Brett Kavanaugh A Good Friend To All The Boys And The Girls That He Was Friends With

This was just a very good Fox interview!

Brett Kavanaugh somehow made it through his Fox News interview last night, insisting to Fox anchor Martha MacCallum that not only has he never done any sexual assaults, he also was a studious teen who went to church every Sunday, possibly dressed as Mr. Rogers, and that Georgetown Prep parties were dull affairs where the only people drinking were those who could do so legally. We kept expecting him to start fondly reminiscing about his pals Jughead, Betty and Veronica.

While remaining very, very sympathetic to Kavanaugh and the awful time he's been having, MacCallum did at least bring up most of the major questions about the accusations made against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez -- though of course MacCallum went out of her way to remind viewers that nobody anywhere ever has corroborated the women's accounts. And Kavanaugh was very, very good at sticking to answers he'd been coached on giving, especially variations on the phrase "I am looking for a fair process, a process where I can defend my integrity and clear my name." He repeats the "fair process" line 17 times in the 20-minute interview.

An interview whose very existence, we'd like to remind you is not the least bit normal at all. A Supreme Court nominee has never before gone on the talking picture box to try to gin up public support, in case you'd forgotten. Isn't having an official state TV channel wonderful? As your attorney, we advise you to watch at least a few minutes of the interview so you can get a sense of just how robotic Kavanaugh's performance is; sure, he's a judge, not a TV guy, but the effect is less "nerd who is bad at talking" than "guy who's been coached to hit several main points, and please remember to mention God, OK?"

Kavanaugh really wants you to know that he's "never sexually assaulted anyone in high school or otherwise" at any time in his life -- another phrase he repeated repeatedly, with repetitions, even. Kavanaugh managed to say he'd "never sexually assaulted anyone" six times, which is a pretty weird way to answer the question, but it certainly got the point across, in case anyone missed it once or twice. He also has always treated women "with dignity and respect," repeated four times, but never with "respect and dignity," because that's not the phrase he was taught to memorize.

Kavanaugh's denials were absolute: Not only did he deny attempting to rape Dr. Blasey at a drunken party when she was 15, he also said he just plain never knew her: "I may have met her, we did not travel in the same social circle, she was not a friend, not someone I knew." We suppose that could even be true -- a couple of swaggering drunk high school jocks might well have grabbed a girl they didn't know and then forgotten all about it, because isn't that the whole problem?

Some of Kavanaugh's other absolute denials, though, strained credulity, particularly when contrasted with what others have said about the climate at Georgetown Prep in the '80s. MacCallum brought up Michael Avenatti's still yet-to-be-detailed claims that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge targeted women for gang rape at house parties -- good for her; she went there -- which led to this self-portrait of Brett Kavanaugh the Very Un-Naughty Boy:

That's totally false and outrageous. I've never done any such thing, known about any such thing. When I was in high school – and I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, a Jesuit high school, where I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship, friendship with my fellow classmates and friendship with girls from the local all girls Catholic schools.

Let's just note some of those service projects, as listed in his high school yearbook:

"100 kegs or bust" IS SO a service project, as are all the other drinking jokes and the hilarious jokes about being a "Renate alumnius" [sic], which was a funny, completely innocent joke about a gal his buddies also claimed to have been "alumni" of. That story was published after the interview was taped, though, so Kavenaugh wasn't able to offer his charming explanation of how he only meant he had chastely kissed the lass after a dance, and perhaps after splitting a malted, with two straws.

A bit later in the interview, Kavanaugh returned to what a fine fellow he was, a regular Davey the claymation boy, only not Lutheran.

I was focused on trying to be number one in my class and being captain of the varsity basketball team and doing my service projects, going to church. The vast majority of the time I spent in high school was studying or focused on sports and being a good friend to the boys and the girls that I was friends with.

If other reports are to be believed, maybe it would have been better if Goliath the talking dog had been there to remind him, "God's watching, Brett." But hey, how about all that drunken partying, huh?

And yes, there were parties. And the drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there. And yes, people might have had too many beers on occasion and people generally in high school – I think all of us have probably done things we look back on in high school and regret or cringe a bit, but that's not what we're talking about.

We liked that part best. We can actually see Jesus-Mr. Rogers-Davey in his checked red shirt, standing at the door of a high school party, checking IDs to make sure only 18-year-olds were drinking and boofing . Or perhaps merely boofed. 

And no, heavens no, when he was a freshman at Yale, he also never did anything untoward at a party like drunkenly waggle his dick in Deborah Ramirez's face, because "if such a thing had happened, it would have been the talk of the campus" -- let's just fact check that one with Jane Mayer, who co-wrote that New Yorker piece, huh?

And so it was - a classmate who heard about it at the time told me he has thought of it every time he's heard Kavan… https: //t.co/dr6AGa0EHH

— Jane Mayer (@Jane Mayer) 1537832280.0 

But nobody at the party remembered any dick-wagging, and as for Kavanaugh's freshman roommate, James Roche, he wasn't there. Kavanaugh only mentions that particular fact, completely leaving aside the less flattering parts of Roche's statement about Kavanaugh being "a notably heavy drinker" who "became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk." Incoherently drunk, at that.

And of course Kavanaugh insisted the most pointless thing of all: He never even had sexual intercourse once during high school and college, which means that, as a virgin, it was impossible for him to attempt to rape anyone or shove his dick in anyone's face, because virgins don't do such things. Especially virgins who won't even admit to having been wildly drunk sometimes. You can trust everything Kavanaugh says, because he is is Jesus and Mr. Rogers and your kindly great aunt Millie and the ice cream man and whoever was good at Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall probably.

[ WaPo transcript / NYT]

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