Althouse: "But for her decision to come out about Brett Kavanaugh and to remake herself as a California surfing mom, [Christine Blasey Ford] is the archetypal Republican voter..."

September 28, 2018

"But for her decision to come out about Brett Kavanaugh and to remake herself as a California surfing mom, [Christine Blasey Ford] is the archetypal Republican voter..."

"A wealthy, white suburban woman, married, with children. Her parents are Republicans. Her father plays golf with Brett Kavanaugh’s dad at Burning Tree. Her parents have been noticeably silent — stonily so, with no letter of support, only the most begrudging words. It chilled me to read what her father, Ralph Blasey, wrung from himself to offer the Washington Post, in the conditional tense: 'I think all of the Blasey family would support her. I think her record stands for itself. Her schooling, her jobs, and so on.' Then he hung up. A second call yielded this hypothetical: 'I think any father would have love for his daughter.'"

From "Christine Blasey Ford Is a Class Traitor/That's why she scares Republicans" by Irin Carmon (NY Magazine).

104 comments:

Robert Cook said...: Class loyalty is thicker than blood.; 9/28/18, 3:01 PM
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...: Blasey-Ford is a Hillary voter.; 9/28/18, 3:01 PM
Mr. D said...: I recall Anita Hill was presented as a Republican.; 9/28/18, 3:02 PM
gspencer said...: He doesn't want to discredit his daughter publicly, but his feelings about his daughter's fanciful remembrances are clear.; 9/28/18, 3:02 PM
Dave Begley said...: No. CBF is a liberal loon. She wears a pussy hat and marches. She has two front doors on her house. When do we see her deleted social media?; 9/28/18, 3:03 PM
Expat(ish) said...: If one of my kids did something stupid and public when they were adults I would probably be about as supportive/civil.

You also don't know if the dad knows what actually happened at the time and it's different than what's going on.

I don't know how I'd react if my adult child was falsely accusing someone. Especially if grand children are involved. I know how I hope I'd act.

-XC; 9/28/18, 3:03 PM
rehajm said...: They know she made the whole fucking thing up but still won't sell her out to fucking NY Magazine.; 9/28/18, 3:04 PM
gerry said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/28/18, 3:05 PM
Oso Negro said...: Weeping Jesus on the Cross. She is an unstable, medicated, former teen slut, who is a now an activist Democrat.; 9/28/18, 3:05 PM
rehajm said...: It's not like Burning Tree is off limits to women. They let the wives on property for a few days a year to buy Christmas presents for their husbands.; 9/28/18, 3:06 PM
gerry said...: A wealthy, white suburban woman, married, with children.

Goofy. This description applies to a very large and overwhelming number of Democrat/Progressive women in Madison, Wisconsin. Or anywhere in Vermont, New Jersey, or bedroom community suburbs of New York, LA, Seattle, or Washington, D.C., or Chicago. Pure blathercrap.; 9/28/18, 3:08 PM
chuck said...: Yeah, I saw that and laughed. My rule of thumb these days is that nothing with NY in its name is worth squat.; 9/28/18, 3:09 PM
PM said...: Bullshit. She's a touchy-feely Marin housewife, Peninsula version.; 9/28/18, 3:09 PM
MayBee said...: SHe scares me because she is the living embodiment of "credible" accusation - the new standard by which we are declaring people be deprived of jobs and schooling.
She scares me because she doesn't even need to have a coherent story or a grasp of her own recent actions to get the US Senate to talk about a high school yearbook in a SCOTUS nomination.
She scares me because even people like Althouse can't see how she could possibly be lying.

I have lots of wealthy white suburban liberal female friends. I mean, that's pretty much all I had in LA. Why do people get to write the stupidest stuff and get it published? Why does the NYer think this writer understands *anything*?; 9/28/18, 3:10 PM
pchuck1966 said...: pussy hat wearing, #resisting, Phd at Palo Alto University - yeah, sure she is a Republican; 9/28/18, 3:10 PM
Henry said...: The lack of support from the parents is chilling. Don't know what it has to do Republicanism. If we take Irin Carmon's self-supplied definition of the archetypical Republican, it includes "with children."

