When did ticket scalping become perfectly fine?

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was young, ticket scalping was against the law, at least that was my distinct impression and my distinct memory.

It also wasn’t so easy to do. Tickets had to be bought either at the box office or with a transaction through the mail. It was harder to do it in bulk. And in order to scalp them, since the internet didn’t exist, people ordinarily had to stand around in the theater district—preferably near the theater in question—and ask passers-by if they wanted to buy a ticket to a popular show. It exposed the scalper to being arrested, because the person and the transaction were visible and sometimes even obvious.

At least, that’s the way I remember it.

Now scalping is big business. Big big business online. People apparently manage to buy blocks of tickets (even though there are some safeguards in place online to supposedly prevent this) and then they sell them for huge bucks to desperate theatergoers, mostly tourists I’d imagine. The old scalpers used to buy the tickets for around eight dollars and mark them up somewhat, but since Broadway tickets now cost hundreds of dollars even at the outset, the scalpers can make a much tidier profit. For a really big show, the tickets can go for many thousands of dollars.

And this all seems to be on the up and up—or at least winked at—with companies like Ticketmaster being the middleman.

When did this become perfectly okay? I missed the transition. According to current law, it’s not legal to sell tickets (in New York, for example) “for more than $5 or 10% (whichever is greater) over the face price of the ticket.” Don’t make me laugh; the markups are enormous these days, and no one even can tell the face price of the original tickets.

It’s like having an argument with your crazy girlfriend: the latest from Ford

The New Neo Posted on by

[Scroll down to see UPDATES below]

Excerpt from Ford’s lawyer’s letter in response to Grassley’s deadline of 10 PM this evening [and this is not The Onion]:

…The imposition of aggressive and artificial deadlines regarding the date and conditions of any hearing has created tremendous and unwarranted stress on Dr. Ford. Your cavalier treatment of a sexual assault survivor who has been doing her best to cooperate with the committee is completely inappropriate…

The 10 PM deadline is arbitrary. Its sole purpose is to bully Dr. Ford and deprive her of the ability to make a considered decision that has life-altering implications for her and her family. She has already been forced out of her home, and continues to be subjected to harassment, hate mail, and death threats. Our modest request is that she be given an additional day to make her decision.

Note the words that echo the idea of big strong men hurting the little woman: the deadline itself is “aggressive” and the purpose is to “bully” her. Christina Ford (“Dr.” to you) is no longer 15 years old, but the letter implies that that’s her approximate mental and emotional age.

There’s no acknowledgment, of course, of the fact that Ford set this entire thing in motion, that she has had nearly two months (or more) to prepare and 36 years before that, that she is the one who blindsided Kavanaugh and the Republicans in the Senate rather than the other way around, that they have already given her many extensions, and that Kavanaugh’s family has also experienced incredible stress and death threats as a result of her accusations.

Most of us have had the experience of arguing with a person like this. Give an inch? They take a mile. Make concessions? They want more. They are the poor suffering victims. They don’t like your tone of voice. They don’t like the expression on your face. If you try to be calm, you’re cold. If you try to be sympathetic, you’re condescending. Nothing you do is okay, and everything they do is okay.

UPDATE 11:20 PM

So, is our long national nightmare over?

Can this news be true? I’m not sure I trust it:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley appears to have ended the halting talks with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford about testifying next week about her allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh. After setting a sudden 10:00 PM deadline for agreement with his terms and rejecting further talks with Ford or her lawyers, Grassley has reportedly scheduled a Committee vote on the confirmation for Monday.

Reportedly???? Does that mean “actually”? Or is it a rumor?

UPDATE 12:00 AM

Now it appears that Grassley is granting Ford another extension.

To me, this can only mean that a couple of GOP senators such as Flake are saying they won’t vote for Kavanaugh unless Ford is heard. So Ford’s got them over a barrel. This concerns me greatly, because of the pressured time frame as well as the possibility that Flake et al will continue to do the “maverick” thing and refuse to confirm Kavanaugh, even after the testimony (if the testimony ever occurs).

