Kavanaugh's how-dare-you-hold-me-accountable face. AP photo

The latest verification that blackout drunk frat boy and Supreme Court Justice Lying Beer Bong is a serial sexual predator - revealed in this weekend's New York Times story of a boozed-up, pants-down Kavanaugh at a dorm party shoving his dick into the hand of a female student, just like he did with Deborah Ramirez - is dismally unsurprising. So is the news he repeatedly lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings, fuming and whining he never went to parties or oh my goodness attempted rape at any of those accursed parties 'cause as God was his witness he was way too busy with church and family and working hard and okay maybe having a few brewskis, when it was grotesquely clear here was a lying, loser, privileged putz with "a sociopathic streak you could see from the moon." Likewise less than shocking, though deeply disturbing, is more proof that the thugs in the GOP-run, so-called Justice Department intent on greasing the way for one of their own worked overtime to cover up his multiple abuses, with a bullshit whitewash of an FBI "investigation" that inexplicably declined to talk to any of the reported several dozen people, and at least one Senator, willing and even pleading to corroborate the story. Less expected, however, is the unholy mess the Times made of the story.

They ran it as an "opinion" piece focused on Ramirez' story. Their bizarre headline noted that Kavanaugh "Fit In With the Privileged Kids" and she did not. They buried the lede - ie: only got to the news of a new, previously unknown allegation after many paragraphs. And they teased the story with the staggeringly offensive tweet, “Having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun...” adding that because Ramirez was grossed out by said dick and the possible rape it conjured up, she figured she didn't belong at Yale. Say what?! The Times later backtracked, twice. Regardless, the story sparked impeachment calls from Democrats, as well as outrage from the right when the Times later noted the traumatized victim didn't remember the episode - ergo, in wingnut world, it didn't happen. Above all, the story served as a reminder of the awful, enduring truth at the heart of the Kavanaugh travesty: An unremarkable, arrogant, entitled white boy, what Trump called "a perfect human being," can rise to power, enjoying the impunity of his privilege as a birthright, and never be held accountable for the hurt he does. Alexandra Petri: "Harmless fun is when nothing real is hurt," like when two friends knock the head off a doll, or hit a baseball into a window, or steal a lunch, or hold down a girl until she is so terrified she cannot breathe. "Fun is what I do to you," she writes. Why are you not laughing?

"So many things are fun, when you have the right perspective. Calling people funny names! Grabbing someone by the — anywhere! Anything can be fun if no one is hurt. (If you are hurt, you are no one.)" - Petri