When something is this off, there probably isn't a political answer, some boilerplate Aesop's fable about the Fox, the Flies, and the Republican. It has deeper, probably unhappy, roots.; 9/28/18, 3:11 PM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Republican voters have no concept of class other than the current cultural zeitgeist in which we all believe we are “middle class” in a classless society. But we don’t sort people into classes, so when a neo-marxist tries to apply her ineffectual learning onto a society she misunderstands we will just scratch our heads and mutter, “academics” as an epithet. Class traitor? What does that even mean? There’s a vast US against a minority of THEM, them being people educated just enough to believe in classes and sort themselves into the elite. She is the elite like them. She hasn’t betrayed her class, if she believes in classes.; 9/28/18, 3:15 PM
MayBee said...: She testified she didn't tell her parents what she was discussing with Eschoo Feinstein, and attorneys even when she was visiting them. She actually said "no" in a way that indicated that was a ridiculous thought.
So there is something there between them. We don't know what it is.; 9/28/18, 3:15 PM
Earnest Prole said...: Fifty years ago an upper-middle-class Bay Area PhD would indeed have been a Republican; now they run 97 percent Democrat. So credit the author with a good story idea except for being decades too late.; 9/28/18, 3:16 PM
Static Ping said...: Judgments based on stereotypes are okay when we do it!

People are scared because this is something straight out of The Crucible and one major political party and the lion's share of the media are all for it!; 9/28/18, 3:17 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Republican voters have no concept of class other than the current cultural zeitgeist in which we all believe we are 'middle class' in a classless society."

Which, of course, is delusional.

(Also, in his "Checkers" speech, when Nixon referred to Pat's "respectable Republican cloth coat," he was certainly using a class signifier.); 9/28/18, 3:20 PM
Big Mike said...: Christine Blasey Ford is a limousine liberal.; 9/28/18, 3:22 PM
Greg P said...: She's a freaking women's college psych professor

She's the epitome of a leftist

How stupid did the author of that drivel have to be, to write that crap?

How stupid does Iain think it's readers are, to think they would believe it?; 9/28/18, 3:27 PM
mccullough said...: In other words, her parents are brother know she’s a nutjob. They aren’t going to take sides agai st the family in public.

But they aren’t backing her up here either.

Ford is a nutjob who doesn’t care how much shit she has put her family and friends through.; 9/28/18, 3:29 PM
chickelit said...: Her parent’s politics don’t describe CBF’s politics anymore than Hillary Rodham’s parent’s politics describe hers. We know nothing about CBF’s politics because her politics have been scrubbed.

Nice try, though.; 9/28/18, 3:31 PM
Mary Beth said...: What does "class traitor" even mean? (I know the definition, but I can't think of anything that would cause me to label someone that way.)

A class traitor doesn't scare me, what scares me is that you can work for decades and have a good reputation and then have it trashed overnight by unsubstantiated accusations of bad behavior when you were in high school.; 9/28/18, 3:35 PM
policraticus said...: That an upper middle class white woman with a PhD. in psychology, who has lived in the San Francisco for the whole of her working life, can be confidently posed as a traitor to her class because she opposes Donald Trump and a conservative nominee to the Supreme Court goes almost beyond parody. She is the walking, talking epitome of what it means to be a liberal Democrat.; 9/28/18, 3:37 PM
FullMoon said...: (Also, in his "Checkers" speech, when Nixon referred to Pat's "respectable Republican cloth coat," he was certainly using a class signifier.)

Sept 23, 1952; 9/28/18, 3:38 PM
chickelit said...: So make that two lies which Althouse is promulgating:: The first lie is that Brett Kavanaugh = Mark Judge, especially regarding black out drinking. The second lie is that Christine Blasey Ford is a typical Republican. You disappoint me, Althouse.; 9/28/18, 3:38 PM
gspencer said...: Maybe he shoulda said it outright, "My daughter's a frappin' loon."; 9/28/18, 3:39 PM
Molly said...: (eaglebeak)

Arrant twaddle. Huge numbers of white suburban prepsters are Democrats, as anyone who knew them would know.

Class traitor my foot.

And the idea that she scares GOP for that reason?

