LISTEN TO THE KIDS

LISTEN TO THE KIDS

At 9:11 last night, I talked to an expert witness on the veracity of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's testimony yesterday.

The expert was my 27 year old daughter, Courtney.

For the entire day, she was live streaming the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on charges by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, sexually assaulted her thirty-six years ago.

Every so often, a text message alert on my phone sounded . . .

And my daughter sounded off. 

At 2:27, it was "How are some of these crack pots Senators?"  A moment later, the"greatest deliberative body" "sound[ed] like idiots" to her.  Later on, she noticed that a bunch of "grandpa[s]" were making "serious decisions about people my age."  "No offense," she added, just to assure me she had nothing against grandfathers. By 5:15, as Brett Kavanaugh was in full battle-mode,  blaming even the Clintons for his current troubles, an all caps text showed up --  "THIS IS CRAZY," she said.  The hearing was a "train wreck."

Then she had dinner . . . 

Thought about what had been said  from the stand by the Judge . . .

And shared thoughts with one of her best friends, Angela.

At 9:11, my phone rang.

Kavanaugh, she said,  reminded her and her friends of all the entitled and over-inebriated frat boys they met in high school and college.  Their partying was non-stop and their behavior often unhinged.  Alcohol fueled a "hook up" culture where saying "No" wasn't always taken as no, and even worse, a culture where it sometimes became impossible even to utter the word.   The notion that Brett never forgot what happened during a night of hard partying, or that Kavanaugh himself wasn't such a creature, were in her mind preposterous. Too many of his friends and associates from the time were telling a different story, all of them couldn't be wrong, and nothing about this dark side was at all surprising.

To my daughter, it was reality.

I asked her if the fact that the assault had taken place in high school should create some sort of defense. 

No, she said.

Why?

Because Christine Blasey was assaulted.  She wasn't "hooking up"or fooling around.  And when she yelled, her assailant covered her mouth.

Kavanaugh went all-Trump in his defense. 

Instead of answering questions, he attacked his inquisitors.  When Sen. Klobuchar -- with some experience as a daughter of an alcoholic -- asked Kavanaugh if he had ever blacked out from drinking, he retorted "Have you?"  When Sen. Whitehouse asked about yearbook references implying that a drunken Brett had, as they say, ridden the porcelain bus, the Judge said he "liked beer" and asked what Whitehouse "liked to drink." 

As Sen. Feinstein was explaining the need for an independent FBI investigation, he repeatedly interrupted her, claiming the hearing itself -- with a mere two witnesses, and no subpoena to bring in Mark Judge, the other guy Dr. Ford put in the room with  Kavanaugh on the night of the assault  -- was some sort of appropriate substitute.  In a stunning exchange with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, he sat in dumbfounded silence for seconds after Durbin asked if Kavanaugh -- an appellate judge and former special prosecutor who has routinely worked with the FBI -- would support such an investigation.

As with all liars, it's not the big stuff, the main lie, that trips them up.

Other than Trump, who lies about the big and the small and most of what is in between, "smart" liars have the big stuff down.

Instead, it's the small stuff that gets them.

About mid-way through his questioning, Sen. Whitehouse asked Kavanaugh about references in his high school yearbook  to "boofing" and a "Devil's triangle."  The first, said Kavanaugh, was teenage talk about "flatulence."  "I'm game" to talk about that, a cocky Kavanaugh retorted, basically inviting Whitehouse to play the fool who would keep someone off the Supreme Court for joking about farting in high school.

The second, he claimed, referred to a "drinking game." 

The sub-text here was unmistakable.  We've reached a new low when Supreme Court nominees can be questioned about innocent high jinks stupidly memorialized in their high school year books.  Indeed, Sen. Hatch practically had a coronary as he lamented a standard of review that ostensibly turns an "immature high schooler" who said "stupid things" in a yearbook into a "sexual predator."

Courtney got off the phone a 9:45.

Just before, she let her ancient father know that a "Devil's triangle" is not a drinking game. It's a "two boy on girl threesome."  

In other words,what Kavanaugh and Judge were attempting to do to Christine Blasey.

At 10:10, another text from my daughter.  This one said ""FYI, boofing means putting alcohol up your butt." 

Yuk!

Kavanaugh is a liar.

How do I know?

He lies about the small stuff.

The stuff he thinks Sheldon Whitehouse is too old to understand or too embarrassed to contest.

The stuff I now know he lied about only because I . . .

Listened to my  kid.