Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years ago

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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:00 pm

Someone hates the comment section more than Wong? Surely you must be Wong about that.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:06 pm

Pargin me, but James Fallows disabled comments on all of his own articles. Not even Wong did that.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:04 am

Aye, I was pretty bummed when NRO put their comments behind a 70-dollar paywall last year*. I'm not sure boycotting media outlets that don't have good comment sections is practical at this point, though. It seems like nobody wants to moderate them, since the ones that are sticking around are the largely unmoderated sewer pits you wouldn't want to go into anyway.

*No, seriously, that's what they charge for full online access, including comments. When the conservative media bubble goes, it's gonna take the whole damn economy with it just like subprime mortgages did.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:44 am

Crimson847 wrote:Aye, I was pretty bummed when NRO put their comments behind a 70-dollar paywall last year*.

NRO = National Review Online? Because I can see their comments fine and I don't even block cookies or scripts for them, like I do to get around the paywalls on most media sites.

Crimson847 wrote:I'm not sure boycotting media outlets that don't have good comment sections is practical at this point, though.

Never tried to do that. I read Sabato's Crystal Ball which has never had comments, and The Economist, which has the worst comments section this side of The Daily Mail.

But I had already made it a rule not to click on James Fallows' own articles because he removed comments on them. And I am still pissed that The Atlantic had one of the only decent comment sections, but they only saw the flaws and rather than fixing it, they destroyed it with a self-aggrandizing announcement which promoted their hand-curated "Letters" section. I also kind of suspected that the comments which call out inaccuracies were part of the reason they removed it. So when they removed their comments, I resolved not to read it regularly again and definitely not to subscribe until they add comments back or James Fallows steps down.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Wed Oct 10, 2018 3:22 am

cmsellers wrote:
Crimson847 wrote:Aye, I was pretty bummed when NRO put their comments behind a 70-dollar paywall last year*.

NRO = National Review Online? Because I can see their comments fine and I don't even block cookies or scripts for them, like I do to get around the paywalls on most media sites.


You can see them, but you can't post in them, nor can anyone else who didn't pay the $70/year subscription fee. Which means, probably not coincidentally, that nobody outside the bubble posts there anymore. Used to be there was a fair amount of debate, now there's hardly any.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Oct 15, 2018 1:05 pm

Even Trump feels like if what she says is true it doesn't matter because his side won.

This is where we're at in America. Who cares if sexual assault happened? My team got the victory stick your head in doo doo.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Mon Oct 15, 2018 6:50 pm

That's been the reaction of a lot of Trump's base. That and "the Democrats' mob mentality is going to kill them in the midterms." While it is ridiculous to hear Trump supporters speaking of a mob mentality, they may be half-right about the midterms.

Based on polls I have seen, the effect of the Kavanaugh hearings appears to have been to energize the base on both the Democratic and Republican side, turn most independents against the GOP, energize reluctant Trump voters, and bring many #nevertrump Republicans home. Though the effect is not nearly as symmetrical as the GOP is claiming, the Senate is mostly being contested on red states. Here in Texas it energized the GOP more than the Dems and split independents almost evenly, which in a state that leans GOP is very helpful for them. And Texas is far less red than Tennessee or North Dakota, which are looking increasingly like lost causes.

As for why these already right-leaning voters have come home, the answer they seem to have almost invariably given is "due process." Which is ridiculous for so many reasons, from the fact that there is no such thing as due process in a Senate hearing (ask Merrick Garland); to the way that the GOP opposes actual due process for things like civil asset forfeiture, denial of voting rights, immigration stops, and actual criminal trials; to the way that it overlooks the issues with Kavanaugh not related to the sexual assault allegations. And yet the idea that denying Kavanaugh that seat would have deprived him of his right to due process is something that the likes of David French seem to very sincerely believe.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:40 am

It's pretty clear to me that French sees a lot of himself in Kavanaugh. They're both genteel, (normally) soft-spoken, middle-aged Christian conservative elites who went to Yale and then pursued long careers as litigators for conservative causes. Indeed, French is only 2 years younger than Kavanaugh--they might well have been at Yale together. I'd be surprised if they don't know each other in some fashion, and even if they don't there's certainly a lot of overlap in their social and professional circles. In short, they're not just members of the same political party, but of the same specific social tribe.

That kind of instinctive "one of us" reaction no doubt gives him a sharper view of the pain Kavanaugh's experiencing. Empathy is easier for a member of the tribe than for an outsider. This, presumably, is why he applies a noticeably different standard to Kavanaugh than he has applied to others outside his tribe, like Trump supporters, police officers, or student protesters. Kavanaugh's understandable pain at being publicly accused justifies his conduct during the hearing, but of course the pain of the sexual assault victim who confronted Jeff Flake comes with no such free pass. The pain is equally real either way, but French experiences one person's pain in a much more visceral way than the other's, so it affects his judgment more strongly.

The extreme rage on both sides isn't helping matters either. Normally when an issue like this is litigated in the media, there's genuine back and forth discussion--if left media consistently makes a particular point or argument, right media quickly develops a response. It might be a stupid or unconvincing response, but it's a response--a dialogue of some form is occurring. On really emotional issues, though (abortion being the ur-example), people can't stand listening to the other side because what they say is so thoroughly enraging, so that dialogue often shuts down. The Kavanaugh thing has been no exception--just getting answers from the right to basic questions about his testimony was a hassle and a halfle, and it was clearly no easier for conservatives to get straight answers to their questions out of most liberals. Everybody bunkered down to ride out the hailstorm of rage, which makes freely sharing information more difficult and thus aggravates the effect of personal, individual biases.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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