BAL. DER. DASH; 9/28/18, 3:41 PM
MikeR said...: Great article about the idea that Republicans have that never ever occurred to a single Republican in the whole country.; 9/28/18, 3:45 PM
TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...: It's simple. Ford was assaulted in high school by a (not immediate) family member, and she has layered on all manner of false memories to assuage her psyche and explain her neuroses to herself. The family knows exactly who did what, and that has caused estrangement and makes them unwilling to be dragged into this s**tstorm.

I wouldn't even be surprised if she tried to drag the family into the fight with her husband, but had to make up some details when it turned out they wanted nothing to do with it. Now she believes those made up details. That's why she was believable, but not credible. Dishonest, but not lying.; 9/28/18, 3:46 PM
Etienne said...: Fathers have no control over their kids after they leave home.

You try to bring them up with good decision making skills, but once you have sex with the mother, it's all a crap shoot on how they turn out, or how productive they are.

Just think of the poor fathers who's kids became prostitutes, pimps, or drug addicts. You think the Blasey's have problems... let me tell you... there's worse things that can happen.; 9/28/18, 3:51 PM
stever said...: She's in Californis, she's not scaring Republicans from there.; 9/28/18, 3:56 PM
mccullough said...: If the FBI asked her parents and brothers why they didn’t sign Ford’s support letter, the Dems would go apeshit.; 9/28/18, 3:58 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: Orcinus Orca not doing its job; 9/28/18, 3:59 PM
FIDO said...: To refer to a prior post:

THIS is how you disagree with your partisan, batshit crazy relative, not putting out a paid political hit piece ad like Democrat Liberals do.

So...her husband 'thinks' she is upset. Her dad has known her longer than that.

What does cruel neutrality tell one about that?; 9/28/18, 4:00 PM
FIDO said...: Just think of the poor fathers who's kids became prostitutes, pimps, or drug addicts. You think the Blasey's have problems... let me tell you... there's worse things that can happen.

I am pretty sure that her dad wishes she became a prostitute instead.

But at least he can thank his lucky stars that she didn't wind up a professor of law.; 9/28/18, 4:05 PM
Jupiter said...: I finally got around to listening to her testimony. It is obvious that she is reading from a document cooked up by her attorneys. It is also obvious that they were not all on the same page. In particular, the one who thought it would sound realistic that she got away from Brett the Beast when Judge the Drunk toppled them off the bed, neglected to check in with the one who thought it would sound especially sinister if they locked the door behind her, like Matt Lauer. Unexplained is what kind of bedroom door has locks, let alone locks that keep people in, and how she managed to get out of the locked room.

Then there was the one who came up with the idea that the boys went "pinballing" down the stairs, laughing about their clever prank. Nice image, but unexplained is how their victim knew that was what they were doing as she cowered behind the locked bathroom door.

And there was the explanation about when and why she told her husband. They definitely wanted to get that in, and someone was detailed to come up with a story. Of course, we now know that it was a lie. The house with the two doors was a house they rented out, not "our home", as she called it, and the renovation occurred in 2008, not 2012. But you can't really blame whoever wrote that part for muffing those details, he was probably working from sketchy notes of a hurried conversation.

Christ, Althouse, you found that convincing? Just because she made little "help-me" faces while she read it? It is certainly credible that Blasey Ford is not bright enough to have seen the problems with the script they gave her, but I expected better from you.; 9/28/18, 4:06 PM
Steve M. Galbraith said...: These people can find class and race and gender oppression in a baloney sandwich. There isn't a single right of center person in the country who thinks like this; who believes Ford is a traitor against her class. What does that even mean?

These people are the most anti-intellectual yahoos possible. Just start with a view through identity politics and then just wing it.; 9/28/18, 4:08 PM
Otto said...: From a psychology angle this case is interesting . Here you have two well educated people who have lead perfectly normal lives for the past 30 years with no sign of scandal or foul dealings and all of a sudden one is a deeply "traumatized" women and the other is a sex pervert. How is a deeply "traumatized" women able for 30 years get multiple degrees and publish volumes of papers, be happily married, have two sons, and love surfing. How is a sex pervert for 30 years able to get multiple degrees , have a happy marriage, be a great father, hold responsible positions, become a lauded judge, pass background checks have no charges of sexual misconduct in any way, is supported by many women and is highly recommended to be a supreme court judge. Something doesn't add up.; 9/28/18, 4:08 PM
Karen of Texas said...: I repeat from the "what doesn't kill you, boob thread":

