked away with honor. That option is no longer open.
OMG, that was GREAT! You also need to see the SNL parody with Matt Damon playing BK. Meanwhile, on a more serious note, a friend of ours published this in the NYT last week: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/opinion/kavanaugh-sexual-assault-blasey-testimony.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
ReplyDeleteOur president is waffling on the scope of the investigation, but it's clear that they're not going anywhere near the third accuser. You would think BK would have stepped down by now "to spend more time with his family," or at least, dear lord, to protect them, but no sign of that yet.
Yes, I read that editorial--I sent them one (alas--they didn't take it) making a similar point about Alexandra Waterbury. Nice guys don't do what Chase Finlay did. Entitled preppies do.
ReplyDeleteYup. We are all on tenterhooks over here. Will the FBI be allowed to conduct a real investigation (one that investigates everyone who has come forward with information)? Does lying to the judiciary committee already disqualify him (several of his lies have now come out; for heaven's sake, the man who says he never drank to excess was arrested in 1985 in a bar fight!)? To lie to them is a felony, actually. And yet, never have we seen the conservative white men who power the Republican party so pissed off. They all look like an echo of their boy on the stand; they fear their power slipping away, being called on the carpet for their treatment of women, their privilege.
ReplyDeleteIf anything has happened these last years, it's shown a lot of us that we do have privilege, and that things are easier for us than they are for other people.