That’s news to me, but it’s actually good news, I’m just missing the details. Did he explode, was he loaded into a missile and fired into the sun, was he fed to crocodiles? Inquiring minds want to know.
That was the title of a whine by Rod Dreher, wonders After Kavanaugh’s Destruction, Who Is Safe?
Really, that’s his title.
Someone should break the harsh news to his persecution complex that Kavanaugh wasn’t destroyed, but was instead appointed to the Supreme Court, the pinnacle of achievement for an American lawyer who likes his brewskis. The President of the US made it a great big partisan event! A Facebook executive threw a big party for him (Facebook loves the Trumpster, and the Russians who make all those ad buys for him). The Nazis are celebrating on the internet!
The far right on Twitter is celebrating Kavanaugh’s confirmation just as you’d expect pic.twitter.com/4HFzMdYTaF
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture) October 6, 2018
I don’t know how he missed it all. Maybe it’s because his source on this article is David Brooks, whose head is so far up his own ass that he vocalizes by vibrating his hemorrhoids while farting.
But if there’s anyone dumber than David Brooks, it’s Rod Dreher. He proceeds to out-Brooks Brooks with a story.
I can’t tell this story often enough: In my rural Southern town, back in the 1940s, a black man and a white woman were discovered in sexual congress. The woman accused him of rape. The sheriff and two deputies hunted the black man down through the woods, captured him, dragged him back to the jailhouse, and lynched him. Days later, the white accuser broke down under the weight of her conscience. She confessed that the black man had been her lover. She had accused him of rape to save her own reputation in that white supremacist culture.
There was never any chance that that black man would have had the opportunity to defend himself in court. There was never any chance that he would be considered innocent until proven guilty. Everybody (that is, all whites, who held all the power) knew that black men seethed with lust for white women. Everybody knew that no white woman could possibly find black men sexually desirable. In a case like this one, there’s no need for a fair trial; you believe the woman. If you don’t believe the woman, and exact swift and sure punishment for her assailant, then it will be open season for black men to rape white women. That was what the power-holders in that time and place believed.
So let me get this straight. In this metaphor for the current situation, a wealthy white prep school boy and Yalie is…the Southern black man in the 1940s? And Christine Blasey Ford is the wicked woman who lied to protect her honor…by stepping forward and revealing an otherwise unknown act, paying for it with loss of security, the need to leave her home, and receiving a deluge of death threats? And “lynching” is being used as a synonym for “being appointed to the Supreme Court”?
Does Dreher think Ford and Kavanaugh were secret lovers? I would not be surprised. Conservatives have been flinging all kinds of ludicrous justifications around.
Everything about this story is totally inappropriate and misplaced. This is a guy weaponizing racism to make bogus excuses for a wealthy, privileged white man.
His conclusion is also bizarre.
Brett Kavanaugh, from what I can tell, is a by-the-book pinstriped Washington Republican. If the liberal mob can turn him into History’s Greatest Monster on the basis of unsupported allegations from his teenage years, and on the basis of his race and gender, then who is safe?
Errm, “by-the-book pinstriped Washington Republican” has become synonymous with “History’s Greatest Monster”. That’s not the work of a liberal mob, but the actions of Republicans — you can’t support Republican policies like denial of science, gutting of education, an overt attack on women’s autonomy, widespread corruption and incompetence, and then be surprised when people wear garlic necklaces and throw holy water as you pass by.
And who is safe? Men who didn’t assault women. It’s like suddenly every Republican is tugging at their collar and beading up with sweat, as if they have a guilty conscience or something. It makes one wonder.
OGH: “It makes one wonder.”
In case anyone was wondering what the word “irony” means…
I had never heard of Rod Dreher before. He seems to be maintaining the high intellectual standards one has come to expect from US Republican commentators.
With any luck, I will not hear of him again.
This seems very reminiscent of what Clarence Thomas said, regarding his “high-tech lynching”, except the metaphor is even worse in this case. Firstly because Brett Kavanaugh is white, secondly because though what Thomas did is certainly deplorable, Kavanaugh is far worse, but thirdly because if Thomas referred to potentially being denied a seat on the Supreme Court as being lynched, surely actually becoming a Supreme Court Justice would be as far from being lynched as possible (short of being elected President, of course). Then again, Dreher would probably also think that Anita Hill was secretly in love with Clarence Thomas.
This seems very reminiscent of what Clarence Thomas said, regarding his “high-tech lynching”, except the metaphor is even worse in this case. Firstly because Brett Kavanaugh is white, secondly because though what Thomas did is certainly deplorable, Kavanaugh is far worse, but thirdly because if Thomas referred to potentially being denied a seat on the Supreme Court as being lynched, surely actually becoming a Supreme Court Justice would be as far from being lynched as possible (short of being elected President, of course). Then again, Dreher would probably also think that Anita Hill was secretly in love with Clarence Thomas.
I may have clicked Post Comment twice. Please delete one of the copies.
I was expected Dreher to go on to discuss how his daddy, Atticus Dreher, valiantly came to the black man’s defense….
Seriously, though, I have seen multiple conservatives cite To Kill a Mockingbird as justification for confirming Kavanaugh. You have to be seriously twisted to derive “bitches be lyin'” as the message of that novel.
So Dreher sees Kavanaugh as a victim in spite of Kavanaugh not suffering any consequences or even being subjected to a substantial investigation, and yet Republicans jabber about #metoo promoting “victim culture”?
A black woman raped by a white man would also never get a day in court. Funny how racist whites never think of that.
Kavanaugh and his ilk are much more like the white man raping a black woman than a black man being falsely accused.
I must be missing something. This story is very close to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, with a few details changed. Time period is close too. Did Dreher grow up in the same town in Alabama?
