The moment U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh began his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, he sounded like a petulant, self-pitying frat boy. He defended his love of beer numerous times, saying, “Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer.”
The hearings about Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault in the 1980s showed two people who displayed very different temperaments, and it’s no accident that the person who expressed the most outrage was a man.
Although Kavanaugh shouted at everyone, he seemed particularly unhinged around some of the female senators questioning him.
When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who had an alcoholic father and has talked about the pain of that experience before, asked Kavanaugh if he ever drank so much that he couldn’t remember things, Kavanaugh began quizzing her instead.
“You’re asking about blackouts. I don’t know, have you?” he asked with a grin on his face.
That question reflected a lack of compassion and downright cruelty on Kavanaugh’s part. After Kavanaugh came back from a break from the hearing, Klobuchar said, “When you have a parent who is alcoholic you’re a pretty careful about drinking.”
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned him, at one point he began looking around the room instead and rarely looked at her. At one point, he sat back in his chair and wouldn’t look at her at all, and when he did, it was to interrupt her and shout things such as “You’re interviewing me. You’re interviewing me. You’re doing it, senator.” When Feinstein asked if Kavanaugh wanted to talk more about the Julie Swetnick allegation that he was present at a gang rape, Kavanaugh shot her a look of disgust, sneered, and simply said, “No” like a preschool-age child who didn’t want to play with the other children.
Kavanaugh even sounded testy with the female prosecutor who Republicans hired to question him. When prosecutor Rachel Mitchell asked him about his drinking, he appeared to be frustrated and annoyed that he had to to answer any questions from her at all. He didn’t answer her questions sufficiently and appeared uncooperative. When asked how many beers he had on occasions when he drank in high school, he said, “I don’t know” and “whatever the chart says, the blood alcohol chart.”
Kavanaugh’s angry, combative performance stood in great contrast to the temperament of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who was relatively calm and kept telling senators that she wished she could more helpful and that she is sorry she doesn’t remember more about the night she said Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. As she relived one of her worst memories for senators’ benefit, she fought back tears as best she could and even laughed along with Mitchell at times.
Ford — who goes by Dr. Blasey professionally — was serene as Mitchell quizzed her on precisely what she heard when she was locked in a bathroom planning her escape from the house where she was just assaulted. She calmly explained that the incident led her to have such a fear of confined spaces that she asked for a second front door to be installed in her family’s home.
Ford had a lot to be angry about during this hearing: Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) obvious insensitivity to Ford and her trauma, displayed by his constant interruptions and yelling, Mitchell’s attempts to paint her as a pawn used by Democrats to destroy Kavanaugh’s reputation, and Republicans blaming her for not going specifically to them to report that a man on the president’s shortlist for the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to rape her. She could have displayed anger that she was there in the first place, recounting her trauma of boys laughing at her expense because her sexual assault was their bonding experience.
But Ford did none of these things. She did not have the option to rage against senators, even if it were in her personality to do so. If a sexual assault survivor went into a hearing and questioned senators instead of answering their questions, she would not be considered credible. Researchers have found that when female jurors express anger, they are seen as less credible during jury deliberation, but when men express anger it makes them seem more credible and makes other jurors feel less confident in their initial verdict.
Ford could not go on a rant about how normal it is to like beer and say she didn’t know many beers she drank on a regular basis. If she gave Kavanaugh’s answer, she would have looked unintelligent at best, and at worst, she would have looked like a drunk. A female U.S. Supreme Court nominee certainly could not have answered questions about drinking — or anything else — the way Kavanaugh did and be considered fit for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh is a man who loves to talk about his his numerous credentials as if they were the same as being a good person, because his whole life he has been taught that this is the case. This is why he, and his Republican supporters, equate his angry tirade yesterday with righteousness. As a white man with the right background and education, Kavanaugh isn’t used to having to explain himself like this. That’s why so many Republicans, and a lot of men of all political stripes, sympathize with his outrage.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — who screamed at Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) until he became red in the face — admitted as much.
“If you wanted an FBI investigation. You could have come to us,” Graham said on Thursday. “What you want to do is destroy this man’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020.”
The next day, he told reporters, “I’m a single white man from South Carolinan and I’m told I should shut up. But I will not shut up, if that’s OK.”
On Friday, Feinstein said she was unhappy with the temperament Kavanaugh displayed during the hearing. She said, “He yelled at Democrats for having the temerity to express our frustration for not having access to over 90 percent of his record and said that had some Democratic members were, quote, an embarrassment, end quote.”
She added, “This was someone who was aggressive and belligerent. I have never seen someone who wants to be elevated to the highest court in our country behave in that manner. In stark contrast, the person who testified yesterday and demonstrated a balanced temperament was Dr. Ford.”
It’s anyone’s guess, however, whether Kavanaugh’s explosive behavior will actually disqualify him for a lifetime appointment for the highest court in the land.