In Related News, Water is Wet

The headline at Rolling Stone, "Miami Group Chat for Young Conservatives Riddled With Racism," says it all.

I am profoundly unsurprised. 

Support Student Journalism

The Harvard Crimson has been all over Larry Summers relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and now we know that Summers was asking advice from Epstein on the best way to f%$# one of his subordinates.

The email exchanges between Summers and Epstein is nauseating. 

When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he sought guidance from a longtime associate: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.

In a sequence of texts and emails between November 2018 and July 5, 2019, Summers turned to Epstein for advice on his pursuit of the woman. Epstein was quick to chime in with assurance and suggestions, describing himself in one November 2018 message as Summers’ “wing man.”

………

Together, the messages show Summers — who served as Treasury Secretary under former United States President Bill Clinton — placing an extraordinary degree of trust in Epstein, asking him for help in navigating a relationship that blurred the boundaries of his professional and personal lives.

This ain't boundary blurring, it is sexual harassment.

Summers, who has been married since 2005, told Epstein he thought the woman was reluctant to leave him because she valued his professional connections. Epstein told him in one June 2019 text, “She is doomed to be with you.”

“Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” Summers wrote in November 2018. “I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rear view mirror category.”

………

A spokesperson for Summers said that the woman described in the exchanges was never Summers’ student, but declined to comment further for this article.

So, he had power over professional career, but never was her instructor.  I guess that it makes OK, right?

Wrong. 

 

Stay Classy

I am referring, of course, to Donald Trump, who, on Air Force 1, responded to questions from a reporter by calling her "Piggy".

In the old days, politicians actually showed some wit when dealing with the press and insulting people.

Hell, even the Peter Capaldi character Malcolm Tucker is classier than this sh%$-heel.

Donald Trump, who has a history of making extremely personal attacks on female journalists, referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One on Friday.

While the remark did not initially get much attention, it picked up some traction on Tuesday and has drawn backlash from fellow journalists, including some who have previously been attacked by Trump themselves.


Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg’s White House correspondent, had taken advantage of a press opportunity with the president – known as a gaggle – to ask a question about the unfolding Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the possibility of the House voting to release all of the files related to his case, which now appears likely.

As Lucey started to ask why Trump was behaving the way he was “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”, Trump pointed at her and said: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

And the religious right sees him as the epitome of virtue BECAUSE he is a racist dirt bag,. 

Worst timeline ever.

The Response to Jeff Bezos' Space Penis

For the life of me, I cannot tell if this is serious of satire

In response to the phallic appearance of more mainstream rockets, they have developed a rocket that looks like female genetalia.

As Anna Russell would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

The group Wer Braucht Feminismus (WBF?), claims that the shape is actually more efficient, assuming that they are actual scientists, and not an exercise in guerilla theater.

I'm kind of inclined to believe that it is the latter.

On a technical level, an optimal design of a spaceship would likely resemble a Sears–Haack body, basically an elongated football shape, at least in terms of transonic drag (MaxQ):

A German feminist art group has revealed a vulva-shaped spaceship concept, which it is encouraging the European Space Agency to help realise in order to better represent humanity in space and "restore gender equality to the cosmos."

The group Wer Braucht Feminismus? (WBF?), which translates to "Who Needs Feminism?", created the Vulva Spaceship concept to challenge the convention of phallic spacecraft design.

The yonic craft was designed to signal inclusivity and the group has started a petition on change.org calling on the European Space Agency to consider the project.

"The project adds another dimension to the representation of humanity in space and is communicating to the world that anyone has a place in the universe, regardless of their genitalia," said the organisation.

I think that this project may be deeply offensive to the M'Koorik, the people of Vega IV, who reproduce through budding.

Bye, Felicia!*

I did not expect this to happen this quickly, but Andrew "Rat-Faced Andy" Cuomo has announced that he is resigning as the Governor of New York. 

Given all the things that he has done during his time as Governor, killing nursing home patients and covering it up, shutting down a corruption investigation that he initiated, actively working to keep Republicans in control of the State Senate, etc. it is remarkable just how long he has survived.

