In 1987, Raymond J. Donovan, a former secretary of Labor, walked out of a courtroom where he'd just been tried for grand larceny and fraud. Prosecutors had accused him, or a company he was associated with, of working with the Genovese crime family in a scheme involving subcontractors. Back in '87, the trial was in all the papers.
Mr. Donovan was acquitted. Along with all the other defendants. He left the courtroom, then asked the press: "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"
We've been watching the madness in Washington, D.C., play out for about a week now, and we wonder--no matter how this judicial nomination turns out--if the reputations of two people will ever be the same. And not just two. If he's telling the truth, it won't matter. If she's telling the truth, it won't matter. Both will be demonized by partisans for a generation. Has anybody on the left ever forgot the charges against Clarence Thomas? Has anybody on the right ever forgot the charges made by Anita Hill?
A news commentator/judicial strategist/Twitter user--apparently, for we've never heard of him before--made news by suggesting that the victim in this case was mistaken, and perhaps confused Brett Kavanaugh with another boy at the high school who looked like him. And named the other boy. Effectively accusing another man of an attempted rape 36 years ago. One media type dedicated a whole column to this theory in The Washington Post. So another reputation is lost.
The president strangely stayed out of the fray for several days until he could help himself no longer. Then he began tweeting, questioning the woman involved. Then, in what will be this week's bizarre tweet from Donald Trump, wrote: "Facts don't matter. I go through this with them every single day in D.C." When this president complains that facts no longer seem to matter, it's getting to be Bizarro World out there.
The accuser's attorneys have said they'll allow their client to testify, maybe. But the accused would have to go first.
One U.S. senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, says she believes the accuser because, for one reason, the accused hasn't asked for an FBI investigation.
Madness.
Columnists are treating this process as a horse race (see Jennifer Rubin nearby). The Washington Post published a guest column from a rape victim this week--as if her nightmare was an aggravating factor in Kavanaugh case. Thanks to MoveOn.org, which has never moved on, some female Hollywood stars have put out an ad convicting the accused. Some of them may even have read a news story about the matter. Some political commentator named Michelle Malkin went on Fox News the other morning to complain about the thousands of men "falsely accused by lying women" over the years. As if that, too, had anything in common with this particular case.
Madness.
We're not sure what's more remarkable, the hyprocisy and negligence of the political class, or the hypocrisy and negligence of the media class. On all sides.
One sentence we read this week in a column was true: This can't be good for the judicial nomination process. Or Americans.
Editorial on 09/22/2018