Ford and the Accusations Against Kavanaugh

Brett Kavanaugh.

I guess it is proper for the US Senate Judiciary Committee to listen to what Dr. Christine Ford has to say, if she is at last ready to testify, about Judge Brett Kavanaugh. But by this point it can only be pro forma, for the sake of completing the record.

It is no longer just a case of he said-she said. Ford claimed four people were witnesses to the event; and all four of them have now stated under oath that so far as they know or can recall the thing never happened. So it is her word against five other people, counting Kavanaugh himself.

The general consensus is that it must have been a case of mistaken identity. I think the more plausible explanation, given Ford's apparent reluctance to testify, repeatedly making demands that sound patently unreasonable, is that she is simply lying for partisan political purposes. Someone who has been wronged and feels they have justice on their side should be eager to testify. Instead, it looks as though she is very afraid of having to make her claims under oath, and is looking for ways to avoid this, while stalling the nomination process as long as possible.

The argument that she must be honestly mistaken instead of lying is founded, it seems, on the confidence that someone so socially prominent as a sociology professor would not go around lying.

That is a naive and frankly classist, discriminatory, assumption, it seems to me. Sure they would. Social prominence is no assurance whatsoever of morality. Anyone who has read the New Testament should have internalized that message.

I bet in the end she finds some excuse not to testify.