His political career is now over, and New York and the nation will be the better for it:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Tuesday that he would resign from office, succumbing to a ballooning sexual harassment scandal in an astonishing reversal of fortune for one of the nation’s best-known leaders.

Mr. Cuomo said his resignation would take effect in 14 days. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, will be sworn in to replace him, becoming the first woman in history to occupy New York State’s top office.

“Given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing,” Mr. Cuomo said in remarks streamed from his office in Midtown Manhattan. “And therefore, that’s what I’ll do.”

Mr. Cuomo’s dramatic fall was shocking in its velocity and vertical drop: A year ago, the governor was being hailed as a national hero for his steady leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The resignation of Mr. Cuomo, 63, a three-term Democrat, came a week after a report from the New York State attorney general concluded that the governor sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, including current and former government workers, by engaging in unwanted touching and making inappropriate comments. The 165-page report also found that Mr. Cuomo and his aides unlawfully retaliated against at least one of the women for making her complaints public and fostered a toxic work environment.

As an aside, there are wider repurcussions indicating that Cuomo's brand, for not at least, is increasingly toxic, with Roberta Kaplan, a noted public interest lawyer with a long record on LGBTQ cases, was forced to resign from Time’s Up, an advocacy group dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual abuse and harassment, and Alonzo David, the President of the Human Rights Campaign, is under investigation by this organization for his role in retaliating against Cuomo accusers. 

Hopefully, the fallout from this will result in a lot of former Cuomo aides and supporters losing their power and positions.

Cuomo is a thoroughly toxic person, even ignoring his behavior towards woman, and he, and his, should be excised from the public sphere completely.

^*Bye, Felicia is a phrase used to contemptuously dismiss someone. It comes from the movie Friday.

Drip, Drip, Drip

Thinking about how we wouldn't need an Andrew Cuomo reckoning if prestige media and elite pundits just reported on him accurately in the first place

— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) February 27, 2021

A lesson for the press

One of the things about serial harassers and abusers is that it almost never happens just once. Once someone comes out to the press, people start coming out of the woodwork.^*  

This means, you guessed it, we now have a second aide who has accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.

The reason that this happens is because typically harassment victims feel isolated, and are terrified of going out on a limb and being there alone.

Once someone else makes an allegation, they realize that they are NOT alone, and come forward as well, and so now we have Charlotte Bennett, former:

A second former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is accusing him of sexual harassment, saying that he asked her questions about her sex life, whether she was monogamous in her relationships and if she had ever had sex with older men.

The aide, Charlotte Bennett, who was an executive assistant and health policy adviser in the Cuomo administration until she left in November, told The New York Times that the governor had harassed her late last spring, during the height of the state’s fight against the coronavirus.

Ms. Bennett, 25, said the most unsettling episode occurred on June 5, when she was alone with Mr. Cuomo in his State Capitol office. In a series of interviews this week, she said the governor had asked her numerous questions about her personal life, including whether she thought age made a difference in romantic relationships, and had said that he was open to relationships with women in their 20s — comments she interpreted as clear overtures to a sexual relationship.

………

Ms. Bennett said that during the June encounter, the governor, 63, also complained to her about being lonely during the pandemic, mentioning that he “can’t even hug anyone,” before turning the focus to Ms. Bennett. She said that Mr. Cuomo asked her, “Who did I last hug?”

Ms. Bennett said she had tried to dodge the question by responding that she missed hugging her parents. “And he was, like, ‘No, I mean like really hugged somebody?’” she said.

Mr. Cuomo never tried to touch her, Ms. Bennett said, but the message of the entire episode was unmistakable to her.

“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared,” Ms. Bennett said. “And was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.”

………

Ms. Bennett said she had disclosed the interaction with Mr. Cuomo to his chief of staff, Jill DesRosiers, less than a week later and was transferred to another job, as a health policy adviser, with an office on the opposite side of the Capitol, soon after that. Ms. Bennett said she had also given a lengthy statement to a special counsel to the governor, Judith Mogul, toward the end of June.

Ms. Bennett said she ultimately decided not to insist on an investigation because she was happy in her new job and “wanted to move on.” No action was taken against the governor.

It never happens just once.

I'm expecting to see a few more.

The only question is whether people still fear Cuomo the way that they used to.  

