SO WE'RE LIKE: BLASEY! BLASEY! BLASEY!



People (rude people, that is) occasionally ask us why so many of our seriated items seem to consist of first entries only, or a mere two or three out of a proposed quartet, and so on. Sloth, of course, is the only valid explanation, but that is hardly to say we are unheedful of our critics. In the spirit of reform, then, we hereby present a second entry in our Lionesses of the Left “series”–meaning, if prescriptive usage retains any significance in these desolate times, only one additional entry is required to fulfill the minimum criteria. But one lioness at a time, we always say.

Truth to power!

Our current Lioness, even before her name was revealed, gained the full-throated support of every televised commentator, major newspaper, and self-absorbed show-business numpty, insuring her recognition as one of the most widely exalted speakers of truth to power since Christie Brinkley testified before congress on the growing menace of nuclear power plants–Miss Brinkley’s expertness deriving on that occasion from the fact that she lived near one. But we digress. Our current Lioness is none other than Christine Blasey Ford, Ph.D. who spoke truth to power (italicized here only because the Depot Masthead format on WordPress does not offer an echo feature), during her appearance before the Senate in September of 2018. Readers will recall Mrs. Blasey Ford’s bombshell assertion that on some unspecified date during some indeterminate year, she was sexually assaulted at some unrecallable location by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and his two drunken henchmen, unless it was only one, or possibly zero drunken henchmen, whose identities in any case remained mutable. The establishment media erupted in vociferous rage at Kavanaugh’s animalistic depravity, even as they declaimed Christine’s stunning courage–a quality invariably ascribed by media to Lionesses speaking (and this is the last time, we swear) truth to power. Some, however, wondered aloud why Ford waited nearly four decades to raise the issue. The answer, irrespective of whether one believes Ford’s story or not, is Donald Trump. Permit us to explain…

“Somebody needs to fix this!”

As of November, 2016, Donald Trump became for liberal America what Joe Biden might call an “exodential threat.” Trump’s electoral victory sent the entire progressive establishment into fits. Not only were actors and entertainers forced to walk back their pledges to flee the country (or, in Cher’s case, the planet), but media mavens, political analysts, pollsters, producers, and those bleached-or-blown-dry propagandists known as “anchors,” found themselves adrift without warning in an alien cosmos. Across the nation, college professors fought back their own anguish to provide solace, safe spaces, and anxiety counseling, to traumatized students. Indeed, on the morning of Trump’s victory, it was a frantic college student who gave the resistance its rallying cry, ending her widely-televised hysterics by shouting, “Somebody needs to fix this!”



So incredibly significant…

The initial assaults on Trump’s legitimacy are forgotten now, each “bombshell” having burst into headlines and vanished almost as quickly, making way for the next, equally ephemeral “bombshell,” finally forming a chain of pseudo-journalistic embarrassments– but suffice it for our current purpose that not only Trump, but all things Trumpish, became targets of “the resistance.” Brooke Baldwin at CNN personified her network’s histrionicism, one day prefacing Trump’s outrage-du jour [we forget which one, exactly] by blurting, “This is so incredibly significant!” to which she afterwards appended “This is not okay!” in case anyone missed her point. New unprecedented outrages were unearthed daily. Bombshell: Melania Trump’s Christmas decorations were too gaudy! Bombshell: Trump ate two scoops of ice cream but guests only got one! Bombshell: Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to pass off pie photos purloined from @PBS site as home-baked. All so incredibly significant..!

In an era of unprecedented media idiocy, Trump had no hope of naming Supreme Court nominees without provoking establishment-wide frenzies. On July 9th, 2018, he announced his selection of Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy. WOOF knows Kavenaugh’s selection was a compromise meant to mollify Kennedy, who made his retirement contingent on Trump picking an acceptably unthreatening replacement. But Kennedy’s acquiescence meant nothing to the radicalized leadership of the Democrat Party, nor, by extension, to that wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC commonly called “the news.” Despite receiving only three votes from Democrats, Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, gained confirmation in 2017, and liberal rage was unabated. With the Senate in Republican hands, Kavanaugh’s nomination would be impossible to block–unless, of course, some last-minute “bombshell” skewed the numbers!

T he DNC playbook features a shocking paucity of maneuvers, which rarely matters in praxis because the complicit media beat their drums so incessantly for whichever leftist snow job currently requires huckstering, the same three or four tactics usually work–or at least they used to. It eludes WOOF how even the most ardently anti-Trump conservative can fail to relish the fact that–if nothing else–Trump’s appetence for counter punching and his solipsistic immunity to the vitriol of establishment opinionists have scuttled the old rules and left his adversaries–on so many delightful occasions–flailing dazedly.

The Kennedy/Biden play….