If that happens, the Democrats will be ecstatic and the GOP rank and file furious, and this will be reflected in the elections.

I hope I’m being too pessimistic, but that’s my worry.

Is tonight at 10 the really, for really real, absolute, deadline?

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps.

I am woman, I am strong, I am invincible—except when I make a last-minute unfounded accusation against a Republican nominee for SCOTUS about a supposed sexual offense that happened when we were both teenagers some 36-odd years ago, and the mean old GOP senators want me to actually testify in a timely fashion order to back up what I said.

Here’s Grassley’s answer:

I hope that means that Flake et al are on board now.

The fat lady has not sung, however.

[ADDENDUM: It just occurred to me that it’s a good thing that Gorsuch is already on the Court. Why? He attended Georgetown Prep, too, Class of ’85. That means he was only one year behind Christine Blasey Ford, who graduated from Holton in ’84.]

UPDATE 10:25 PM:

Are Christine Blasey Ford and her lawyers trying to drive the GOP—and much of America, including the vast middle—crazy with sheer annoyance?

Enough, already

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m getting tired of all this waiting on the Kavanaugh vote. Wasn’t there some sort of deadline today that came and went? Christine Blasey Ford and her lawyers have played Lucy and the football long enough for me.

So, what are Grassley and McConnell thinking? I don’t know. So far they’ve played this surprisingly well, but I lack faith that they’ll continue to do so.

The delays also make me wonder if the reason they’re not holding the vote now is that there are some defections on the GOP side. They can’t hold a vote unless they’re sure they’ll win it.

And while they’re at it—isn’t it about time to censure Dianne Feinstein?

UPDATE 2:08 PM:

Don’t know whether this report is true, but that’s supposedly where it stands at the moment. In negotiations. I think postponing at this point and allowing her to testify and set conditions is wrong. But my guess—as I wrote above—is that it’s what some of the more squishy GOP senators are insisting happens in order to get their vote.

A bigger GOP margin in the Senate would mean that those particular senators couldn’t hold the rest hostage.

UPDATE 5:15 PM

Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice:

More here:

“We’ll do it on Wednesday, we expect the accuser before the accused, and we do intend to have the counsel do the questioning,” the senator said, summing up the Republicans’ stance.

The party is assenting to two of the terms Ford’s lawyers laid out in a Thursday evening call with staff from both parties, the senator said: limiting the hearing to one camera and ensuring that Kavanaugh is not in the same room as her.

GOP members of the Judiciary Committee held a conference call on Friday morning to discuss how to respond to the requests from Ford’s lawyers. But several elements of their offer appear to be nonstarters with Democrats and Ford’s camp, which had made clear that she could not be in the capital to testify before Thursday, according to a senior aide to the minority.

“They’re making this disingenuous counteroffer knowing she won’t be here,” the Democratic aide said.

The GOP has been told that Ford does not want to fly from her California home to Washington, according to the Republican senator, which means she may need to drive across the country to make the hearing. Ford has reportedly told friends she is uncomfortable in confined spaces, indicating a physical difficulty in making the trip by plane.

Can the Ford v. Kavanaugh story get any more bizarre?

The New Neo Posted on by

I know the answer: of course it can.

I keep trying to get away from this story, but stuff keeps happening. I was happily away from my computer all afternoon, seeing old friends from out-of-town who were visiting the area, and now I see that some alleged excerpts form the yearbooks of Ford’s high school years have been posted on an obscure website, after the copies had been taken off a website where they’d originally appeared. I have no idea whether the excerpts are truly from the yearbooks or are a form of Fake News (no one seems to know for sure at the moment), but the supposed excerpts describe a widespread culture of drunken partying at the school during the years Ford was a student there.