"I've said before, I believe Ford is damaged. Something may have happened to her as a child/young teen. The swim suit under her clothes has had me circling around it. Finding out her family are Republicans and not signing on to daughter's bandwagon is another piece. Her moving to the opposite coast to "get away" is yet another. ... Either:

a) her father molested her
b) a wealthy, powerful friend of the family molested her and dad and mom looked the other way
c) she was a problem child (it happens) who may or may not have gotten enough attention. She became rebellious. She learned she could threaten to lie about her father ... say he was molesting her just to get her way

Prove me wrong."

I'm leaning to "c".; 9/28/18, 4:10 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: I am trying to imagine the Flake inspired FBI investigation. I predict it will turn into a month of arguing with CBF’s lawyers and chasing imaginary rabbits down rabbit holes. It will be the end of October and BK will still be cooling his heels.

Murkowski has to go next time.; 9/28/18, 4:11 PM
bleh said...: Class traitor? What? Her immature surfer-chick personality is quintessential well-heeled California aging white liberal woman. And the vocal fry ... Honestly, I felt like I was watching one of my aunties on the TV. I'd be more surprised if a woman like that wasn't politically liberal.

I didn't dislike Ford at all, mind you. But I absolutely reject the notion that she's some "threat" to Republicans because she's relatable as a normal average suburban white mom or whatever.; 9/28/18, 4:15 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: We don’t know anything about who CBF is, and we aren’t going to.; 9/28/18, 4:16 PM
Mountain Maven said...: They think the more they attack Becky the more likely she'll be to vote for them.; 9/28/18, 4:18 PM
Ray - SoCal said...: What a useless article.; 9/28/18, 4:26 PM
Ray - SoCal said...: I’m actually curious about her real background, and this article did little to illuminate it.

It seems to have the position if you are white and well off, you should be GOP.

It seems a lot more of the elite now days belong to the Democratic Party.

And the deplorables are more Republican.; 9/28/18, 4:29 PM
wwww said...: Suburban upper-middle class, married-with-children, college educated women used to vote Republican.

this was the "standard."

Vote is changing. Trump era is speeding up the shift.; 9/28/18, 4:34 PM
mccullough said...: The FBI doesn’t need to interview Ford or interview Kavanaugh again. We have their stories.

And the FBI interviews Kavanaugh and did background checks on him over the years.

Quick interviews of Judge and Leland and Smyth.

Then background check on Ford; 9/28/18, 4:38 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: Robert Cook at 3:20. It’s wonderful that you can quote the Checkers speech, but that social commentary from 1952 is a little dated. Everything has changed. The GOP lost Illinois to North Shore suburban women who vote Democratic with the fervor and loyalty of African American women or law school professors. They don’t want to hear the other side, either.; 9/28/18, 4:39 PM
JaimeRoberto said...: The author obviously doesn't know much about Bay Area academic types.; 9/28/18, 4:59 PM
Leland said...: If CBF didn't want the publicity, then certainly her parents and family didn't want the publicity. I'm sure they are pissed about being dragged into this. And if her Dad is truly friends with his Dad, then that opens up a bunch of questions, some of them bad for Kavanaugh as well for CBF.

But considering the author put out a suggestion that CBF is a Republican type voter; I pretty much don't believe any other part of the story. I don't have Gell-Mann amnesia, and sure, you can infer if they're lying about one thing they are lying about others or so a Democrat tells me.; 9/28/18, 5:01 PM
Matt said...: Traitor to her class? She might as well be a class representative: prep school, psych major, psych PhD, moved to some liberal city, too many neurotic issues to count. Educated guess - she hates Trump with a passion.

Imagine a prep school, college-educated, advanced-degree holding woman who hates Trump so much that they post anti-Trump articles and rants on Facebook 3-4 times a day. Now imagine this going on for months, every single day, non-stop; three posts a day, a hundred or so a month, 1,200 posts a year. Now imagine there are at least 20 women who fit this exact description in your friends (and family). We're talking literally thousands of anti-Trump posts by women just like Ford. It was unbearable. They are the reason I gave up social media.

