Skeletons in the Closet

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

-Bob Dylan

The monstrous fear that exists in the age of #metoo, is that the public reaction to accusations is going to ruin people who are innocent and falsely accused.  Indeed, in my line of work, I can certainly recognize the reality that someone with a grudge or a hostile motive could cause a lot of pain by leveling the type of charge that has been tossed at Brett Kavanaugh.  But what I also know about that sort of situation is that, if and when it comes up, transparency and integrity become very important.  We must approach situations like this without pre-judging the truth, because the truth, despite much current evidence to the contrary, is a powerful weight in how things eventually pan out.

I got into some of the reasons why the accuser's story sounds plausible in the last post, but today I would like to offer an opinion about what Mr. Kavanaugh should be doing if he is indeed innocent of the charges leveled at him.  The first thing that he should do is sort of the exact opposite of what he actually did in his interview with Fox News.  He should acknowledge what he was actually like in High School and College, even if there are some unflattering aspects to be told.  There are simply too many people who knew him then, and despite the fact that many of his Frat Bros have, in good Bro fashion, stood up for him as a stand up guy who could hold his liquor, some of the people, even some who initially supported him, aren't buying his clean cut kid routine.

As someone who probably would not like to have incidents from his college years replayed for all to see, I find it far more wise to simply acknowledge that I did some things I am not proud of when I was young rather than trying to paint myself as a young St. Francis.  I don't need Kavanaugh to come out and give a soul-wrenching confession of puking in the bushes at Yale or detailing every time he got a little too drunk.  I would like to see some harmony between the stories that witnesses tell and what he "remembers" about himself.  I kind of wish we didn't have to go here in this particular process, but as they say, here we are.

General ribaldry in one's late teens is not something that would disqualify a 50 year old man from just about anything.  This includes the idea that perhaps young Mr. Kavanaugh was not always quite as "gentlemanly" as he would want his grandmother to believe.  I do not doubt that now, as a husband, father and respected figure, he treats women with respect and dignity, I have no reason to believe otherwise.  Whether he did as a teenager in the early 1980's is and entirely different matter. Again though, Bro behavior would not necessarily disqualify him, but dishonesty and perhaps even perjury about said Bro behavior in the here and now is another matter.

So Brett, as hard as it may be, you need to be super honest with us and with yourself I think.  If the accusations are false it is even more important to be honest. The simple fact is that everything about this is going to be hard to prove, but don't bank on the technical protections of the law, this isn't a trial. If you want to take your seat on the bench of the highest court in this land, and serve there with your integrity in tact, you're going to have to navigate a world of ideas and assumptions that fall outside of the technical boundaries of the law.  If you actually did what Dr. Ford says you did, then you might as well keep lying, because you're going to answer to a higher justice than the Supreme Court.