If that wasn’t enough, we have the very curious case of Cristina King Miranda, a classmate of Ford’s (was everyone at the school named some form of the name Christine?) who yesterday posted a letter on Facebook [see *NOTE I below] in which she said, among other things, that “The incident did happen, many of us heard about it in school.” Not long afterward she deleted the entry, as well as the Twitter account on which she’d written:

I graduated from Holton Arms, and knew both Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. Christine Blasey Ford was a year or so behind me, I remember her. I signed this letter. The incident was spoken about for days afterwards in school. Kavanaugh should stop lying, own up to it, and apologize.

After the deletion of that particular tweet, she added that the first tweet had “served its purpose” and that she was deciding which of several interviews she should accept from various MSM outlets.

Now when you go to her Twitter account you get a message that it does not exist.

In the meantime, she did give an NPR interview in which she walked it back:

“In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen],” Miranda told NPR. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”

Miranda noted on Twitter that she did not have “first hand knowledge” of the incident…

Miranda says she played soccer with Ford — whom she refers to as Chrissy — in high school and that she continues to support her. Miranda added that despite not knowing specifics of what went on at the party three decades ago, she remembers that there was a “buzz” that went around possibly on a weekend about the party where an alleged incident involving students from her school and Kavanaugh’s took place.

It is something, she said, that was not surprising to hear given the culture of drinking and partying…

In case this story seems hard to decipher, let me help out.

Miranda remembers having heard some sort of vague rumor once way back when she was in high school that there was a party where something-or-other bad had happened between some Holton Arms girls and some Georgetown Prep boys. Recently, after hearing Ford’s allegations about Kavanaugh, Miranda felt “empowered” to tell the world that he’s a lying bastard who should ‘fess up, because she figured that old vague rumor she once had heard about something-or-other must mean it was actually about Ford and Kavanaugh, or that at least she could pass it off as being about Ford and Kavanaugh. And she never thought—never never never thought—that dropping this bombshell into the mix would cause anyone to want to hear more of what she had to say.

I can’t say this woman is any sort of advertisement for the quality of the education her alma mater offers.

Which brings us to an article in National Review by David French entitled: “Do Democrats Really Believe Christine Blasey Ford Doesn’t Have To Prove Her Claims?”

The answer? Yes, they really believe that. They really believe that their base will be fired up without Ford needing to testify. They really believe they can spin any attempt by Republicans to make her testify into an example of bullying by those mean old white men. Also, they really initially believed that those mean old white Republican men wouldn’t even ask her to testify, so it wouldn’t come up. Yes, they really believe they can say that Ford—being a woman and all—should just be believed because women should always just be believed (despite the evidence to the contrary from women such as Cristina King Miranda, above).

And by the way, anyway who calls this another Salem Witch Trial is being unfair to the Salem accusers. It is my contention that most of them were hysterics who truly believed that what they were saying was the truth. I think some of the current accusers fall short of that standard.

[*NOTE I: The text of Miranda’s original Facebook letter, now deleted, can be found here. From the length of it it’s clear that this was not a spur-of-the-moment impulse, unlike a tweet. The letter took some time to compose. It contains quite a few hints as to Miranda’s state of mind and motives, for example the following [emphasis mine]:

The current situation involving Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh touches a very personal nerve and has unearthed memories, good and bad, that I had buried deep from my time at Holton…

…I remember having a bit of a crush on Mark [Judge, the man who Ford named as having witnessed the incident regarding her, and who has categorically denied this], he had a keen intelligence and sardonic, biting wit when he wasn’t drunk which was often (as were lots of teenage guys from Prep, Landon and girls from Holton, Stone Ridge, Visitation on weekends at parties, during Beachweek, etc). I asked him to go to my junior or senior prom with me…I just remember how horrible I felt when he stood me up because he got bombed a few hours before the prom dinner. He showed no respect and had no remorse. Apparently, in 2018 some things have not changed, unfortunately.

