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 … Read the rest

Alexandra Petri wrote this scorching parody yesterday, and I regret not reading it until just now. (A whole day lost!)

“If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.”
— A lawyer close to the White House, speaking to Politico

Look, who among us?

If, apparently, a single alleged assault at a single party decades ago is to be frowned upon, then no man is safe, right?

What’s next? You can’t harass a colleague and serve on the Supreme Court? You can’t pick up high schoolers outside custody hearings and serve in the Senate? You can’t have a meat locker full of female femurs and expect to breeze through your

Trump’s vile spawn was quick to sneer at the woman who dared to report that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her years ago.

Donald Trump, Jr., son of President Donald Trump, posted an image to his Instagram account on Sunday appearing to mock the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

The image shows a piece of scrap paper with childish handwriting reading: “Hi Cindy, will you be my girlfriend,” followed by two boxes marked “yes” and “no.” “Love, Bret [sic]” the note ended.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnwjBsVnSN1/?utm_source=ig_embed

Hur hur; such a funny guy.… Read the rest

Megan Garber at the Atlantic on this whole “all teenage boys try to rape girls, let’s have a little charity here” thing:

Ford’s account of the event has been corroborated by her husband; by a therapist, with whom she discussed the alleged event in 2012; by the notes of a 2013 therapy session, which refer to a “rape attempt” Ford survived as a teenager; and by a polygraph test Ford took on the advice of a lawyer who knows the doubt with which the world, still, reflexively responds to the recollections of women. What the professor describes, in her letter to her Congressional representatives and again to the Post, is by no means the typical stuff of mere

The New Yorker has a long piece on Sarah Sanders as Trump’s battering ram.

Trump needed a stronger link to evangelicals and women, and Sanders was happy to provide one. Despite the differences in their family backgrounds—Mike and Janet Huckabee grew up poor; Trump didn’t—the candidate felt familiar to her. Huckabee was an economic populist; Trump claimed to be one, too. Huckabee had campaigned on a promise to “restore America’s greatness”; Trump’s slogan was “Make America Great Again.” Huckabee wanted to ban abortion; Trump had vowed to appoint pro-life advocates to the bench. Like Huckabee, Trump enjoyed ad-libbing while giving speeches.

Sanders relished the idea of helping an outsider like Trump defeat the people she viewed as the ultimate

Republicans are preparing the buckets of mud.

Judiciary Committee Republicans sent out a memo criticizing “Democrats’ tactics and motives” and calling on Feinstein to release “the letter she received back in July so that everyone can know what she’s known for weeks.” And four people close to the White House said they expected Republicans to question the accuser’s vague memories and why Feinstein, up for reelection in November with the Democratic base hungry for anti-Trump fodder, sat on the accusation for months.

They’re going to attack Feinstein for not acting on the letter and attack anyone who does act on the letter. All bases covered.

Three of those people also said they expect the president to go after Kavanaugh’s

God, he’s still doing it. The stubborn dishonesty of it and the absolute determination to remove the young woman who was assaulted from the picture is mind-boggling. Is this what Republicans are? Guys who struggle hard to draw a veil over attempted rape so that they can take women’s reproductive rights away at last?

As would mine. But I would not want to be the father who says: "Your life will now be defined by this one moment at a party, so just accept that it will be used at will at any point in your life."

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 16, 2018

It was more than a moment – they shoved her into the room, they locked the … Read the rest

Lordy lordy lordy – even Radio Free Tom, who is normally…sensible, at least.

Whoa. One was accused of as a continuing behavior while a senior supervisor at a Federal agency. The other's been accused of an incident of drunken assault at 17 years old. Both are terrible things, but they're not generically the same.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 16, 2018

It's giving me the willies to go back to "this happened between minors at a party in high school" as a permanent disqualification for anything. This is a powerful weapon that will be deployed again, and I think in ways that will have drastic and unintended consequences.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 16, 2018

ARGGGHHH! It did not “happen … Read the rest

Now the woman who said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers has gone public – with great reluctance.

Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.

Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the

Philosopher Asia Ferrin explains why feminists must defer to trans women no matter what:

There has been some online discussion recently about how, or if, people can have open conversations about policies that aim to create more inclusive spaces for trans people, trans women in particular. I will not recount the conversation here, but readers might want to see these posts, first from Kathleen Stock, then a reply from Talia Mae Bettcher, and a reply to the reply from Stock. Similar themes also come up in a recent post here on hostility in such discussions.

That’s one way to put it, but it’s quite a loaded way. “Inclusive” has become a highly deceptive or tendentious word in some contexts, … Read the rest

Eleazar David Melendez on Facebook:

They did not die in the hurricane.

They died in pain, at home, of kidney failure unable to access the dialysis clinic for weeks.

They died, gasping for hours near the end, when the oxygen tank they needed to breathe gave out.

They died in the dark and the heat of unsanitary ICU units, of burns or gunshot wounds received before the hurricane that they almost certainly would have survived otherwise.

They died, burning up with fever, of leptospirosis from being in touch with flood waters during the effort to save their neighbors.

They died in fear and confusion after being forced to go off their regular medication.
They died of heat stroke.

They

Isaac Chotiner’s Buruma interview is today’s news in Abusers’ Corner; yesterday’s was John Hockenberry doing his “This has all been so sad for me” thing in Harper’s.

He starts off by telling us everything we know about him, which is why I stopped reading it yesterday, gagging. He goes on to tell us about all his stuff in a storage unit now, how important he used to be, how sad, poor him.

Then he tells us his friends don’t shower him with affection any more.

I have also faced unrelenting anger from both male and female colleagues. Or, more common and more painful, I have faced their stony and, in my view, cowardly silence. Only one of my accusers

Justin Weinberg at Daily Nous yesterday:

Scientific American is a monthly magazine aimed at popularizing scientific and technological findings. But how trustworthy a magazine is it?

This question is prompted by several articles that Scientific American has published on topics in philosophy. It is wonderful that the magazine’s editors recognize how much philosophy is relevant to science and scientific practices. But the quality of those articles has been questionable.

Yes, I’ve noticed that, for instance when they publish Michael Shermer pretending to be a moral philosopher.

The uneven quality of Scientific American articles on topics I am familiar with has led me to question its trustworthiness more generally. I know I’m not alone in that questioning.

As for the 

Oh good GRIEF.

Our $10+ Patrons now have access to A Day of Reckoning – 1 – Why can't we have civil conversations about race, politics, gender etc. featuring @SamHarrisOrg , @DouglasKMurray , @MaajidNawaz , @BretWeinstein & @EricRWeinstein . Moderated by @joshzepps
https://t.co/fgYPHzsZ7K pic.twitter.com/LVYbafBZHV

— Travis Pangburn (@ThePangburn) September 13, 2018

Why can’t seven guys team up to pronounce on gender? Why can’t six white guys plus one brown guy (see how woke we are?) tell us all what to think about gender and race, and charge money for it? Who doesn’t want to hear what all-male panels think about gender?

That’s the intellectual dark web. You can tell because it’s dark outside the window.… Read the rest