What about the deeper ethical question here?
Ah the riches of the Intellectual Dark Web. Bari Weiss goes on tv to repeat the “who among us has not assaulted someone at 17, and should that really disqualify someone for a seat on the Supreme Court?” mantra.
WEISS: What about the deeper, moral, cultural, like, the ethical question here? Let’s say he did this exactly as she said. Should the fact that a 17 year old, presumably very drunk kid, did this, should this be disqualifying? That’s the question at the end of the day, isn’t it?
RUHLE: Wait, hold on. We’re not talking about should he be disqualified to be a dog catcher. We’re talking about to be a Supreme Court justice.
WEISS: I’m aware.
Cool, she’s aware, but why shouldn’t the standard for the Supreme Court be that high? It’s not even all that high, saying no assaulters thanks. The age cutoff is hardly an absolute. What if it’s a kid of 5? One who likes to kick dogs and cats, for instance? Do we just say “well, 5…” or do we recall that that can be a warning sign for psychopathy? The issue isn’t Kavanaugh breaking a window or smoking weed, it’s Kavanaugh assaulting a girl two years his junior. He looks to be a fairly beefy guy, and he had two years on her, and she was a girl. Yes this is something we should be taking seriously.
You know, if he’d done it to a boy two years his junior – jumped him, pinned him down, tried to drag his clothes off to humiliate him – I bet everyone would be taking that seriously. Everyone would grasp that that would show he was a bully as a teenager. But because it was a girl and the goal was sex, that somehow becomes not real violence any more. He didn’t want to hurt her, he just wanted to fuck her – and that’s totally understandable and forgivable and not something that should stand between him and ending abortion rights in the US for a generation.
What Dr. Ford describes is criminal conduct by Kavanaugh, such as battery. Voluntary intoxication is not a defense. Being 17 is also not a defense, but it may affect whether a defendant is tried as an adult.
The law has already settled this "ethical" question by Bari Weiss. https://t.co/JpHDWxp4j5
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) September 18, 2018
The “deeper, moral, cultural, like, the ethical question,” of course, being whether the right can get a stranglehold on the court for the next three decades. So what’s a little sexual assault compared to that?
Yeah, but he didn’t like the answer and wants to make it best two out of three.
There are memes going around the internet right now asking why an underage-drinking 17-year old Kavanaugh attempting to rape a 15-year old girl was just a kid getting up to hijinks, but Trayvon Martin was a terrifying thug who needed to be shot to prevent him… walking and consuming some Skittles and iced tea.
(I’m paraphrasing because I can’t look it up directly at work).
I’m pretty sure that if he’d tried to get another boy naked and hump him, he’d already be gone.
@Rob #4:
I wouldn’t be too sure… The Senate wouldn’t be happy but this is the White House we’re talking about here. No sin is too great.
It’s so sad that the NY Times has chosen to give such a position to such a mediocrity as Bari Weiss.
I’m sorry, but nobody using ‘like’ in that infantile manner should be regarded as an intellectual – not even of the Dark Web variety.
At a run-of-the-mill house party, maybe, but call it ‘hazing’ and a ‘long-held tradition’ of an ‘esteemed’ college fraternity and, as long as the attacker was a rich, well-connected white boy from a good family all you’d hear would be ‘Well of course the practice has stopped now, but back then hazing was a honourable and important ritual, necessary in ensuring that those young men wishing to make valuable, life-long connections had the right qualities, strength of character and loyalty to the brotherhood, come what may’.
There will always be excuses for rich, well-connected, successful white men from good families for the crimes they comitted as rich, well-connected white boys from good families.
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