This woman is in her fifties, and still hung up about a guy standing her up in high school? If in fact that happened at all, either. I feel like I’m wading knee-deep not merely in high school gossip, but in junior high or middle school gossip. Is this really the sort of information a SCOTUS confirmation is supposed to rest on?

Continued:

This incident did happen. Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details. However Christine’s vivid recollection should be more than enough for us to truly, deeply know that the accusation is true.

That’s the reference she explained in her later NPR interview—to a vague rumor of something happening to someone somewhere at some time, a rumor which about 35 years later Miranda decided to plug into Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh, and then to truly, deeply know it to be true.

Continued:

…The drinking ensconced in the puritanism and hypocrisy of that elite, privileged , mostly white, Catholic, Washington society, was completely out of control.

Now that, I can believe. But dearest Cristina, just because there was a ton of drinking during your high school years, it does not mean that Person A committed Act X on Person B.

More:

…In my case, even before Christine came forward, I was and still am completely against [Kavanaugh’s] nomination. I do not want him representing me or making decisions on my behalf in the Supreme Court as he goes against everything sacred to me as woman, mother, daughter, latina, American and professional.

Please forgive me, I cannot resist: this is certainly not the sort of “wise latina” that Sotomayor had in mind, is it?

If Kavanaugh truly has the integrity mentioned by those who support him, then he should be just as courageous as Christine and stop trying to dodge the accusations, admit his actions from so long ago, speak from the heart, and apologize. By doing this, he would be giving the next generation and our kids/teenagers a huge lesson in humility, dignity and humanity…

My heart goes out to all involved who are now whether they like or not, facing their demons, which are never pretty nor easy to dialogue with, but they are necessary in order for us to accept that we are all flawed and ultimately, human.

It would be good if Miranda could now go quietly off and contemplate her own words. in that last paragraph.]

[NOTE II: I’m not sure what to put this next bit, so I’ll just add it here: all preppy white guys look alike to me. Not a good idea, Ed.]

Have Democrats gained or lost so far as a result of the Kavanaugh accusation?

The New Neo Posted on by

This writer says Feinstein got exactly what she wanted out of the Ford accusation against Kavanaugh: propaganda points for the 2018 election.

I tend to be pessimistic as a rule in politics. But I wonder. I don’t see it quite that way, although I would have agreed a few days ago, before Ford’s refusal to testify. I think a lot of people have been turned off by the sinister calculation of the entire Democratic approach, and surprised by the Republicans’ willingness to cooperate by letting Ford testify, and put off by her refusal.

Here’s some evidence that those things may be true.

Yes, of course, the leftist troops are all fired up to get with the program of “Republicans hate women and they nominate rapists to the Court, and conservatives want to take away all your reproductive rights and institute The Handmaid’s Tale.” But I think that’s mainly preaching to the choir. Plus, by the sound of the blogosphere anyway, the right has been energized as well.

Men are probably most upset, but I’m not even sure of that. Many non-leftist women (and who knows, maybe even some leftist women) have an interest in not having their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, male friends, grandsons, nephews, falsely accused and vilified.

Yes, even if confirmed, Kavanaugh’s name will always be tainted. But Clarence Thomas has been quite effective even with that hanging over his head all these years.

The inconvenient accusers

The New Neo Posted on by

For the “believe the women; Kavanaugh is guilty as the day is long” crowd on the left, there remain the inconvenient accusers.

These accusers are female, too, like Kavanaugh’s. In nearly all instances, their stories of sexual wrongdoing on the part of men are more well-documented and therefore more compelling. But the left wants to pretend they don’t exist, and/or to silence them and/or discredit them.

Why, if the mantra is to believe the women? It’s very simple: these women have accused Democrats.

Now, certain Democrats are expendable and therefore their accusers are believed. I bring you Exhibit A: Harvey Weinstein. He’s not a politician, and so he could go, and he was also part of an (ultimately failed) attempt to get Trump.

