Not that anybody asked me. But here’s my take: I think it’s entirely possible that Christina Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh are both telling the truth as they remember it.
How well do you remember events that occurred when you were “stumbling drunk”? I’ve drunk some wine on a very, very few occasions and remember a slight buzz, I guess, but I don’t know what being drunk is like. I’ve done a little bit of Wikipedia diving and found that yes, you can indeed forget/not be able to remember something that happened when you were very drunk.
Okay. So that’s part of my theory. Here’s another very important piece: Brett Kavanaugh was good friends in high school with Mark Judge, the other 17-year-old that Dr. Ford says was in the room during the alleged assault. It’s interesting that Kavanaugh has not denied being friends with Judge; indeed, there would be no way he could as there’s plenty of evidence showing their closeness. Why is Judge so important? Because he’s written two memoirs detailing his blackout drinking and drug use during high school and college. (I could find only one on Amazon: Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk. It’s out of print and is marked as having “extremely limited availability.” The other one is titled God and Man at Georgetown Prep, according to an article in the Washington Post.) The excerpts I’ve read are pretty harrowing. In it he talks about a friend, “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who’s known to have vomited and passed out in a car after drinking to excess. A pretty thin pseudonym of his known friend, one could say. Both boys were members of something called the “100-Keg Club,” a reference to a goal set by their senior class for beer consumption before graduation. (This information has been gleaned from Kavanaugh’s and Judge’s senior high-school yearbooks, but I’m not sure how these were made public. Kavanaugh apparently lists himself as the treasurer of “100 Kegs or Bust.”) Judge details a number of times when he blacked out while drunk and then afterwards worried about what he had done, especially about whether or not he had harmed any girls. So that’s pretty . . . suggestive.
Kavanaugh’s assertion that he never attended any such drunken party as was described by Ford is belied by Judge’s books, in which we’re told:
We took turns having parties. The word would get out that someone’s parents were going away, and the other guys would pressure them into ‘popping,’ promising to help them keep things under control. This, of course, was a joke. I had seen houses destroyed by rampaging hordes of drunken teenagers.
So it seems completely credible to me, given Mark Judge is listed by Christina Ford as being the other person in the room (and how would she have known about him if she’s just making this whole thing up?) and given this type of party was routine, that while for her this attack was life-changing, for Kavanaugh and Judge it was simply a forgotten incident at a party like dozens of others they attended. There are calls for Mark Judge to be subpoenaed and forced to testify under oath; I think that seems like a reasonable and fair thing to do.
Should you be held responsible for actions that took place a) while you were still a teenager, and b) while you were blind drunk? Well, let me remind you that a drunk driver who kills someone is held guilty of at least manslaughter. And 17 isn’t 14. I just think that this is a classic case of one’s past catching up with one at the worst possible moment. If Kavanaugh never drank to excess and never went to parties, why doesn’t he say so?
Here’s what he could and should say:
During my high school years at an all-boys’ school I indulged in heavy drinking, often going to house parties at places where the parents were absent. There were often girls at these parties from the nearby girls’ school, and they were usually drinking heavily also. There were times when I couldn’t clearly remember everything that had happened at these occasions. It is entirely possible that I did indeed do what Dr. Ford has reported, but I have no memory of it. I can’t categorically deny or confirm her account of my actions. All I can say is, if I did this it was wrong, and I sincerely apologize. I have gone on to build a life and a career of which I am proud. I am not proud of my behavior as a teenager, though, and if this event is seen as just cause for terminating my Supreme Court nomination, so be it. I accept responsibility for my actions and will take the consequences. It has been a great honor for me to be named as a candidate to the highest court in the land, no matter what happens next. I leave the final decision to the US Senate.
I could stop there, but I do think, in all fairness, that it should be pointed out that Ford went to this party voluntarily. She was only 15, for heaven’s sake! What was she thinking? I’m reminded of a segment on our local PBS new show, “Colorado Matters,” in which two young women from CU Boulder were interviewed about the dangerous atmosphere at fraternity house parties on campus. They’d be sure to keep a hand over their drinks at all times to foil attempts to spike them with rohypnol and would take care to stay with another girl. And I asked myself, ‘Why on earth would you want to attend a party where you were in danger of being drugged and raped?’ Come on, girls! You know better than that!
Still, in the end, we don’t excuse the robber because the victim foolishly walked down a dark alley or left his keys in the ignition. We hold the perpetrator responsible. I don’t think that dreadful teenage behavior means your whole life is ruined by any means. Still, if this assault really happened, then Kavanaugh needs to take his lumps. It would be far, far better for him and everyone else concerned to just own up to at least his overall behavior. He needn’t, and shouldn’t, admit to doing something he can’t remember, but he can at least say that . . . he doesn’t remember.
Well, we’ll see what happens, as the President often says. I have to point out, once again, that many of us said before the election that voting for someone like Donald Trump in order to get conservative Supreme Court justices was making a deal with the Devil, and boy, is that prophecy turning out to be true. This coming week is going to be yet another doozy.