The playbook’s method for dispensing with unwanted Supreme Court nominees was created long ago by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden. So successfully did they vilify, slander, and otherwise tarnish the good name of the brilliantly qualified Robert Heron Bork, that Bork withdrew rather than continue mud-wrestling two morons. The tactic became a transitive verb–as in “to Bork.” But Borking wouldn’t stop Kavanaugh, whose record was unladen with instances of juristic audacity susceptible to misrepresentation, and who didn’t even have a beard they could make fun of, as Biden had Bork’s. Indeed, Trump’s stated reasons for picking Kavanaugh included his “impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications, and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law,” all of which bore scrutiny.

Find me the next Anita Hill!

In such circumstances, there remained the Anita Hill maneuver–unsuccessfully attempted against Justice Clarence Thomas in the ’90s, but a sure winner at a moment when women were flooding Twitter with “me too!” testimonials, half the GOP privately loathed its own president, and the prospective target was White, heterosexual, and male. Anita Hill was unavailable, having faded into obscurity after souring everyone’s appetite for Coke in cans. But if the next Anita Hill hadn’t taken the stage, she was hovering timorously in the wings.

The reluctant Lioness….

Before achieving lionhood, this installment’s Lioness was merely an alarmed constituent—and we cannot lay it at our heroine’s feet that her constituency fell within the congressional district of Democrat Anna Eshoo, who is, by the way, the only Assyrian American in Congress–a detail we stress first because it seems to preoccupy her staff and her fan-base in the media, but mainly to remind readers who might otherwise shout “gesundheit!” on hearing the congresswoman’s name, that hate speech isn’t funny.

Anyway, eleven days after Trump nominated Kavanaugh, Christine Ford entered Eshoo’s office claiming to possess dirt on the nominee. It bears witness to the poignancy with which Ford must have related her account that Eshoo instantly pronounced her truthful and elevated her case to a loftier sanctum, the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. At such rarefied levels, however, grievances are submitted in writing, thus the details of Christine’s youthful despoilment arrived on Feinstein’s desk in letter form, accompanied, less noticeably perhaps, by certain budding synchronicities. Consider: Eshoo found Ford’s story so compelling that she recommended the matter to the attention of a powerful senator who represented California, making her Christine Ford’s senator, and who was also the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, scheduled to oversee Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Besides describing her victimization by Kavanaugh when he and she were high-school students in Bethesda, Maryland, Christine’s letter also emphasized her perfervid desire to remain anonymous. Feinstein later defended her failure to mention Ford’s accusations during the initial confirmation hearings as the only means of safeguarding her constituent’s identity–but that’s ludicrous. The notion that Feinstein sat on Ford’s charges as the sole alternative to naming her publicly ignores numerous less extreme options, and rings particularly hollow in view of the Democrats’ subsequent enthusiasm for cranking out daily headlines based on scandalous allegations ascribed to a secret “whistle blower,” whose anonymity was repeatedly–if arbitrarily–declared sacrosanct.

At least sideways…

With respect to this apparent paradox, we offer two thoughts. First, we are discussing Dianne Feinstein, a woman whose enthusiasm for banning “assault weapons” led her to address the Senate with her finger on the trigger of an AK-47, and who more recently endorsed Joe Biden for president, citing “his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitude.” Senator Feinstein, in other words, is not a serious thinker. Some argue that Feinstein disbelieved Ford’s allegations and spiked them to avoid embarrassment to the committee. Whatever the case, Christine’s lionhood was suspended until, once again, a confluence of circumstances impelled her toward the limelight. By September, various left-wing web sites were atwitter (as was Twitter, for that matter) with rumors Feinstein was withholding a letter containing information that would destroy Kavanaugh. This sudden chorus of oddly simultaneous leaks soon nudged Feinstein forward, or at least sideways.

Feinstein executed a lateral pass, handing the letter off to the FBI, which redacted Ford’s name (presumably as a safeguard against Trump sending ninjas to assassinate her) and forwarded the letter to the White House, calling it an “update on Judge Kavanaugh’s background check,” which was silly, since the Bureau hadn’t checked a word of it. With a nonchalance that must have rankled the FBI leadership, Trump’s people submitted the letter to the Senate judiciary committee, whose ranking Democrat, Diane Feinstein, had received it to begin with, and done her best to hide it. The judiciary committee as a body, however, was by no means inclined to ignore Christine’s story, although even the most radical committee members realized that without a name attached, it amounted to little more than a spritzing of graffiti. The media, after all, had been hammering Trump with anonymous sources for over two years with such disheartening results that a verifiable accuser seemed mandatory.

A a flesh-and-blood victim willing to make her victimhood a matter of public record, and as melodramatically as possible, was desperately sought. When Christine seemed reluctant to embrace her destiny, the leakers began chorusing afresh–this time whispering her name into tactically-useful ears–some of which were attached to the editorial staff at the Washington Post, which lost no time entreating Ford to come forth and save the Republic. Haunted by visions of a renegade Supreme Court ruled by a fascist majority answerable solely to Donald Trump, Christine, who originally whispered her accusations anonymously over the newspaper’s tip line, steeled her nerve and consented to an interview. So favorably did the Post’s editors resonate to Christine’s story, they rushed it to print without a scintilla of corroborative evidence. The Rubicon was crossed.