If not, he is toast.

^*This statement is offered only in the context of the current story regarding Andrew Cuomo, and not on the allegations involving Woody Allen, which I have not, and probabably never will, have a public opinion on.

And He's Gone

When I suggested that Biden aide TJ Ducklo should be fired for his abusive behavior to a reporter, I did not expect this to happen, but now the former Assistant Press Secretary has resigned.

His behavior was indefensible, so it wasn't:

White House deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo has resigned, the day after he was suspended for issuing a sexist and profane threat to a journalist inquiring about his relationship with another reporter.

In a statement on Saturday, Ducklo said he was “devastated to have embarrassed and disappointed my White House colleagues and President Biden”.

“No words can express my regret, my embarrassment and my disgust for my behavior,” he said. “I used language that no woman should ever have to hear from anyone, especially in a situation where she was just trying to do her job. It was language that was abhorrent, disrespectful and unacceptable.”

It is the first departure from the new administration, less than a month into President Joe Biden’s tenure, and comes as the White House was facing criticism for not living up to standards set by Biden himself in their decision to retain Ducklo.

During a virtual swearing-in for staff on inauguration day, Biden said “If you ever work with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I will fire you on the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”

Ducklo was suspended for a week without pay on Friday after a report surfaced in Vanity Fair outlining his sexist threats against a female Politico journalist to try to suppress a story about his relationship, telling her “I will destroy you”.

Thoughts and prayers, I guess.

A Definition of Advancement That I Was Unfamiliar With

I have to agree with the cartoonist, the fact that a woman is raining down death and destruction upon black and brown people throughout the world is not a cause for celebration, a better solution is to stop the bombing:

In a historic first, the Navy has recommended a female officer to command an aircraft carrier.

Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt is one of six officers recommended to command a nuclear-powered carrier in fiscal 2022. Also selected for the job were Capts. Colin Day, David Duff, Brent Gaut, David-Tavis Pollard and Craig Sicola.

Naval Air Forces did not respond to requests for comment from Bauernschmidt, or questions about when the captains will be assigned to carriers and what having a woman serving in this role will bring to the force.

Bauernschmidt has already broken barriers in her Navy career since leaving the Naval Academy in 1994. She became the first woman to serve as executive officer on a nuclear warship, the carrier Abraham Lincoln, in 2016.

The definitive word on this is Caitlin Johnstone's essay, "Biden Will Have The Most Diverse, Intersectional Cabinet Of Mass Murderers Ever Assembled."

It is not enough that women or minorities have an equal opportunity to oppress.  The oppression should stop.

H/t Naked Capitalism., both for the article and the cartoon.

Boy, I Screwed up This One………

In 2014, as Gamegate affair was metastasizing into an orgy of white male privilege and terrorism, I made fun of what I referred to the "Quinnspiracy", seeing it as little more a controversy about gaming and gaming journalism.

Shortly after that, what was a kind of an inside-baseball controversy became the blueprint for white male (and it is almost always white male) terrorism via the internet.

At the time, I thought that it was a metaphor for the corruption in game journalism, and how it made it difficult for independent studios to get any coverage. (Valid, but irrelevant to what it revealed)

The real story, which was that an army of violent racist, sexist, and homophobic dirt-bags poised to terrorize our society, and in 2016, our electoral politics.

An Interesting Coda to the Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings

Some of may remember Yale professors, and husband and wife Jed Rubenfeld and Amy Chua, who offered an empassioned defense of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in a WSJ Op/Ed.

At the time, it they were accused of pandering in order to get prestigious federal and Supreme Court clerk positions.

Both of them, particularly Chua, were prominent in part for their ability to get these clerkships, and The Guardian reported that Chua told applicants to Kavanaugh to, "Dress to exude a “model-like” femininity to help them win a post in Kavanaugh’s chambers." (Chua's daughter ended up clerking for Kavanaugh shortly after the Op/Ed.)

There were also allegations that Rubenfeld, one of the most prominent critics of Title IX sexual harassment protections, routinely sexually harassed female students.

Well, the investigation is completed, and Jed Rubenfeld, a tenured professor, has been suspended for 2 years, and after he returns, he will be forbidden from teaching small group or required classes.

