During a lengthy reporting career that led me from coast to coast and newsrooms between, I never would have considered publicly ballyhooing decades old unsupported, memory-afflicted sexual-assault allegations of any female, especially one with a publicized political bent.
A bona fide journalist never uses the enormous power and responsibility they are given to seriously injure another's life without reason, corroboration, evidence and weighing the intent and credibility surrounding the information.
I suspect such caution also was the case with virtually all my colleagues of that reporting era (1971-94). It would have been unthinkable and the height of irresponsible journalistic standards to assassinate a good man's character with allegations from a victim who never reported to police (or friends) a supposed groping incident as a teenager.
Yet Christine Blasey Ford conveniently offered the account 36 years later, but only to Democrat politicians on the eve of her supposed offender's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It's clear to most Americans the calculated defamation onslaught against nominee Brett Kavanaugh, an honorable man with a spotless FBI-vetted record, is designed as a Democrat delaying tactic on his Senate confirmation vote until after the November elections.
Why else would Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat senator, quietly and shamefully have held this uncorroborated allegation for six weeks, not even mentioning it to Kavanaugh during their discussions before suddenly publicizing it after his Senate hearing? This lowest-tech public lynching is a disgraceful, totalitarian tactic that has and indeed will affect all Americans.
Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist news website called this assault on justice the evildoing it is. Her story observes that only after Kavanaugh's hearing did Feinstein announce she'd sat for six weeks on a 35-year-old claim of sexual assault from a woman who also happened to be a staunch activist Democrat.
"The media then began running with uncorroborated and disputed allegations ranging from Christine Blasey Ford saying she thought Kavanaugh was trying to rape her and might kill her, to [attorney Michael] Avenatti suggesting that Kavanaugh is a gang raper," Hemingway wrote.
"Republicans on the Judiciary Committee--in part thanks to Sen. Jeff Flake, cowering in the face of a smear campaign--bent over backwards to accommodate the first accuser, no matter how outlandish her requests to delay the hearing. As was easily predictable, the media and other resistance members put forth additional claims--somehow even less substantiated than the initial one--as the days passed."
As Hemingway further explained, Democrat senators blatantly stated, as the Kavanaugh nomination was announced, that they would do what was necessary to stop him.
They weren't kidding, were they? Thus proving to the nation and world that the lowest-functioning Machiavellian principle of using any means to a dubious political end is an acceptable tactic, even down to savaging a good man and his family.
"Republican senators, however, seem to lack the discernment to understand when they're getting played by people who hate them and want them destroyed," wrote Hemingway. "It's not just that they're losing a political battle, but that they're allowing Democrats and the media to destroy a man and his family for political gain. There is no virtue in allowing a man to be smeared without evidence."
To my original point, none of this unsupported and ruthless character assassination works without a cooperative media willing to spread, sensationalize and grossly overplay the accusations from decades past.
Hemingway again: "At some point one must consider whether evil means are justified for progressive ends. The bottom line is that this media-enabled Democratic smear campaign simply can't be the standard by which we destroy people."
Guilty-till-proven-innocent in today's America? What flagrant miscarriage of justice. I prefer what Sen. Lindsey Graham termed this entire high-school-yearbook-quoting Senate hearing travesty when he called it "crap," and the worst "ethical sham" he'd seen in his long political career.
There was abundant truth in this Facebook post from last week: "As long as women who accuse men of sexual attacks are believed without evidence or due process, no man is safe. I'm not safe. Your husband isn't safe. Your father isn't safe. Your son isn't safe. The grandson isn't safe. Your male friends aren't safe."
I've also seen the pertinent question raised whether Judge Kavanaugh as a teenager only committed alleged sexual misconduct against activist Democrat females.
My 88-year-old friend Hank Thompson, who was a campaign official with former Democrat Rep. Bill Alexander, put it another way here in our one-time republic of laws. "If Kavanaugh is denied confirmation, who in the Sam Hill would ever agree to go through a nomination? This is the scum pond of politics."
And there, amid all this ugly, calculated, unconstitutional and unacceptable deception, my friends, is some more truth.
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 09/30/2018