Ironically, it was Christine’s move to retain legal representation that made her “outing” inevitable. Once her Democrat lawyers were immersed in negotiations with the Democrats on the committee, all of whom leaked constantly to the press, Ford’s hopes of retaining any semblance of privacy were dashed. The Washington Post simply formalized the event, after which the New York Times reported, “After days of intense and closely watched legal wrangling, lawyers for the woman, Christine Blasey Ford, reached final agreement with the committee…for Dr. Blasey [sic] to testify.”

(READ MORE)

What, me radical?

W ith Christine’s name in headlines, the priority shifted to obfuscating her political radicalism, lest it be seized upon by narrow minded conservatives as motivating her charges. To this end, nearly every information-and-news organization in America performed yeoman’s work keeping the public in the dark by omitting any discussion of Ford’s pro-impeachment activism, opposition to Trump’s climate and border policies, financial contributions to Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign, militant support for abortion on demand, or even the fact that she was a registered Democrat. When word leaked despite the mainstream’s best efforts (blame those pesky right-wing websites) the Washington Post had a disinformation campaign ready to go. Ford’s opposition to Trump, snarfed the Post, stemmed entirely from her dismay at discovering her rapist-manque listed among Trump’s Supreme Court choices, and who could blame her? By the time a few right-wing bloggers began wondering aloud how the legendarily scrupulous Post missed the fact that Kavanaugh’s name was not added to Trump’s list until November 2017–by which time Dr. Ford was a familiar figure at anti-Trump events–the media had moved on to “matters of greater importance.”

Ford’s principal attorney, Debra Katz, proved an unwitting hindrance to Christine’s sheep-dipping. At the University of Baltimore’s Feminist Legal Theory Conference, Katz revealed that Christine came forward out of fear that Kavanaugh’s appointment threatened abortion rights, a fact first reported in Ryan Lovelace’s book Search and Destroy: Inside the Campaign Against Brett Kavanaugh, and later confirmed by video footage. “When [Kavanaugh] takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade,” Katz warned, “we will know who he is… It is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.” Evidently, few journalists procure tickets to the University of Baltimore’s Feminist Legal Theory Conference, because Katz’s revelations went unreported, together with her quintessentially liberal inference that a man who dislikes killing babies will probably also rape coeds.

Christine Blasey Ford finally addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, September 27th, 2018. Her first utterance was undoubtedly true. “I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified,” she told the committee, She then stressed a theme destined to mist the eyes of many an interviewer, politico, and audience member to come, insisting her “civic duty” impelled her testimony, adding, in her quavering soprano, “I felt like I couldn’t not do it.” In that moment, Ford could have aced any polygraph. First, she was most definitely someplace she didn’t want to be; her efforts to avoid public identification, let alone testifying, bespoke an authentic dread of exposure. Second, though insensible of the carefully orchestrated squeeze play executed by the deep state to place her on public display, she certainly felt duty-bound. How better to rationalize mendacity? Striking a blow against Trump while defending Roe vs. Wade was her duty, and if that meant slandering a couple of male-chauvinists who opposed women’s reproductive rights and probably even voted for Donald Trump, then duty came first.

“Indelible in the hippocampus…”

Ford told the Senate she’d been swimming at a club in Chevy Chase after which she’d agreed to join a small gathering of college students at a nearby house. She arrived to discover people drinking beer in a small living room, and acknowledged drinking one herself. When she ascended a flight of stairs to the bathroom, she was pushed from behind into a bedroom. She realized her assailants were Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, who locked the door and turned the music (which was already playing in the unoccupied bedroom for some reason) “up louder.” “I was pushed onto the bed,” Ford recalled, “and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was so drunk, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under my clothes. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.” But Ford told the Senators the most traumatic aspect of the situation stemmed from her inability to catch her breath once Kavanaugh mounted her. In her baleful quaver, she made a point of emphasizing her fear that Kavanaugh would kill her “accidentally.” “This is what terrified me the most,” she sniffled, “and has the most lasting impact on my life.”

H aving enunciated sufficient diagnostic criteria to suggest clinical trauma, Ford moved to highlight her relevant expertness. In a line that perfectly emphasized her training as a psychologist as well as a victim of toxic masculinity, she declared “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two and having fun at my expense.” Newscasters took pains to instruct neuroscientifically untutored viewers on the hippocampus’s role in storing memories. Democrats fed Christine questions perfectly tailored to highlight her clinical training, allowing her to expatiate on “how memory of a traumatic experience works.”

Her own expert witness!

Jungian psychology manifested itself in a spectacular display of synchronicity as countless publications, broadcasts, and websites, described Ford’s testimony in identical terms. “Christine Blasey Ford is her own expert witness,” headlined the Atlantic. “Christine Blasey Ford appears before senators as her own expert witness,” reported CNN. “Christine Blasey Ford is serving as both witness and…her own expert witness,” marveled the New Yorker. “She became an expert witness,” gushed Slate. But no one had impugned Christine’s academic or professional bona fides. Her status as a clinical psychologist was not at issue. Only today’s media could twist Ford’s doctorate into a guarantor of probity–as if Ford’s degree validated her claims–a surreal argument to the effect that Dr. Ford’s experiences were obviously real, because she was a psychologist, and ought to know.