Others were not so expendable but, after much defense of their integrity by the Democrats, the evidence against them simply became incontrovertible and overwhelming. I bring you Exhibit B: Anthony Weiner.

Others, such as Ted Kennedy, could be contemporaneously ignored or rationalized because it was a long time ago and at this point he is deceased anyway.

But some Democrats, such as Keith Ellison, against whom complaints have been lodged, are men who are both important in the party and very much alive, and the charges are fairly recent. That article I just linked was from two months ago, for example.

Strange how the left has circled the wagons around him. Unfortunately for the Democrats, his accusing ex-girlfriend is still trying to point this out:

Karen Monahan, the woman accusing Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of domestic abuse, responded to a Twitter user on Monday who asked if Democrats believe Monahan’s allegations, saying they don’t, and that she’s been threatened and isolated from her own party.

And luckily for the Democrats, they have the cooperation of the usually-oh-so-woke MSM in trying to get people to ignore or disbelieve what she’s saying:

In response to a question on whether each voter believed the allegations leveled at Ellison are true, 5 percent of Democrats responded “yes,” 30 percent responded “no” and 65 percent were unsure…

The Democratic Party has largely ignored the allegations against Ellison, which he denies.

And, speaking of people who are “still trying to point this out,” we have Juanita Broaddrick:

Juanita Broaddrick has used Hillary Clinton’s own words against her by coming out and demanding that “it seems only fair” that if the FBI is going to investigate accusations against Brett Kavanaugh from three decades ago — as demanded by Hillary Clinton — then the FBI must also investigate her own credible rape allegations against Bill Clinton from the same period.

My own opinion is—as I’ve written many times, including yesterday—not to automatically “believe the women” or any class or group. I evaluate each individual story on its merits.

And I tend toward skepticism with unsubstantiated tales. I believe in innocent till proven guilty, and although it’s only in a court of law that I require a level of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, even in the court of public opinion I require a pretty high level of evidence to believe a story—especially an old one. So you might call me generally a skeptic.

But I’m a skeptic about accusations towards members of either party, people I like or people I don’t like. That means I’ve long had doubts about Broaddrick’s claims, for example, too complex to go into in this post but for some examples of what I’m talking about see this.

I don’t require that people agree with me. But in order to respect their opinion on these matters, I do require at the very least consistency. Logic helps, too, but if people are going to apply illogical and unfair standards like “believe the women” they at least should be consistent in it.

For the most part, they are not.

67 million in the US don’t speak English at home

The New Neo Posted on by

This statistic rates a big headline at Drudge today:

Nearly half of the residents in the nation’s five biggest cities do not speak English at home, choosing instead their native language, according to the latest Census Bureau data that details the impact of a decade of soft immigration policies.

Overall, a record 67 million do not speak English at home, said the bureau. That is nearly double in 27 years.

In its just-released analysis of the Census data, the Center for Immigration Studies said, “As a share of the population, 21.8 percent of U.S. residents speak a foreign language at home — roughly double the 11 percent in 1980.”

The Center added, “In America’s five largest cities, 48 percent of residents now speak a language other than English at home. In New York City and Houston it is 49 percent; in Los Angeles it is 59 percent; in Chicago it is 36 percent; and in Phoenix it is 38 percent.”

It certainly is a graphic demonstration of the increase in immigration, both legal and illegal.

But to me it’s a somewhat meaningless statistic. The far more meaningful one is not reported: what percentage of people in the US not only speak a language other than English at home, but also are not fluent in English and are not engaged in trying to be?

As far as I know, most immigrants used to speak another language at home, even a century ago. That’s why it’s called a “mother tongue.” But they, and especially their children, were forced to learn English if they wanted to function in this country, because their devotion to their original language was not indulged. They did not have access to bilingual education. They did not have translators in 50 languages at the ready. They did not have phone messages in Spanish as an alternative tongue.