I'm kind of surprised that he has not been fired, but tenure provides an enormous amount of protection to professors.

My guess is that Rubenfeld will not be returning to Yale after his suspension ends:

On Monday morning, members of the Yale Law School faculty received a terse message from their provost informing them that Professor Jed Rubenfeld “will leave his position as a member of the YLS faculty for a two-year period, effective immediately,” and that upon his return, Rubenfeld would be barred from teaching “small group or required courses. He will be restricted in social gatherings with students.” As of Tuesday morning, he was no longer listed on the Yale Law faculty site.

Three people familiar with the investigation that led to Rubenfeld’s suspension said it stemmed from the university finding a pattern of sexual harassment of several students. The allegations, which spanned decades, included verbal harassment, unwanted touching, and attempted kissing, both in the classroom and at parties at Rubenfeld’s home.

In a phone conversation Tuesday, Rubenfeld told me, “I absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent deny that I ever sexually harassed anyone, whether verbally or otherwise. Yes, I’ve said stupid things that I regret over the course of my 30 years as professor, and no professor who’s taught as long as I have that I know doesn’t have things that they regret that they said.”

He added, “Ironically, I have written about the unreliability of the campus Title IX procedures. I never expected to go through one of them myself.”
In 2014, for example, Rubenfeld wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that said that the university that puts in place affirmative-consent standards “encourages people to think of themselves as sexual assault victims when there was no assault” and that it is “illogical” to claim “intercourse with someone ‘under the influence’ of alcohol is always rape.”

Lovely fellow.

Also a liar:

That’s not true, according to Yale’s stated policies — and one of the complainants. “License to write about sexual harassment is not license to sexually harass,” she told me. “I reported because I was sexually harassed. Now he’s being dishonest about even this aspect of the Title IX process. For example, as Yale’s policy requires, I identified myself to him. I had to, and I did so at considerable risk given his influence in the legal community.”

………

Multiple women told me that a whisper network about Rubenfeld operated on campus, and that as law-school students, they were warned by peers to be careful around him. One said she was told by a male alum, “You’ve not scraped the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Rubenfeld’s behavior. Stay away.”

Rubenfeld is married to fellow Yale Law professor Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, [a paean to abusive parenting] and both wield power in the high-stakes race for judicial clerkships. In the summer of 2018, it was Chua who took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to vouch for then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a “mentor for young lawyers, particularly women.” (That was before allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh were made public.) The op-ed noted that the couple’s daughter had been about to clerk for Kavanaugh on the appeals court, and a year later, the Supreme Court acknowledged Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld would clerk for Justice Kavanaugh on the Court instead.

The Guardian first reported on the existence of the investigation into Rubenfeld’s conduct in the fall of 2018. He told the paper that he hadn’t been informed of the specifics but that he had been “advised that the allegations were not of the kind that would jeopardize my position as a long-tenured member of the faculty.” Female students also said that Rubenfeld and Chua discussed with students hoping to work for Kavanaugh the importance of their physical appearance. Chua denied telling students that Kavanaugh preferred attractive female clerks or coaching them on how to dress in “outgoing” fashion for interviews, though a Slate story subsequently reported it had “confirmed the Guardian’s reporting with students who were present at the time.”

August 2020 does seem to be a bountiful harvest for schadenfreude.

H/t Atrios

I've Heard of Fighting Fire with Fire, but This Is Ridiculous

But running a sexually harassing mayor against a sexually harassing President seems to be to be an exercise in stupidity.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party establishment seems to think that Michael Bloomberg's checkbook is the last firewall against a Bernie Sanders success:

As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him.

A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, “Do you want to f---? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f----- a lot, too!” Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers “will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”

………

Several lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging that women were discriminated against at Bloomberg’s business-information company, including a case brought by a federal agency and one filed by a former employee, who blamed Bloomberg for creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation.

The most high-profile case was from a former saleswoman. She sued Bloomberg personally as well as his company, alleging workplace discrimination. She alleged Bloomberg told her to “kill it” when he learned she was pregnant. Bloomberg has denied her allegation under oath, and he reached a confidential settlement with the saleswoman.