Rave reviews in the morning editions!

Most Americans, however, shrugged off Christine’s credentials, focusing instead on her demeanor and the evidence. And this despite media pundits ceaselessly thundering their unshakable faith in every syllable the Lioness uttered. The New York Times called Christine’s testimony “riveting.” The Washington Post upped the ante, declaring it “devastating.” The Associated Press adhered to higher journalistic standards, concurring only after consulting a Northwestern Pritzker School of Law professor, who pronounced Ford’s testimony “vivid and credible.” Dylan Scott, of Vox, attempted a big-tent approach, writing, “the overwhelming consensus, from right, left, and center alike, was that [Ford] was a credible and compelling witness.” But in the real world, opinions differed. Questions of the sort America’s journalists once felt a professional obligation to ask, were surfacing despite the practiced indifference of America’s journalists.

Can I get a witness?

That Kavanaugh categorically denied Ford’s charges hardly amounted to evidence, since any slimy reprobate might be expected to do likewise. True, Kavanaugh went further by insisting he and Ford never even met, but again, one might expect as much from a cornered sex fiend angling for the Supreme Court. Hunting down witnesses to Kavanaugh not attacking Ford, was easy enough, but licitly futile. Christine, on the other hand, had her own witnesses. Apart from Mark Judge (who denied any part in the affair, but of course, he was Kavanaugh’s accomplice) Christine was able to recall two others present during the assault. She identified a Georgetown Prep student, one P.J. Smyth, who, despite some equivocation in previous iterations, she now declared innocent of any part in the attack. Smyth, however, responded to his de facto acquittal ungraciously, telling the FBI he had “no knowledge of the small party or gathering described by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.” This made Christine’s lifelong besty, Democratic operative Leland Ingham Keyser, the last witness Team Ford could prevail upon. Alas, Keyser’s attorney told the press, “Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.” Not only did Keyser insist she was never there–none of Ford’s early accounts mention her. She seems to have shown up first in Christine’s letter to Feinstein, and is described by Ford in some accounts casually conversing with P.J. Smyth, and the guy who just attacked her, as she fled the scene. Either Christine forgot about Keyser until 2017, or mixed Keyser into the narrative when the story began to circulate, hoping her friend and fellow Democrat would back her up if need be. When the need arose, Keyser chose principles over politics, leaving Christine to ponder the wisdom of assuming. Christine’s witness pool was thus reduced to zero, or what prosecutors used to call a “he-said-she-said” stalemate, before “believe the woman” became forensically decisive. Some obviously misogynistic onlookers were even churlish enough to wonder aloud where Christine’s family was throughout her travails. Rumors spread that they didn’t support her appearance. This impression was temporarily blunted by the timely appearance of an affidavit fully endorsing Christine’s version of events, beginning,“As members of Christine Blasey Ford’s family . . .” bearing twelve notarized signatures. But the media had barely reached a crescendo ballyhooing the document when someone pointed out that no one signatory to the affidavit was a blood relative of Christine’s. Ford’s parents remained silent on the matter, which spoke volumes, skeptics suggested. The media countered that Ford’s parents were obviously scarred by the event as well, and keeping a low profile to minimize their emotional pain. After events settled, however, Christine’s father was not keeping a low profile when he approached Kavanaugh’s father at the Burning Tree Golf Club, telling him in front of witnesses, “I’m glad Brett was confirmed.” You’ve been Miranda-ized! Hope bloomed afresh for Team Ford when a former classmate of Christine’s went viral on Facebook posting first-hand confirmations of Christine’s story. Cristina Miranda, who attended school with Ford during the ’80s, triggered a media storm insisting, “This incident did happen!” Miranda vividly recalled hanging out with Ford, Kavanaugh, and Mark Judge, and described the accused assailants as products of “a particularly toxic drinking environment.” Furthermore, Miranda recalled much of the Holton-Arms campus abuzz with news of Kavanaugh’s assault on Christine. The news elated Ford’s lawyers, who subpoenaed Miranda, believing they’d stumbled upon the evidentiary mother lode. But alas, their star witness greeted the opportunity to testify by lapsing into an immobilizing bout of apoplexy, precipitated, it seemed, by the traumatic intrusion of reality upon her cyber-spacial realm. Confronted with the unanticipated circumstance of being taken seriously, Miranda underwent an epiphany. She realized she “had no first hand knowledge” of the events Ford described. Suddenly awash in lucidity, Cristina told an audibly frustrated NPR interviewer,”That it happened or not, I have no idea. I can’t say that it did or didn’t. In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered, and I was sure it probably did. I had no idea that I would…have to go to the specifics and defend it…” This was not the eye witness account Christine’s lawyers were hoping for. Miranda was quietly un-subpoenaed, and exited stage left. The devil’s in the details…. It didn’t help that despite imbibing, by her own account, a single beer, Christine could not recall a single detail specific enough for anyone to verify. Certainly, victims of violence can be forgiven memory gaps, lapses, and distortions, but there are limits. Writing in USA Today, Margot Cleveland perfectly summarized the distinguishing feature of Christine’s mnemonic dysfunction, noting “…the problem for Ford is not that she doesn’t remember everything: It is that everything she remembers changes at her convenience.” This was particularly the case where Ford’s timeline was concerned. For starters. Christine’s Washington Post transcript described Kavanaugh assaulting her in the mid-1980s. That time frame is corroborated by Christine’s therapist’s notes from 2012 and 2013, which record Christine’s assertion that she was in her late teens when she was assaulted by four boys, all of whom attempted to rape her, only to be thwarted by her magic bathing suit. Throughout the session notes, Brett Kavanaugh is conspicuous by his absence. By the time Christine addressed the Senate, the year had become 1982, placing her in her early teens, with her assailants reduced to only two: Kavanaugh and Judge. If true, this striking departure from her original account, as well as from her therapist’s notes, meant Christine originally misremembered her age, the number of boys who attacked her, and even in which year it happened, and continued to misremember these details for more than three decades, recovering an accurate memory of events only prior to her Senate testimony. A cynic might infer that once targeting Brett Kavanaugh became essential, the switch was necessary to place him at the crime scene, since Kavanaugh was at Yale by the mid`’80s–an airtight alibi, until Christine re-remembered the year.