Looking a Ford and listening to her talk (including jokes about the hippocampus), she could be an older version of any one of these women. Given their vehemence, I'm sure at least a quarter of them would happily lie in public to beat Republicans.; 9/28/18, 5:10 PM
Renee said...: Wait this isn't an interview... it's just what someone speculates... and it gets printed?; 9/28/18, 5:11 PM
Two-eyed Jack said...: Renee asks "Wait this isn't an interview... it's just what someone speculates... and it gets printed?"

Yes, the author states authoritatively that the truth is "that even the white woman on the pedestal is ultimately doomed to subordination, and if she gets in the way of the plan or breaks the code— well, she’s on her own." You can't gainsay insights like that.

The author, of course, is a Fellow for the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale Law School, which "seeks to broaden the narrow focus of scholarship in reproductive rights and justice from questions of whether Roe was correctly decided, to an examination of factors that are necessary for justice in reproductive health policies," so she knows what should happen to women who get in the way of the plan.; 9/28/18, 5:26 PM
Francisco D said...: Why do people read this crap?

Do they have an obsessive need for intellectual masturbation?

The disingenuousness, moral nihilism and historical ignorance of the pseudo-intellectual Left is absurd.; 9/28/18, 5:37 PM
Bilwick said...: "This is why she scares Republicans . . ."

In psychology, this is, I believe, called "mind rape."; 9/28/18, 5:39 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/28/18, 5:54 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/28/18, 5:57 PM
Steven said...: So, Democrats are still under the delusion that they're the party of the working class, not the professional class?

I mean, seriously. Of the four educational buckets in the 2016 exit polls, Clinton carried a majority of the postgraduate-educated, and plurality of the college grads. Trump, on the other hand, won a majority of both "High school or less" and "some college".

Nobody can think of Dr. Ford is a "class traitor" except people who have had their brains so addled by undead socialist rhetoric that they are intellectual zombies.; 9/28/18, 6:04 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Psych profs are not Republicans. Ever.; 9/28/18, 6:05 PM
bagoh20 said...: Lots of victims all around. Nice work, Feinstein. End your career on a low note - pure evil.; 9/28/18, 6:05 PM
phantommut said...: Oh please. All the women who gather on Tuesdays at the local commie latte shop to sign letters fit her profile.; 9/28/18, 6:08 PM
mikesixes said...: Class Traitor, Ha! She's Obama's class all the way. She's the opposite of the class of people who elected Trump, and the entire purpose of the charade she's putting on is to stick it to those people by sticking it to Trump.; 9/28/18, 6:25 PM
gg6 said...: I don't think it's "stupid" of this liberal Journ-iac to write this nonsense about Ford being an "archetypal Republican voter..." - it's simply very typical Liberal dissembling. It also helps deflect from the REAL question inherent here: does Ford's Father, who declined to sign a doc supporting his daughter, think so very little of his daughter that the best he can say re her is "her record stands for itself"...talk about enigmatic! Compounded by the distancing statement: 'I think any father would have love for his daughter.'" Yeah, u would THINK any father would but Ford's father refuses to explicitly say it.
Well - at least he is not one of those overly emotive 'Male phonies' like Judge K that 'tear up' when his entire Life is 'raped', right??; 9/28/18, 6:26 PM
Michael K said...: Anybody who is not a communist is to Cookie a Republican.

He could be right, though.; 9/28/18, 6:41 PM
narciso said...: even if her grandfather, was the late Nicholas deak, which is doubtful, she doesn't look Romanian, she wouldn't be a class traitor, although one wonders how her father fell into foreclosure,; 9/28/18, 6:53 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It is the Democrats that are class obsessed, not republicans.
They are Judge Smails, Trump is Rodney Dangerfield.
It's not the other way around.; 9/28/18, 7:43 PM
stan said...: This may be the dumbest crap ever. The typical GOP voter is a middle class citizen in flyover country. Way to pull out a stereotype that is a half century out of date.; 9/28/18, 7:46 PM
stephen cooper said...: I actually feel bad for Feinstein, whose descent into the history of vituperation will be forever illustrated by the ugly haggish face she wore this week, as she viciously mocked a man when she did not know if he was innocent or not. And she was vicious, even while she had no idea if Ford or Kavanaugh was innocent. That is about as close to the dictionary definition of political evil and slander as any of us Americans have seen in our lifetimes.

