Why everyone should be angry at what Feinstein did re Kavanaugh, and why everyone is not
There are many things wrong with the accusation against Brett Kavanaugh that Diane Feinstein publicized recently. The vagueness of the charges, their antiquity, and the suspect timing, to name a few.
But the one I want to focus on now is the anonymity of the accuser,
There is a reason why one of the pillars of our legal system is that the accused—in a court of law—is given the right to face his or her accuser. This is true not just in sexual crimes but in others as well, and it’s even true when a child is the purported victim, although sometimes there are special ways in which children are protected from having to face their alleged perpetrators.
Anyone who bears legal witness against someone is identified and subject to cross-examination and the other tools in the lawyers’ kit. The purpose is not to be mean to victims, although the process can indeed be very stressful. The purpose is to protect the rights of the accused, which is considered (or used to be considered) one of the most important principles of American law.
I’m old enough to remember when even rape victims in cases that went to trial had their names published in the newspapers, which is a different but related issue. Then, in the 1970s, the movement to pass rape shield laws came to fruition with the passage of a host of such laws by the 1980s. These laws protected alleged rape victims in trials from having their own sexual history dragged out and used against them except in limited circumstances.
However, when these laws tried to make it a violation for newspapers to publish the names of victims, they ran afoul of the courts who mostly considered such laws unconstitutional. However, to this day, newspapers are reluctant to publish such information, as a courtesy, although they sometimes do. Of course, the scandal sheets and internet sites are not so reluctant, if they can manage to find out the information.
But all of that is about legal proceedings and rapes or sexual assaults that meet the criteria for court proceedings. The accusations against Kavanaugh very clearly do not. So why is Feinstein protecting the accuser’s identity?
Because PC practice now dictates it, as a mark of great sensitivity. That’s pernicious, because it elevates anonymous gossip to the status of news. Not only is the accused unable to confront the accuser, but the public is unable to evaluate a single thing connected with the incident. That leaves the space wide open for people to project whatever they wish onto the story, and for politics to rush in to fill the gap.
That’s Feinstein’s intent, of course. And everyone—right or left, man or woman, Democrat or Republican—should be calling her out for it. But of course they are not.
But this isn’t just a case of someone publicizing this story. This is the case of a United States senator of great seniority (in every sense of the word) using anonymous gossip as character assassination for political purposes.
Or trying to use it; we’ll see if it has any effect. So far it doesn’t seem to have derailed anything. But as I wrote yesterday, that’s probably not her intent. Her intent was to delay the hearings if possible (that doesn’t seem to be happening), or at the very least to taint Kavanaugh’s reputation forever and to rally Democrats to even greater fury for the 2018 elections.
But there’s even more behind it. It’s a warning to any future appointee of Trump’s, just as the Manafort and Cohen and Flynn prosecutions are warnings to anyone who might associate with him in business or government: beware!! It’s scorched earth, and we will use every method we can think of to destroy you.
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