Somewhere between my house and your picture….

The location of the incident was equally nebulous. Ford was never able to recall the location of the party, but told the Washington Post the place was “near the country club”—a nice splash of White Privilege that Ford augmented by describing Kavanaugh and his friends as “boys from an elite prep school”– forgetting, apparently, that she herself was attending a posh private girls’ academy, the Holton Arms School in Bethesda Maryland. On examination, the houses near the country club didn’t fit Ford’s scenario, first because no party house in the vicinity matched the one described by Ford, and second because none of the alleged miscreants lived in the area., When shown a map, Christine waxed briefly incoherent, finally sputtering, “I would describe [the house] as it’s somewhere between my house and the country club in that vicinity that’s shown in your picture.”

Inside proved no less problematic. Ford had trouble settling on the layout, plus the details of her escape. Her description of the stairwell shifted with various tellings. The living room where the students were drinking beer became a small family room, suddenly distinct from the living room through which she made her escape. When this drew criticism as a facile means of explaining how she fled the dwelling without a single witness noting her departure–never mind her presence–the area morphed into a “small living room/family room-type area.” Too, Ford never explained how she escaped a gang of inebriated sex maniacs while at the same time pausing to secure transportation to her residence, and in the same moment witnessing Kavanaugh chatting with Keyser and Smyth in the aftermath of the attack, a room away. And who drove her home? Despite every mainstream media reporter and DNC operative (forgive the redundancy) combing the landscape for Christine’s phantom driver(s), no one ever stepped forward to claim credit for rescuing her, or driving her there in the first place.

Fear of flying….

By any rational standard, Dr. Ford’s reality testing proved as dysfunctional as her storied hippocampus. Counsel Rachel Mitchell drew her into a discussion of her alleged aviophobia–a line of inquiry that should have aroused Ford’s suspicions immediately, unless her amygdala was also on the blink. A principal reason offered by Ford’s lawyers in defense of their client’s reluctance to testify, was Christine’s horror of air travel. Friends dashed to assure any available reporter that Ford’s fear of flying was not only extreme, but (for reasons that remained psychologically opaque) a direct result of Kavanaugh’s assault on her person. Ford also testified that her phobia posed a significant obstacle to her Senate appearance. “I was hoping … to avoid having to get on an airplane,” Ford told Mitchell, “but I eventually was able to get up the gumption with the help of some friends, and get on the plane.”

“Going that direction….”

A stirring account, but Mitchell was armed with Ford’s effusive Facebook posts, depicting her vacationing in Hawaii, Costa Rica, the South Pacific Islands, and French Polynesia. Asked whether these excursions had not obliged her to book round-trip flights aboard airplanes, Ford readily confirmed the fact, then froze for an awkward moment and compressed her lips, as if grasping belatedly the paradoxical nature of her testimony. In a twinkling, she composed herself and sprang back into the fray, but her improvisational skills proved unequal to the task. “Easier for me to travel going that direction,” she sputtered, “when it’s on vacation!”

No team of lexicographers, syntactitions, and semanticists, assigned the task of divining Ford’s meaning, could have arrived at a unanimous conclusion. The impression grew that Christine Ford was, by dint of some unknowable peculiarity of her psyche, prone to spasmodically exiting consensus reality for dimensions where no one could follow. This was not a woman who could be taken at her word—even by the most fraudulent hacks among the Democrat committee members, although they doggedly interrupted Mitchel’s questioning to blither social justice apothegms, punctuated by reminders to, “believe the women!” (A courtesy not extended 65 women who attended high school with the accused and submitted affidavits vouching for his decency, nor to Ford’s key witness, Democrat operative Keyser, who swore the whole thing never happened.)

