And try to imagine what would have happened if Donald Trump had behaved a fraction that well. Instead of turning everything into a debate about whether the #MeToo movement was really about persecuting men.
.. the president was thrilled when Kavanaugh transformed himself into a ranting boor who demanded to know whether one Democratic senator had a drinking problem and who blamed all his trouble on leftists and Clinton Democrats.
.. it was standing up to yelling men who feel the only problem in this world is that they’re not getting what they deserve.
.. As Senator Lisa Murkowski said when she announced she’d be a no vote, “We’re dealing with issues right now that are bigger than the nominee.” Nobody owed Kavanaugh a Supreme Court seat. His hearing was a job interview, and the Senate had a perfect right to simply decide there was more to consider than whether he had ever molested anybody.
.. In another era Franken could have gotten away with an apology, but he was at the center of a historic moment, when the country had to turn its back on the old boys-will-be-boys ethos that worked when women were supposed to stay home where they’d be safe from wandering fingers.
.. “Boy did he fold up like a wet rag,” Trump laughed at a rally this week in Franken’s home state of Minnesota. “He was gone so fast. It was like: ‘Oh, he did something.’ ‘Oh, I resign. I quit.’”
.. This is exactly what the Kavanaugh nomination has come to represent. A vote for the nomination became a symbolic vote for a political ethos that thinks grabbing private parts is fun and complaining about sexual assault is a threat to young manhood.
.. This is a senator whose he-man image is so critical to his identity that he always runs campaign ads in which he shoots offensive legislation with a rifle. Imagine if someone like that had come out against the Kavanaugh nomination — just to say that Americans can behave better than this.
.. Kevin Cramer, who called the Kavanaugh controversy “even more absurd” than the Anita Hill case. And, he added, Blasey’s charges just amounted to “an attempt or something that never went anywhere.” Basically his position was that if there’s no penetration, it doesn’t count.
.. If the powerful can find a way to not take your claim seriously, they will.