I’m not saying we should go back all the way to those days. But I’ve never—even in my liberal Democrat days—been in favor of caving to the bilingualists. I definitely think people need to be nudged out of their dependence on their languages of origin. It’s tough, but it’s necessary.

Neither “believe the women” nor “believe the victims” is a valid form of decision-making

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written about this subject before, and I’ll probably write about it again.

But apparently it requires repeating:

Anyone who says that members of a certain group always tell the truth is lying.

There is no such group on earth. I don’t care if it’s a group of Catholic nuns or Buddhist monks. There are liars in every group, at least potentially.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that I’d take the word of an ex-con in the same way I’d take the word of some upstanding citizen of the community. But it means that in any given circumstances—and in particular if that circumstance is a court of law—a person is only as good as the evidence behind him or her.

The difficulty lies when there is no evidence other than a person’s word. Sometimes with sexual harassment or assault claims there is some independent corroborative evidence: an emailed photo, for example. That’s the petard with which Weiner was hoisted. But harassers and abusers aren’t always so dumb as to leave evidence, and then we are left with a hesaid/shesaid scenario. In that case we look at demeanor, before and after behavior, and all sorts of other information that could help us come to a decision.

But never should we rely on something like “being a woman” or “being a man” to tell us whether a person is a truth-teller in each particular circumstance. Nor does membership in a certain race or religion or any other demographic group, including being a child. Even children lie about abuse, sometimes at the behest of a scheming parent and sometimes on their own. It happens, although how often it happens is a matter of some dispute.

In a court of law, charges must be specific to a particular act or set of acts by this particular defendant. Time and place are all not just important, but ultra-important, not only to determine the veracity of the accuser and the accuracy of his/her memory, but to allow the defendant a chance to construct a defense.

That’s what was so powerful about many of Kafka’s works, so much so that it earned him an adjective derived from his name: Kafkaesque. Here are some excerpts from the beginning chapter of his book The Trial:

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. Every day at eight in the morning he was brought his breakfast by Mrs. Grubach’s cook – Mrs. Grubach was his landlady – but today she didn’t come. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an inquisitiveness quite unusual for her, and finally, both hungry and disconcerted, rang the bell. There was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered. He had never seen the man in this house before. He was slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close-fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for. “Who are you?” asked K., sitting half upright in his bed. The man, however, ignored the question as if his arrival simply had to be accepted, and merely replied, “You rang?” “Anna should have brought me my breakfast,” said K. He tried to work out who the man actually was, first in silence, just through observation and by thinking about it, but the man didn’t stay still to be looked at for very long. Instead he went over to the door, opened it slightly, and said to someone who was clearly standing immediately behind it, “He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast.” There was a little laughter in the neighbouring room, it was not clear from the sound of it whether there were several people laughing…

“I want to see Mrs. Grubach … ,” said K., making a movement as if tearing himself away from the two men – even though they were standing well away from him – and wanted to go. “No,” said the man at the window, who threw his book down on a coffee table and stood up. “You can’t go away when you’re under arrest.” “That’s how it seems,” said K. “And why am I under arrest?” he then asked. “That’s something we’re not allowed to tell you. Go into your room and wait there. Proceedings are underway and you’ll learn about everything all in good time.”…

It was much more important to him to get a clear understanding of his position, but he could not think clearly while these people were here, the second policeman’s belly – and they could only be policemen – looked friendly enough, sticking out towards him, but when K. looked up and saw his dry, boney face it did not seem to fit with the body. His strong nose twisted to one side as if ignoring K. and sharing an understanding with the other policeman. What sort of people were these? What were they talking about? What office did they belong to? K. was living in a free country, after all, everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared accost him in his own home?

Of course, the court of public opinion is not the same as a courtroom, and does not have the same exact standards. But it should have standards nonetheless—and specificity, corroboration, and the ability to verify charges matter. So do character witnesses.