The FBI Story…

T he only credible evidence remaining in support of Christine’s claims was her FBI polygraph, which supposedly supported her testimony. But here too, irregularities abounded. After Leland Keyser testified under oath that “the party and the whole assault situation didn’t happen,” she told the Wall Street Journal that FBI agents visited her and urged her to alter her testimony to support Ford’s allegations. Meanwhile, Christine’s former-boyfriend, Brian Merrick, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Ford once coached a woman named Monica McLean on beating an FBI polygraph in order to become an agent. By an amazing coincidence, Leland Keyser identified McClean as one of the FBI agents who suggested she lie on Christine’s behalf. Quizzed about this, Ford denied telling anybody how to pass a polygraph, and affected a girlish ignorance of such techy complexities—seemingly oblivious of co-authoring a 2008 article detailing how psychological factors affect polygraph results. Agent McClean also denied everything, lawyered up, and resigned from the Bureau.

The invention of the one-question polygraph…

Ford’s polygraph was performed by FBI Agent Jeremiah Hanafin who, for whatever reason, abandoned protocol, first by allowing Ford to write a lengthy statement describing what happened at the party house, and then by asking her extensive questions about her statement. Most polygraphers agree that the more questions a subject is asked, the harder it becomes to detect falsehoods, since lengthy dialogues desensitize the examinee, making lies harder to catch. For this reason, asking Ford numerous questions about her jotted scenario was both a terrible way to establish a baseline, and an excellent means of abetting deception. But Hanafin not only granted Ford an opportunity to acclimate her psyche–he eliminated any semblance of baseline readings by activating his polygraph only once Christine and he ended their colloquy. Still more bizarrely, once up and running, Hanafin limited the actual examination to only two questions, “Is any part of your statement false?” and “Did you make up any part of your statement?” (Which, if you think about it, is the same question twice.)

Genius at work!

In stark contrast to Hanafin’s pioneering approach, the Justice Department mandates highly specific questions, testing “the possible direct involvement of the examinee.” Hanafin, however, managed to conduct what amounted to the world’s first one-question polygraph exam during which he entirely avoided specifics, neglecting even to ask whether Ford had been sexually accosted at a house in Bethesda, or the year of the alleged incident, or whether Brett Kavanaugh was Ford’s attacker—in fact, Kavanaugh’s name didn’t come up. Whether one deems Hanafin hopelessly inept, or sleazily duplicitous, is irrelevant to the fact that his results are useless.

Cancelled!



The hearings closed without any Republican Senator, let alone any Democrat, giving Ford the grilling her story merited. The GOP’s spin on its observable pusillanimity portrayed Republicans as too chivalrous to engage in verbal fisticuffs with a lady. The even funnier liberal explanation was best encapsulated by Doreen St. Felix (accent grave over the “e” in Felix, if you please), who wrote in The New Yorker that “Republicans on the committee, likely coached by some consultant, did not overtly smear Ford. Some pretended, condescendingly, to extend her empathy.” The real motivation for Christine’s kid-glove treatment by Republicans, of course, was the GOP’s terror of the media. The media, for their part, played along by pretending they hadn’t realized as much decades ago. But there is courage in numbers, or at least grim conformity, and In the end the Anita Hill maneuver foundered, the GOP majority held, Kavanaugh was confirmed…and the Christine Ford Show was cancelled.

The inevitable book….

O nce a Lioness’s utility erodes, a book is customary–a bestseller, fanning the embers before they fade. Usually such books are penned (or seemingly penned) by the Lionesses themselves, Perhaps Christine delayed her search for a compatible ghostwriter in the expectation that New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly would make her case adequately in their hastily co-authored The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation. P ogebrin and Kelly are certified liberals, and afflicted with that amusing purblindness endemic to the insular Left. Less endemically, they are also ambient researchers, meaning they occasionally include facts damaging to their case in the apparent conviction that such details can be magically agendafied by splicing on whichever progressive sophistry seems germane. For example, they admit Christine is making bank and gaining celebrity as a result of her testimony, but dismiss any thought of venality, declaring, “the only reason to come forward with an uncorroborated 35-year-old account of sexual misconduct would be because she believed it to be true.” On what planet that sentence qualifies as logical, the authors neglect to say. nce a Lioness’s utility erodes, a book is customary–a bestseller, fanning the embers before they fade. Usually such books are penned (or seemingly penned) by the Lionesses themselves, Perhaps Christine delayed her search for a compatible ghostwriter in the expectation that New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly would make her case adequately in their hastily co-authoredogebrin and Kelly are certified liberals, and afflicted with that amusing purblindness endemic to the insular Left. Less endemically, they are also ambient researchers, meaning they occasionally include facts damaging to their case in the apparent conviction that such details can be magically agendafied by splicing on whichever progressive sophistry seems germane. For example, they admit Christine is making bank and gaining celebrity as a result of her testimony, but dismiss any thought of venality, declaring, “the only reason to come forward with an uncorroborated 35-year-old account of sexual misconduct would be because she believed it to be true.” On what planet that sentence qualifies as logical, the authors neglect to say.

