According to reporting in the New York Times, while seated next to his wife on Monday night, Brett Kavanaugh claimed “I’ve always treated women with dignity and respect” four separate times during his 20-minute Fox News interview with Martha MacCallum. According to other reporting in the New York Times, Brett Kavanaugh was lying.
For a high school girl, it’s never a good thing to be an inside joke with the football team. I think we all know this because it seems to happen to some unfortunate girl in virtually every high school. But rarely does the football team take things so far as to create an entire page in the high school yearbook to memorialize their contempt.
The “Renate Alumni” included at least 13 boys who made reference to a teenage girl by that name in their individual yearbook pages. They even made up a poem about her that was quoted by one of Kavanaugh’s teammates: “You need a date / and it’s getting late / so don’t hesitate / to call Renate.”
On his individual yearbook page, Kavanaugh listed himself as a “Renate Alumnius,” suggesting obviously that he had some kind of sexual relations with her. He also claimed membership in the “Wendy Whitney Fan Club” and made reference to Devil’s Triangle, which is slang for a ménage à trois involving two boys and one girl.
The girl in question had actually signed a letter in support of Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court but she did not know until very recently that she’d been ridiculed so prominently by Kavanaugh in his yearbook. She is now angry and humiliated.
“I learned about these yearbook pages only a few days ago,” Ms. Dolphin said in a statement to The New York Times. “I don’t know what ‘Renate Alumnus’ actually means. I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way. I will have no further comment.”
There’s simply no way to support Kavanaugh’s claim that he has “always treated women with dignity and respect.” He hasn’t, and we have unusually clear proof of that fact.
He also laughingly claimed in the Fox News interview to have been a celibate until after he graduated from college.
The wincingly personal nature of that interview was paralleled on Monday when Ms. MacCallum asked Judge Kavanaugh about rumors that he and his high school friends targeted women for sex at parties.
“I did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter,” the judge replied.
“So you’re saying,” Ms. MacCallum interrupted, “that through all these years that are in question, you were a virgin?”
His face frozen — and his confirmation on the line — Judge Kavanaugh had little choice but to respond. “That’s correct,” he said.
That is not correct. A handsome, intelligent, and Ivy-bound captain of the high school basketball team who is the “treasurer” of the Keg City Club, attends alcohol-fueled beach parties at every opportunity, and brags about his group sexual conquests in his yearbook is not the profile of a 30-year-old virgin.
Kavanaugh is a showing that he is one thing for certain, and that is a liar.
Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate (Steve Kantrowitz, now U. Wisc Prof of History) says that Kavanaugh claimed that he was no longer a virgin during his freshman year.
Lying then, or lying now?
Also, I look forward to the video clip of the United Nations laughing at Trump becoming a part of the Trump Presidential Library.
Is this any great surprise? That TRUMP would nominate a liar?
ALL of the people that Trump would/has nominate(d) have significant character flaws. They lie, they cheat, they have no empathy, they are racists, mosogynists, classists to a person. ALL of Trumps cabinet are unfit for public office.
Mattis might be an exception, but if I knew nothing about Mattis except his name and position you’d have to prove that he wasn’t slime.
Not only is Kav a bad liar, he isn’t very thoughtful with his comments. He could have said, “As an adult, I’ve always treated women with respect,” and just acknowledge that as an adolescent male he did act in ways that was disrespectful to women and girls. While not excusable, at least it would be honest. But that’s his big issue; like Trump, he has issues with the truth.
. . . when he probably could have gotten away with playing the “regret youthful indiscretions” card and still gotten confirmed.
He squandered that opportunity first by blanket denials, then doubling down on them when they became less and less plausible under scrutiny and with new evidence, and now just baldly lying virtually continuously.
Sucks to be you, “Bart”!
Well, maybe. But the famous quote from Nietzsche seems pertinent:
“‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains adamant. At last–memory yields.”
. . . Ockham suggests O’Kavanaugh’s just baldly lying.
Ya mean it was all Locker Room Talk(tm)? Say it ain’t so, Captain Bart!
The script must be followed, however ridiculous.
I know that this is not the proper spirit for the looming destruction of the nation and the harm done to the various ladies, but the dark comedy value being obtained from our tax dollars this month is pretty high. Mea Culpa.
Also, too, O’Kavanaugh is remarkably inarticulate for a person at his lofty station in life. Just another sign of our wonderful meritocracy. A Hero of the Conservative Movement nevertheless!
When the whole Republican party’s current philosophy and platform is founded on lies, it is no surprise that they all (Trump, the 11 members of the Judiciary Committee, and several other senators) are going to stick with a SCOTUS nominee who has difficulty with truth!
I have to explain to my friends and relatives in India how a party like the GOP even gets votes when they ONLY carry water for 1% of the population. If any party in India overtly said what the GOP platform says, they would be wiped out in a nanosecond!
RE:
This is a serious question, as I haven’t seen the video. He did not seem to speak “laughingly” in the related audio clips I heard on NPR, though. “Laughingly” also seems kinda at odds with this:
I think you may have misunderstood Booman. It wasn’t that Kavanaugh was laughing; rather fhat the absurdity off his claim, given his background was a laughable one.
. . . wrote “laughingly” instead, then it’s not so much a matter of my misunderstanding as it is of booman’s mis-expression of his thought.
Which is what I asked about. (Kind of marveling that that could have been unclear.)
I.e., the claim was “laughable”, so by making it, he was making it “laughably”, not “laughingly”. Unless he did, in fact, make it (also) “laughingly”. Which is why I asked!
He also claimed the drinking age in Maryland was 18 in 1983 when in reality it had been raised in 1982.
. . . of Ford while shitfaced.