What should not matter and should never matter is the class to which a person belongs: man or woman, black or white, rich or poor. Each individual is an individual and must be evaluated on the strength of the details of his or her story, both accuser and the accused. We should be humble about it, too, and acknowledge the inherent difficulties in making a decision.

And, as with the author of this harrowing story of rape, we should take a middle way:

I cannot tell you if a person’s account of his or her assault is valid or not. I cannot tell you to believe all survivors. But I can tell you that there is a difference between sharing your story and naming a person in an accusation. The longer a person waits to do so, the more scrutiny and skepticism is warranted…

I do not believe we have immunity to accuse without consequence, and…I advocate due process and the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” more now than ever. Don’t blame a person for not reporting sooner, but don’t damn the accused to compensate for it.

Do I believe Ford? If I had to vote, I would say I strongly believe her story is untrue. I believe that she may believe she’s telling the truth, however. And I believe that it is at least possible that she is telling the truth, although highly unlikely.

I believe that her story has been used by ruthless politicians who will stop at nothing to destroy the opposition. At the moment it looks as though they have been foiled, but that could change at any minute.

And that’s where we’re at now.

The first act was different: Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill

The New Neo Posted on by

If Kavanaugh and Ford is the second act, Thomas and Hill was the first.

Please don’t quibble with me. I know that Bork preceded that. But I’m talking about sexual allegations mounted against a SCOTUS nominee after the initial hearings, precipitating a call for more hearings, in which the public would be invited to decide about the truth or falsehood of a “he-said/she-said” set of allegations and vociferous denials.

So, what were the differences? Well, one big difference has been intervening events. After Thomas and Hill we had the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the escalation and success of various sexual allegations against many politicians (Herman Cain, just to take one example, and Roy Moore, to take another), and the well-publicized #MeToo movement.

Another big difference is that there was a much-watched hearing in which Anita Hill did testify; we don’t know yet if Ford’s refusal to testify will stand, but at the moment it seems to be that way. Another difference is that while Hill’s allegations were old—as much as ten years old—they were nowhere near as old and potentially unverifiable as Ford’s (approximately thirty-six years old). Another difference is that both Hill and Thomas were fully adult rather than teenagers at the time the events were said to have transpired, and therefore they reflected their adult behavior and personalities.

But another difference I did not initially remember, but one that I discovered when I looked the Thomas hearings up recently in light of current events, is that Clarence Thomas was confirmed despite the fact that the Democrats controlled the Senate 57 to 43 at the time:

The final floor vote was not strictly along party lines: 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats (Dixon (D-IL), Exon (D-NE), DeConcini (D-AZ), Robb (D-VA), Hollings (D-SC), Fowler (D-GA), Nunn (D-GA), Breaux (D-LA), Johnston (D-LA), Boren (D-OK), and Shelby (D-AL) now (R-AL)) voted to confirm while 46 Democrats and 2 Republicans (Jeffords (R-VT) later (I-VT) and Packwood (R-OR)) voted to reject the nomination; John Glenn was particularly vituperative in his rejection. Ironically Packwood himself would later be engulfed by sexual harassment allegations which ended his Senate career.

Can anyone imagine that happening today?

I think it’s a sign of the obvious change in the political climate in the 27 years since those hearings occurred that I, for one, cannot even imagine such a thing happening today. There are not eleven Democrats who would vote for Kavanaugh (or Thomas, for that matter) if the Democrats held the majority in the Senate and had the power to deny either man the right to be a member of the Supreme Court.

Granted, since the Republicans control (barely) the Senate right now, some Democrats in reddish states might yet vote to confirm Kavanaugh, since they know they can’t stop him by voting “no,” and if they feel that a “no” vote would be political suicide. Live to fight another day and all that. But I cannot believe that, if the Democrats had a chance to stop him, eleven (or any number close to that) would hesitate to do so.

The times they have a-changed, and not for the better.