Two liberals, one gut.

Pogebrin and Kelly shrug off other discoveries unflattering to Ford as mere curiosities. They admit searching exhaustively for a house matching Ford’s crime scene–without any luck. They chase down Ford’s old friend Leland Keyser, apparently in hopes of turning her toward the light. Given the level of naivete inherent in the authors’ contention that despite zero evidence, Christine’s story is credible because their “shared gut” tells them it is, Pogebrin and Kelly may well have supposed Keyser a victim of intimidation by Trump’s secret alt-right goon squads, and reckoned that an alliance with two crusading Times reporters would stiffen her backbone. Instead, they admit Keyser genuinely disbelieves Christine’s tale. “We spoke multiple times to Keyser,” they write. “She didn’t recall that get-together or any others like it. In fact, she challenged Ford’s accuracy, [saying] ‘I don’t have any confidence in the story.’” Pogebrin and Kelly conclude, therefore, that Keyser’s memory must be “poor.” But indelible in Keyser’s hippocampus are memories of mutual friends begging her to change her testimony and support Ford’s claims, threats to publicize her substance abuse issues if she didn’t endorse Ford’s story (Keyser is in recovery from opioid addiction resulting from numerous back surgeries), and being “told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn’t comply.” Keyser stood her ground, telling the reporters, “It would be impossible for me to be the only girl at a get-together with three guys, have [Christine] leave, and then not figure out how she’s going to get home.”

The Lioness at large….

T he ambivalence infecting Pogebrin’s and Kelly’s opus must have disappointed Christine. On a brighter note, beyond what she described as legal costs (although her lawyers worked pro bono) Christine quickly exceeded a million in profits from national crowdfunding campaigns, and is once again beset by major publishers vying for her autobiographic account of the scandal. Cannily, she continues to encourage donations, explaining “The costs for security, housing, transportation and other related expenses are much higher than we anticipated and they do not show signs of letting up.” Specifics aside, Christine’s GoFundMe spokeswoman assured concerned journalists that Ford and her husband “can withdraw as much as they want whenever they want for any purpose.” A separate fund managed by the eponymous yet otherwise anonymous “Team Christine Blasey Ford” raised an additional 700,000 dollars, while Heidi Li Feldman, a Washington law professor, told reporters she “sponsored a capped fundraiser to assist Dr. Blasey [sic] with her security expenses.” Feldman placed her take at $241,000, adding “I understand [Christine] will draw upon them [sic] when she has the opportunity.” The disgusting slime menace…

Christine described a torrent of death threats, which she called “terrifying,” adding, “[they] rocked me to my core.” A spokesman for the Senate Judiciary Committee insisted the committee was “not provided with specifics of any threats against Dr. Ford,” but Christine told donors, “We have already had to move four times, our movements are limited even with security, and the threats are ongoing.” Actually, the main threat to the Blasey-Ford estate derived from members of the national media camping on the property, snapping photos through the windows, littering the grounds, crushing flowerbeds, and trampling lawns. Given such boorish encroachments, it is understandable that Christine fled her 3.3 million-dollar Palo Alto property, taking refuge at her 1.03 million-dollar beach house in Santa Cruz, but this was the sum of her evasive manoeuvres. To date, the only threat Christine disclosed publicly was an alleged social-media message reading, “From what I’ve heard, you have 6 months to live, you disgusting slime.” Ford weathered the threat unscathed, presumably thanks to the exertions of her outstanding security teams, which clearly comprise top-notch professionals given Christine’s assurance that hundreds of thousands of dollars accrued specifically for security went entirely to that purpose. Sustainability…? Ford’s capacity to monetize her Warholian 15 minutes, as well as her post-orbital telemetry, surpasses that of most Lionesses. Indeed, the aplomb with which Christine manipulates the ever-exploitable demographics of liberal, feminist, and Silicon Valley gudgeons is impressive, giving us hope she may prosper in her post-leonine years. Overtime, we fear, Christine’s sparkle as a progressive cause célèbre will prove unsustainable…a nightmarish condition our liberal readers will recognize as anathema to their beliefs, as well as those of Wiccans, environmental activists, chubby female baby boomers sporting Pussyhats at Whole Foods, network newscasters, and most especially to Gaia, primal earth goddess and ancestral mother of Greenpeace.