The Washington Post interviewed a former Bloomberg employee, David Zielenziger, who said he witnessed the conversation with the saleswoman. Zielenziger, who said he had not previously spoken publicly about the matter, said Bloomberg’s behavior toward the woman was “outrageous. I understood why she took offense.”

………

A number of the cases have either been settled, dismissed in Bloomberg’s favor or closed because of a failure of the plaintiff to meet filing deadlines. The cases do not involve accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct; the allegations have centered around what Bloomberg has said and about the workplace culture he fostered.

Now, as Bloomberg is increasingly viewed as a viable Democratic candidate for president and the #MeToo era has raised the profile of workplace harassment, he is finding that his efforts to prevent disclosure are clashing against demands that he release former employees and complainants from their nondisclosure agreements.

Why anyone thinks that he could defeat Donald Trump is completely beyond me.

This is the most PUMA Thing Ever

For those of you who don't know what the initials mean, there was a PAC formed, People United Means Action (PUMA), to demand that, despite Barack Obama winning the primaries, Hillary Clinton should be the nominee.

The movement, such as it was, was an exercise in upper middle class white women privilege.

It has not changed:

the replies to this tweet are full of white women outraged and disgusted by the ostensible misogyny of Tlaib booing Clinton, none of whom have any comments about the misogyny & racism of calling four women of colour Bernie’s “Concubines”. pic.twitter.com/IR98wf2zic

— Alexander (@purplechrain) February 2, 2020

The level of oblivious narcissism is stunning.

#MeToo, Presidential Candidate Edition

A former aide of Kirsten Gillibrand has alleged that she did nothing about a senior aide harassing her:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the most outspoken advocates of the #MeToo movement who has made fighting sexual misconduct a centerpiece of her presidential campaign, spent last summer pressing legislators to update Congress’ “broken” system of handling sexual harassment.

At the same time, a mid-20s female aide to Gillibrand resigned in protest over the handling of her sexual harassment complaint by Gillibrand‘s office, and criticized the senator for failing to abide by her own public standards.

In July, the female staffer alleged one of Gillibrand’s closest aides — who was a decade her senior and married — repeatedly made unwelcome advances after the senator had told him he would be promoted to a supervisory role over her. She also said the male aide regularly made crude, misogynistic remarks in the office about his female colleagues and potential female hires.

Less than three weeks after reporting the alleged harassment and subsequently claiming that the man retaliated against her for doing so, the woman told chief of staff Jess Fassler that she was resigning because of the office’s handling of the matter. She did not have another job lined up.

The woman was granted anonymity because she fears retaliation and damage to her future professional prospects.

“I have offered my resignation because of how poorly the investigation and post-investigation was handled,” the woman wrote to Gillibrand in a letter sent on her final day to the senator's personal email account. Copied were general counsel Keith Castaldo and Fassler, who is now managing the senator’s presidential bid.

………

Gillibrand, who was not made available for an interview, issued a statement to POLITICO defending her office’s handling of the incident.

“These are challenges that affect all of our nation’s workplaces, including mine, and the question is whether or not they are taken seriously. As I have long said, when allegations are made in the workplace, we must believe women so that serious investigations can actually take place, we can learn the facts, and there can be appropriate accountability,” she said. “That’s exactly what happened at every step of this case last year. I told her that we loved her at the time and the same is true today.”

Her office said no one responded to the letter because it determined that “engaging again on an already settled personnel matter was not the appropriate course of action.” It said the letter came after she’d given three weeks’ notice, “contained clear inaccuracies and was a major departure from the sentiments she shared with senior staff in her final days in the office.”

Since she left last summer, the woman has been doing part-time contract work. The male aide, Abbas Malik, kept his job.

Two weeks ago, however, POLITICO presented the office with its own findings of additional allegations of inappropriate workplace conduct by Malik. Among the claims were that he made a “joke” about rape to a female colleague — a person whom the office had failed to contact last summer despite repeated urgings by Malik’s accuser to reach out to the person.

It's not enough to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk.

I have no doubt that Gillibrand is sincere in her publicly stated positions on this issue, but her, and her office's, response to this.