Remember that - Feinstein did not know the underlying truth of the matter (as none of us, except Kavanaugh, do), and yet she treated Kavanaugh in a way that all of us would immediately recognize as pure evil if the treatment had been directed at the woman who said she was almost raped, but who might also be no more than her famous victim's criminal stalker (just as he may be the guy who she describes almost raping him in 1982). Feinstein's defense might be that she is old and not all that aware of the world anymore, and such a defense is sad in and of itself. It does not excuse her gleeful participation in evil.

As for people who say that the accuser is a typical Republican, they are either profoundly ignorant or just lying.

As for the accuser's testimony, I agree with Scott Adams that she probably inserted some vaguely famous person whom she vaguely knew into a trauma she experienced long ago and had not thought specifically about, with all its details, with any attention to her specific memories, for decades.

If she were in a different situation, and doing this to an ordinary person, she might be prosecuted for stalking or sued for libel or slander, and false memory syndrome would be a pretty good defense.

On the bright side, I am now more confident that Woody Allen is not guilty of the worst things Ronan Farrow, who I now realize is an obvious hack and capable of being a dishonest and viciously unfair person, has said about him.

Feinstein is old and has tried, in her way, to do good in her life, and now she has to know that she did something despicable. It is sad.; 9/28/18, 7:51 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Moronic. "A wealthy, white suburban woman, married, with children. Her parents are Republicans." This describes most progressive women I know, except sometimes their parents are Democrats.; 9/28/18, 7:54 PM
Random Onlooker said...: Blasey-Ford's kid will be a Republican. Not her. Skips a generation.; 9/28/18, 8:27 PM
Tarrou said...: Democrats are desperate to somehow keep up the fiction that they are not the party of the 1%.; 9/28/18, 8:33 PM
William said...: I don think I've ever read or heard anything negative said about Anita Hill in the msm. It will probably be the same with this woman. Hell , even Stormy Daniels gets good press, and I would think her backstory must be fairly complicated.......I don't know anything about Dr. Ford's politics or psychology, but here's a certain, observable fact. Even if her story is true, she waited over thirty five years to pull the trigger on him, and she waited until it would inflict the greatest amount of harm on his family and reputation. I know we're not allowed to say anything bad about her, but does this strike anyone else as vindictive and calculating.; 9/28/18, 8:33 PM
Michael K said...: Blogger Random Onlooker said...
Blasey-Ford's kid will be a Republican. Not her. Skips a generation.

If he doesn't turn out a serial killer. 50-50, I'd say given the mother.

Susan RIce's son is president of the Stanford college Republicans.; 9/28/18, 8:36 PM
Michael K said...: one wonders how her father fell into foreclosure,

Then was president of the golf club.; 9/28/18, 8:38 PM
William said...: I think it would be edifying and instructive to to post clips of the various pundits and commentators as they discussed the debased nature of the Duke Lacrosse team. They take the word of a drug addled stripper over that of fraternity members.; 9/28/18, 8:40 PM
stephen cooper said...: William, we are allowed to say that, just as she may be a victim of attempted rape, she may also be a vicious stalker - with conscious intent to be a stalker or not, depending on the psychology of her memory, which she admits is not as good as she would like - anyway we are allowed to say she may be someone who strategically lies in order to inflict as much vicious damage on the victim and the victim's children as she possibly can. It is no more wrong to say that the accuser may be a vicious stalker than to say the accused may be a rapist.

Kavanaugh is the only person in the world (not named Ford) who knows for sure, assuming he never got black out drunk at a party like the party she describes. In which case, nobody knows, except, maybe, the accuser.

The evil of the Democrats' vituperation of a man who is - in the estimation of many people who have assessed the evidence - more likely than not innocent (and certainly there is no probable cause to establish that a crime may have been committed by him, in any of the evidence so far) is that they assume, as if they were angels of light, that they know the truth. Of course the pro-abortion party is not going to be full of people with deep spiritual insights into the truth of what other people are saying.