Christine’s odds of prolonging her luster brightened when oddsmakers named her a shoo-in as TIME magazine’s “person of the year.” The honor, reduced to a hollow japery over the decades, still excites liberals–probably because it always goes to liberals, and invariably to liberals whom no rational person would think of. Christine was the consummate candidate. But fate had not wearied of shortchanging our Lioness. TIME’s journalistic laurels fell unexpectedly upon the furrowless brow of Greta Thunberg, the insufferable teenage Pecksniff blown by ill winds to our shores (while her support team arrived by jet) in order to denounce America’s responsibility for Global Warming. Had Thunberg elected to visit her dudgeon upon the worst planetary polluters, Red China and Russia (where her jeremiads would have ensured her permanent disappearance, or earned her a heaping bowl of Polonium-210), Christine would have gotten her cover shot, but once the pompous homunculus glared at her audience in New York’s U.N. building and ululated “How dare you?” TIME’s editors forgot all about Christine Ford–lured irresistibly by the Swedish wunderkind’s harangues. “Communism is the goal!” But in the grand tradition of deus ex machina, hope descended in the form of the American Civil Liberties Union. California’s ACLU chapter dazzled guests at their annual “Bill of Rights Dinner,” by introducing Christine as the surprise speaker, and winner of the Rodger Baldwin Courage Award, named in honor of the ACLU’s founder, who in 1920 enunciated his organization’s credo by declaring: “I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself… I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth.” Possibly concerned that future generations of Americans might mistake his manifesto for the Democratic Party platform, Baldwin took pains to add: “Communism is the goal!” Ford wowed the diners, telling them: “When I came forward last September, I did not feel courageous, I was simply doing my duty as a citizen,” to which she somewhat unmindfully added, “I thought anyone in my position…would do the same thing.” She even quoted former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, (the previous winner of the Baldwin Courage Award–who knew?) to the effect that “we all have an obligation, no matter the risk and regardless of the reward, to stand up for fellow men and women,” which seems an odd sentiment coming from a man who insists the NFL won’t hire him on account of his repeated refusals to stand up. Rare Lioness…. E ntertainment sites like the Hollywood Reporter and Glamour provided the lion’s share (sorry) of Christine’s ACLU coverage. Detailed reviews were likewise limited to showbiz sites and periodicals, all of which gushed fulsomely, but in eerie isolation. It was as though the establishment’s gaze shifted overnight, consigning its most recent Lioness to the entertainment glossies. Mainstream newscasters noted Christine’s ACLU appearance, but in passing, and rather tersely, stressing that appearances by Ford were “rare.” On one hand, viewers were expected to understand Christine was not in the habit of capitalizing on her martyrdom–the ACLU business was a mere divertissement…an outlier. On the other hand, however, the subtext was intended for Ford, and those of her supporters too clueless to evaporate gracefully. Hence the media-wide fixation on “rare.” Besides providing further evidence of the uncanny synchronicity haunting liberal news coverage, choruses of “rare” served as a sub-textual injunction. A fever had flourished briefly, the subtext seemed to say, and while lots of people caught it and went crazy for a while, the infection had now passed, and nobody saw the point of revisiting those days of mass delirium. Translated from liberalese, Christine was on notice. Her legacy would be upheld when necessary, or when briefly convenient to the cause, but her mission had failed, and her objective value lay in tatters among the fragments of her busted testament. Cooler heads now prevailed, the subtext implied, and wisdom decreed a return to sounder, less illusory stratagems–the Russians again, perhaps–or Stormy Daniels–or the President’s role in spreading the corona virus. But Christine? Maybe a guest shot on The View. “What’s the rush to judgment?” In an objective world, Christine Blasey Ford’s story would be dismissed on the evidence, or rather its absence. But in today’s media-constructed matrix, we are incessantly prompted to stifle our critical faculties and embrace whichever PC dogma is currently masquerading as thought. Shouts of “Believe the woman!” and the implicit inverse: “If you don’t believe the woman, you hate women!” supplant rational dialogue. This abandonment of criticality was epitomized by ABC news analyst, Mathew Dowd, who tweeted: “The default position should be to believe the women,” a standard Dowd clearly considered too obvious to bother explaining, any more than he explained the Left’s absolute refusal to believe–or even tolerate–women who are not the women they enjoin us to believe, but rather women we must never believe, especially when they disagree with the women we must always believe, unless otherwise instructed. This abandonment of rationality was nicely encapsulated by Phil Murphy, the dunderheaded governor of New Jersey, who during the hearings rhetorized, “What’s the rush to judgement?” followed immediately by the afterthought, “Kavanaugh ought to just pack up and leave town.”

Margot Cleveland, the lawyer and adjunct instructor quoted earlier, summarized the entire debacle, writing “Open-minded Americans of all stripes should see that–emotions aside–Ford’s testimony is completely devoid of credibility: so much so…that Ford’s allegations do not even meet the preponderance-of-evidence standard….Yes, victims must be believed. But Ford is not a victim—at least not of Kavanaugh.” argot Cleveland, the lawyer and adjunct instructor quoted earlier, summarized the entire debacle, writing “Open-minded Americans of all stripes should see that–emotions aside–Ford’s testimony is completely devoid of credibility: so much so…that Ford’s allegations do not even meet the preponderance-of-evidence standard….Yes, victims must be believed. But Ford is not a victim—at least not of Kavanaugh.”