Of course, we all remember the trumped-up charges of sexual assault brought against Neil Gorsuch, don’t we?
Only if you are a delusional fool, as too many changes are required to make the story hang together.
I think Scout accusing Bo Radley of assault thirty years later as he was appointed to high political position would be more appropriate as an anology. Almost equal social status, but a woman saying a man did her wrong years ago.
Close enough that Dreher (and/or Lee) could have embellished a few things from what they saw, heard, or read. But I suppose they could be distinct events, both with a black man facing a white woman over sexual allegations, and white supremacists.
Who is safe? Anyone who 1) didn’t assault people. and 2) perjure himself in a ton of ways, (related and unrelated to the credible and supported assault charges) in front of the senate judiciary committee.
Actually, it seems that if you’re a white preppy you’re safe if even if you do both, but Dreher seems to mean “safe from any sort of criticism, anytime, anywhere.” By definition, anyone who’s alive isn’t safe from that, although entitled white males seem to think they ought to be.
It’s funny, through all of this I feel perfectly safe from false accusations. I literally only think about it when other people bring it up.
Need,
You misread willj’s point. They’re comparing the story Dreher told to Mockingbird, not the Kavanaugh assault.
willj, sadly the story was all too common in the US, so no reason to assume that they were thinking of the same one.
#16 Actually I was more evil than that. I was insinuating that Dreher may have read the story and fabricated his own. A quick search of the web shows that he’s interested in Harper Lee’s story. If there are indeed two distinct stories, I think it’s odd that he didn’t didn’t reference Harper Lee’s story in the article.
“was he loaded into a missile and fired into the sun?”
Please don’t use this figure of speech – as you know (I hope!) it is damned difficult to send a missile to the sun. That is why the Parker Space Probe needed to be sent on such a complicated trajectory.
Your audience includes children who hope to learn from your postings. Think of the children!
Did this really happen.
Or is Rod Dreher lying?
Cmon, he is a Republican.
He is also a fundie xian.
Fundie xians always, always lie!!!
The chances that he just made this up is close to 100%.
FWIW, Rod Dreher was born in 1967.
The chances that he knows anything for sure about an alleged event in 1940 ‘s is also around zero.
As PZ points out, Brett Kavanaugh is a monster.
A by the book, pinstriped Washington member of the New Monsters Party, once known as the GOP.
It has zero to do with a liberal mob.
They are what they are by choice.
And they aren’t History’s Greatest Monsters.
That takes talent and brains.
Merely small “m” monsters.
And oh yeah, so is Rod Dreher.
A routine garden variety hater and liar.
I’d heard the name Rod Dreher but that was about it.
Way too many religious kooks, not enough interest or time.
He’s pathetic.
A routine garden variety hater of atheists, Muslims, gays, trans, and probably more.
I read one of his posts where he combines his hates of the Catholic church, gays, and atheists.
It was basically a huge wall of god babble where every sentence was just an assertion without proof and demonstrably wrong.
It was grammatically correct, punctuated,…gibberish.
…burning pieces filtered down through the atmosphere all across the globe for years, streaks of orange fire trailing oily white smoke. Where parts of the wreck of the Great Putz Kavanaugh fell the Earth was poisoned and thereafter in them only the hardiest and most noxious weeds would grow. Most animals will not willingly enter these places; the sole exceptions are horrid baboon-like mutants who’ve made strange shrines of the shriveled bits of the GPK, and the repulsive parasitic creatures (which vaguely resemble shell-less turtles) who’ve attached themselves to the mutants’ buttocks.
Those unlucky pregnant women who were exposed to the foul smoke of the wreckage gave birth to cruel, bellowing, red-faced monstrosities who, if fed anything but grain alcohol, weep in a most piteous and appalling manner. These unpleasant but impeccably-coifed beings are expected (and expect) to rise to prestigious positions in the highest levels of government.
“After Kavanaugh’s Destruction…”
Bad PZ! Bad!!
I saw that heading, and for one joyful moment I thought I should rush to check the news, but it was just clickbait* 😢
though, I suppose, not too baity since I’d have read it anyway.
Dreher is notorious for (amongst other things) having a number of alleged correspondents who all write exactly like him and tell stories which are incredibly convenient for whatever lousy point he’s trying to make at the time. Roy Edroso has been keeping an eye on him for quite some time: https://alicublog.blogspot.com/search?q=dreher&max-results=20&by-date=true
Dreher may be lying about knowing about a particular case, but rape of white women was a really common excuse for lynching black men. In at least some cases, this will have been based on consensual activity that others in the community objected to.
Look, for example, at Emmett Till – there the excuse was that he whistled at a white woman.
OK, we’ve seen enough.
Given who Rod Dreher is, and his history,
that he is telling the truth is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof!!!
There isn’t going to be any proof.
I read some of his writing yesterday.
It’s routine fundie xian liar and hater god babble. It’s also demonstrably, factually wrong.
One of his pet hates is gays and gay marriage.
Gay marriage is going to destroy our society.
Gary marriage has been legal for a long time in some countries and in the USA for a while.
It made no difference and no one cares any more.
If two people get married, it is none of my business and doesn’t effect me.
Rod Dreher is just a creepy kook who is wildly upset that it is getting harder for right wingnut fundie xians to tell the rest of us what to do and how to live our lives.
I’d like to point something else out about this Kavanaugh shit; a woman came forward with testimony about Kavanaugh’s alleged wrongdoing. Why would it have been the right thing to ignore her outright? Are we supposed to automatically discount allegations against Kavanaugh just because the Republicans like him? “Innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t mean much unless the plaintiff is given a chance to fulfill the burden of proof. That’s not possible without a thorough investigation.
All I know is no woman is going to come out in front of the whole country and lie about something like that many years later. It makes no fning sense to me. Such BS on the right.