Even now, being presented with additional evidence from POLITICO, the response is dismissive.

I understand how difficult it is for someone to deal with allegations when it involves a valued employee, but this is her signature issue, so I expect that there will be significant consequences to her campaign.

She needs to address this, and maybe spend less time at fund raisers with big pharma executives.

Tweet of the Day

whenever i see the name kirsten gillibrand i automatically think of her lehman sisters quote pic.twitter.com/hXF5sl40xD

— aída chávez (@aidachavez) January 16, 2019

So much wrong in one one short quote.

This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

Just spoke with #JamesRoche who was Yale roommate of Brett #Kavanaugh . He confirms that the #SCOTUS nominee was frequently drunk, and incoherently. Says he supports integrity of Debbie Ramirez, the 2nd accuser. #abc7now #KavanaughConfirmation Respects her courage. pic.twitter.com/rrBboHAyj2

— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) September 24, 2018

And his roommate too

I am, of course, referring to Brett Kavanaugh and his Evil Minions^™.

First, we have another allegation of sexual assault while drunk, this one at Yale:

As Senate Republicans press for a swift vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats are investigating a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The claim dates to the 1983-84 academic school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote. The Democratic Senate offices reviewing the allegations believe that they merit further investigation. “This is another serious, credible, and disturbing allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. It should be fully investigated,” Senator Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, said. An aide in one of the other Senate offices added, “These allegations seem credible, and we’re taking them very seriously. If established, they’re clearly disqualifying.”

The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.

………

Ramirez acknowledged that there are significant gaps in her memories of the evening, and that, if she ever presents her story to the F.B.I. or members of the Senate, she will inevitably be pressed on her motivation for coming forward after so many years, and questioned about her memory, given her drinking at the party.

And yet, after several days of considering the matter carefully, she said, “I’m confident about the pants coming up, and I’m confident about Brett being there.” Ramirez said that what has stayed with her most forcefully is the memory of laughter at her expense from Kavanaugh and the other students. “It was kind of a joke,” she recalled. “And now it’s clear to me it wasn’t a joke.”

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer have not been able to find a witness, but they have been able to someone who says that, "Another student told him about the incident either on the night of the party or in the next day or two. The classmate said that he is “one-hundred-per-cent sure” that he was told at the time that Kavanaugh was the student who exposed himself to Ramirez. He independently recalled many of the same details offered by Ramirez, including that a male student had encouraged Kavanaugh as he exposed himself."

And do we have one person on the record, albeit with (contemporaneous) hearsay, as well as her family:

Another classmate, Richard Oh, an emergency-room doctor in California, recalled overhearing, soon after the party, a female student tearfully recounting to another student an incident at a party involving a gag with a fake penis, followed by a male student exposing himself. Oh is not certain of the identity of the female student. Ramirez told her mother and sister about an upsetting incident at the time, but did not describe the details to either due to her embarrassment.

I should note that this is not limited to just the revelation, it appears that he and his friends used their senior yearbook to slut shame a woman at a nearby school, and there is absolute confirmation of this:

Brett Kavanaugh’s page in his high school yearbook offers a glimpse of the teenage years of the man who is now President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: lots of football, plenty of drinking, parties at the beach. Among the reminiscences about sports and booze is a mysterious entry: “Renate Alumnius.”

The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Judge Kavanaugh, who were described as the “Renate Alumni.” It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school.

Two of Judge Kavanaugh’s classmates say the mentions of Renate were part of the football players’ unsubstantiated boasting about their conquests.

“They were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate,” said Sean Hagan, a Georgetown Prep student at the time, referring to Judge Kavanaugh and his teammates. “I can’t express how disgusted I am with them, then and now.”

You will note that the "Fourth of July" has 6 extra "F"s. This stands for, "Find them, French them, Feel them, Finger them, F%$# them, Forget them."

And finally, for Kavanaugh anyway, we have allegations of alcohol soaked parties where people pulled a train on a drunk girl.

But it isn't just Kavanaugh, but also his friends, the Bobsey Twins of Yale Law School, Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld.