Every person who makes a nasty joke about Kavanaugh is guilty of vicious slander. Not because he is certainly innocent, but because they do not know if he is innocent or not, and they do not have the right to pretend they know he is guilty, at least not without forfeiting their right to be considered decent people.; 9/28/18, 8:48 PM
wholelottasplainin said...: My wife belongs to a smallish exercise group that includes women of lower-middle-class-to-very rich economic status. A couple are lawyers and professionals, others are office workers; one runs a day care.

They have a great social life together, which I envy very much; I don't have anywhere near the same number of close friends living near me.

Thing is, one of them, by far the richest lady in the class, is a Trump Hater who sends tweets and Facebook messages expressing her anger against the POTUS and the GOP to the other members of her group.

What she doesn't know is, she's in the minority. Roughly 2/3's of the ladies think Trump is doing just fine. But they keep their comments to themselves until Mrs. Ritch rhymes-with is out of earshot.

Myself, I'd tell her to eff off and go find another group, yet they seem to value social harmony over everything else.

But I suspect that as they watch what the Senate fascisti are doing to K and his family, they're wondering why they should coddle a person who apparently supports such detestable Democrats.; 9/28/18, 9:15 PM
wholelottasplainin said...: John Lynch said...
Psych profs are not Republicans. Ever.
*************

OK, he's Canadian and therefore not GOP, but....Jordan Peterson.; 9/28/18, 9:19 PM
Mark said...: Unexplained is what kind of bedroom door has locks, let alone locks that keep people in

Interesting point. Come to think of it, usually bedroom doors do not lock. Some do, I've seen them. But parents typically would not want their kids to be able to lock their doors -- even if the parents might want to be able to lock theirs.

The locks on bedroom doors I have seen are not much of a lock. They are push-button locks that open from the inside from a mere turn of the knob, and can be unlocked from the outside by any long pointy item inserted into a small hole. You can't have something super secure for safety reasons.; 9/28/18, 10:05 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: Puh-leeze. Stanford professors are not Republicans.; 9/28/18, 10:23 PM
rcocean said...: She's a rich, palo alto Professor.

80-90% of all professors in the USA are liberal Democrats.

Its been shown in survey after survey - for years!; 9/28/18, 10:48 PM
rcocean said...: I thought Althouse was a traitor to her class.; 9/28/18, 10:49 PM
rcocean said...: 2/3 of American Billionaires are liberal Democrats.; 9/28/18, 10:50 PM
Big Mike said...: @rcocean, they’re Democrats because it was easy to buy that party. If it had been cheaper to buy the GOP then they’d be Republicans.; 9/28/18, 11:14 PM
Big Mike said...: Donald Trump remade the Republican Party in 2016, much the chagrin of many alleged conservatives and people who had (mistakenly) thought of themselves as conservative Republicans. The press just hasn’t caught up yet. Donald Trump’s party is the party of the small businessman, the party of the long haul trucker, the party of the rancher and the farmer, and fundamentally the party of the people who work with their hands.; 9/28/18, 11:23 PM
LA_Bob said...: Karen of Texas,

This is largely where I am on Christine Blasey, although I am not at all convinced of the molestation angle. But, it seems to me the family was dysfunctional in some way, and there is likely as much a problem with the parents as there is with Christine. I suspect she has never gotten much emotional support from her parents, and it shows. She seems so fragile, and the reports of some five dozen sex partners during high school add weight to this in my mind.

I have sympathy for this troubled woman. She is really not a "normal" person. I know something about dysfunctional families. The impact can be huge. In this case, the dysfunctionality drama found its way to the national stage and crazily fueled the flames of partisanship and the mob mentality of the media.

The Kavanaugh confirmation would otherwise have been but mildly controversial.; 9/28/18, 11:26 PM
Achilles said...: Progressives are the party of the very very wealthy and the permanent poor underclass and it's mandarin managers.

She is just one of the mandarins that was born wealthy, went to the right schools, and now works the finishing school for other wealthy mandarin children to join the class.; 9/29/18, 1:16 AM
walter said...: Bob said...Karen of Texas, This is largely where I am on Christine Blasey, although I am not at all convinced of the molestation angle.
--
Did Kavanaugh fondle her on a plane? Did her Dad force her on a plane? Did..was...could it be (more caffeine please)...it might be..the effects of one beer and the unreliability of a sick friend.

