Prof. Ford Flunks as a Female Role Model

In Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery" – published in 1948 and later made into a film – a rural community holds its annual drawing, after which the unlucky winner is stoned to death. This pagan-like ritual presumed personal culpability for whatever ills had befallen the town since the last lottery. Jackson's chilling tale is one of superstition and human sacrifice practiced on behalf of self-interest. To be fair, the story's lottery made no distinction among townspeople based on sex, race, wealth, opinion, occupation, or popularity. In the piece, it was a woman with a sterling reputation who met her end at the willing hands of her neighbors. To that extent, it seems less shocking than what has happened in the current "lottery" to choose a Supreme Court justice, since in the present ordeal there is implicit bias based almost entirely on a progressive ideology built on by "identity politics."

In this latest Kavanaugh scenario – in which the ultimate objective is to stone to death the object's reputation by way of advancing one's own political interests – the white conservative male is most likely to have the lottery tickets stacked against him. The Democrat leadership has methodically assembled its own stockpile of societal, racial, ideological, and sexual missiles to hurl at the accused. These liberal insurgents are by no means innocent Davids taking aim at Goliath. Rather, they are power-hungry government "servants" out to vanquish a well reputed conservative Republican with as many smooth stones as it takes. Now that the "Me Too" movement has become rooted in our consciousness, Democrats are eagerly harvesting it for selfish political gain. Any resistance to the assumption that an accusing woman is not immediately and totally to be believed is no longer tolerated. The very idea has become, in itself, a form of guilt. We all know the framework of Judge Kavanaugh's ordeal. What we lack are the details, which no longer matter to those out to destroy him. Democrats seem to presume that by coming out categorically in favor of females – at least when it comes down to sexual encounters – they will secure the hearts, and more importantly, the votes, of all women. But this is not happening. Many of us are astute enough to see beyond the case at hand to the frightening prospect that our men – our husbands, fathers, sons, and friends – will be likewise scarred for life by unsubstantiated scandal and innuendo. Even if we cannot grasp the danger of this unfairness spreading elsewhere, there is cause for women to decry the tactics, timing, and unsubstantiated claims of accusers like Christine Blasey Ford. Naturally, that's a pretty tough call for the sisterhood to make, since women are expected, without qualification, to be "emotionally supportive" to other women, especially those who claim to be victims of sexual abuse. If we fail to do that, we are immediately accused of being insensitive and incapable of "feeling their pain." The flip-side of "boosting," is "belittling." That is what Professor Blasey Ford has done to women. She has made our sex look less capable and more vulnerable than we deserve to. On the one hand, young women in today's America are told they can be anyone and do anything. Certainly, we have made amazing strides toward that end. More of us now attend college and graduate school than boys do. Aspiring and talented women have axed through class ceilings, strode boldly into boardrooms, flown into outer space, juggled job and family, etc. We bought into the old ad, "You've come a long way, baby!" – even as we stopped smoking the product it promoted. Yet when it came to a scary sexual encounter that did not physically disable her, Blasey Ford demonstrated just the opposite. In a pinch, she failed to muster the moral strength, the will, or the wherewithal to even now put such a predicament behind her. Instead, Kavanaugh's accuser became so instantly mortified that she could not even share her story with trusted adults. Presumably, she kept it bottled up inside her for years on end, paralyzed with unspeakable fear from a single long-ago encounter that did not – according to her – involve rape. Admittedly, it is hard to walk in another's shoes. Yet this octogenarian finds it important to believe that had such an incident happened to me during my youth, I would not have remained silent and thereby complicit in the affront. I choose to think that, despite my fear and inexplicable "shame," I would have "told" on the rat-fink...blabbed to my parents or to a minister or a good friend or ultimately to the police. I would have taken such actions in order to prevent the predator from doing the same thing to others. It's important to me as a female to believe that I would not have allowed myself to remain a silent victim for decade upon decade of my life. I have more disdain than sympathy for Professor Blasey Ford. Despite lecturing to college students on a daily basis, she still claims to be cowed by the prospect of being questioned by other adults. Psychologist, cure thyself. There are legions of women who have overcome far more than what is contained in Prof. Blasey Ford's claims – women who have undergone intolerable existences, survived horrors like the Holocaust, lost their health, their resources, their loved ones, yet persevered with extraordinary courage. Still, they are rarely celebrated for their heroics with the same insistent reverence given to a middle-aged snowflake who came seemingly out of the blue to rescue the Democrat Party. In my first year of college, almost 70 years ago, I learned something on this subject that I have never forgotten. It was a Saturday night, and co-eds were returning from their dates to a freshman dorm on our all-women's campus. On the second floor, a classmate could be heard sobbing loudly, and many of us ran to her room to see what was wrong. She was lying on her narrow bed, weeping, blurting out that her boyfriend – a young man she had known from her hometown in the Midwest – had suddenly tried to "take advantage" of her during their evening out. (That was the language back then!) We all liked her boyfriend, who was a polite, promising student at a nearby Ivy League college. But in light of her accusations, we immediately disliked him, empathizing with her and urging her to end the relationship. Suddenly, to our surprise, she jumped off the bed, started to laugh, and told us it was all untrue – just something she had made up as part of an assignment for her psychology class. (I hope she got an "A"!) This small incident taught me a larger lesson about how easy it is to be deceived – and how quickly such deception can lead to turning a good man into an evil one. Oh, by the way, that classmate and her boyfriend married after graduation and have been together ever since. It's ambiguous whether Judge Kavanaugh will enjoy so happy an outcome.