This will take but a week.
Let's all watch how the definition of a "a week" gets trans-formed.; 9/29/18, 1:22 AM
walter said...: Achilles,
My roommate at UW-Madness was a secular Jewish lib who would wave at random black people and joined Men Stopping Rape..when he wasn't on his futon reading liberation theology and Malcolm X...era of "every man is a potential rapist."
We have come so far....; 9/29/18, 1:35 AM
walter said...: (We had a major falling out when, back in the Act 10 days, launched into a presumptive conversation with me about that, his brother being a Milwaukee Public School psychologist); 9/29/18, 1:38 AM
MadisonMan said...: It's a mistake to draw conclusions from one act, or from one person.; 9/29/18, 7:12 AM
Anonymous said...: All this stuff with the "Republican" and "white male" angle is a projection of the writers' own resentments and neuroses. (Though in some cases - say, twitter catladies as opposed to people who write for publications with "New York..." somewhere in the title - it's more the product of stupidity and docility to perceived authority.)

This one, and the Schwartz article discussed in a previous post, are just tamer versions of the genre, motivated by the same psychology that, in its more nakedly nutty form, gives us Sabrina Erdely Rubin. The rich white frat boy (and there's usually a tony golf club reference in there somewhere) is their Emmanuel Goldstein.

It's a remarkably silly and juvenile genre, on the level of comic-book fantasy. Yet people who subscribe to publications with "New York..." somewhere in the title continue to take it seriously.; 9/29/18, 7:42 AM
Sloanasaurus said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/29/18, 7:57 AM
Sloanasaurus said...: We still know nothing about Ford, or what she did from 1982 - 2012. My guess is that she did NOT behave like the "typical republican woman voter" on her journey to being known for making the most famous uncorroborated allegation in American History (perhaps next to Joe McCarthy and the woman who accused Emmit Till).

When people look at her life currently, as it has been reported to us, we assume that she got there incrementally - every year getting a little better - like an ever increasing straight line. That appears to be the chart for Brett Kavanaugh and his family (as success is a family event), because unlike Ford, we know a lot more about him. That is the chart everyone wants, and it takes hard work and planning to get there.

But, Ford's life could be like a volatile stock price, she might have a lot of ups and downs along the way to where she is now. And if we knew about these ups and downs, we might have a different opinion about her and her "credibility." Who knows...; 9/29/18, 7:58 AM
Sloanasaurus said...: Also, has anyone noticed that Ford has become a Rich woman from this event. Our society rewards those who make uncorroborated allegations, if they meet a political end.

The media claims that she had no motive to become the Accuser. But, she is getting rich from doing it. She will make tens of millions in her lifetime from this incident.

That does not seem fair.; 9/29/18, 8:11 AM
MacMacConnell said...: We now can confirm that ANTIFA isn't anti-fascist, otherwise they'd be beating the shit out of the Judicial Committee Democrat Senators with bike locks.; 9/29/18, 8:14 AM
MacMacConnell said...: Ford's parents didn't sign the letter because they know the truth about Ford. She a manipulating bitch who had academic problems early because of excessive alcohol and sex as a teenager.; 9/29/18, 8:18 AM
Jupiter said...: William said...
"I know we're not allowed to say anything bad about her, but does this strike anyone else as vindictive and calculating."

To tell you the truth, no. It would be vindictive and calculating if Kavanaugh had molested her. But destroying the career of a stranger who never did you any harm for political reasons is certainly not vindictive. And I don't see much evidence of calculation either. She is a tool, being used. Like Anita Hill, she thought she could wreck the nomination with anonymous lies. She got muscled into testifying, and she probably was "terrified".; 9/29/18, 9:37 AM
Dad29 said...: Whatever it was that wrote the article you linked, Professor, is a genuine HATER. Hates golfers, hates men, hates suburbanites, hates people with children, hates people who are married....

Sheesh.; 9/29/18, 12:23 PM
truth speaker said...: Utter nonsense.; 9/29/18, 7:01 PM