I had already mentioned reports that Chua had advised her students that Kavanaugh wanted his clerks to look like models, which she has denied, bit now some of her former students are calling her a liar:

But another former law student who was advised by Chua and approached the Guardian after its original story was published on Thursday said his experience was consistent with the allegations presented in the article.

The male student, who asked not to be identified, said that when he approached Chua about his interest in clerking for Kavanaugh, the professor said it was “great”, but then added that Kavanaugh “tends to hire women who are generally attractive and then likes to send them to [supreme court Chief Justice John] Roberts”.

It was a reference to Kavanaugh’s role as a so-called “feeder” judge, whose clerks often go on to win highly coveted clerkships at the US supreme court.

The student alleged that Chua then added: “I don’t think it is a sexual thing, but [Kavanaugh] likes to have pretty clerks.”

The former student told the Guardian that in the following year, he advised two female classmates who were also interested in clerking for Kavanaugh to talk to Chua.

“They got the same advice: ‘He likes girls who are pretty’,” the student said. “Another girl … she got the same advice, and [Chua told her] to wear heels.”

Meanwhile, the allegations against Rubenfeld sound a lot like Kavanaugh's freshman year:

………

And apparently the school’s been worried about Jed Rubenfeld for some time.

We can now report that Yale has been conducting an internal investigation into harassment and inappropriate conduct allegations concerning Professor Rubenfeld. The law school will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the investigation, but a letter that went out to Yale Law School Alumni over the summer confirms that the investigation is ongoing.

“YLS has hired an outside investigator to look into Professor Rubenfeld’s conduct, and folks should reach out to her if they have something to share. The sooner the better, and it’s possible to talk to her in ways that preserve anonymity (see details below). The investigator’s name is Jenn Davis, and she can be reached at: [Redacted]

More details:

YLS seems to be pretty concerned about what it’s been hearing about Professor Rubenfeld’s conduct, especially (but not solely) with respect to female students. This is conduct that seems to date back decades but that has persisted into the just-concluded school year. YLS has hired an outside investigator, Jenn Davis, to try to put together a more comprehensive account of that conduct and its effects on the environment at YLS. One Dean Gerken receives this account, a determination will be made about what steps to take with respect to remedies.

Scope and process: Jenn’s jurisdiction is over issues regarding female students as well as other types of behaviors that have given rise to concern over the years. It seems she’s been tasked with understanding whether Professor Rubenfeld contributes to a hostile environment for students, generally. There is an understanding that certain behaviors might well not be unique to him or to YLS, but that does not make them OK.

More specifically, it seems Jenn is interested in hearing about, among other things:

• Disparate treatment of, or boundary crossing with, women in the YLS community. She is interested in hearing from subjects of, or witnesses to, that treatment. (E.g., comments about female students’ physical appearances or relationship histories, conversations that seem designed to “test the waters,” intimidation or efforts at manipulation targeted at female students, etc.).
• Conduct related to excessive drinking with students (driving with students while drunk, etc.).
• Inappropriate employment practices relating to RAs or Coker Fellows.
• Retaliation against students who do not show sufficient loyalty.

Anonymity: YLS has given Jenn permission to talk to individuals (students, alums, etc.), and to record (or not) what they have to say, at whatever level of anonymity the individuals feel comfortable with. There are opportunities to aggregate accounts, to speak completely off the record, etc. Obviously, the more detail that Jenn can ultimately pass along, the more useful her report will be, but any accounts that help her get a better sense of the environment at YLS will add value. If you are interested in reaching out to her, you can set up a preliminary call just to talk about procedure, if you would like. You can also change your mind at any point about the level of anonymity at which you provide information; she has said that even for people who agree to have their name or identifying information used, she will circle back to confirm before sharing it. There is enormous flexibility here. That said, the one thing Jenn cannot offer is attorney-client privilege; if her records are ultimately subpoenaed, she could fight the subpoena, but can’t guarantee she would win.

Jenn herself: She has worked on investigations at graduate and undergraduate programs at peer schools, and she seems to recognize the complexities of, and common dynamics within, these types of environments. [Redacted] has spoken with her already and would be happy to speak with anyone who wants to know more.

………

Moreover, Yale Law alumni tell us that Rubenfeld’s behavior towards women was an “open secret” within the Yale Law community. The allegations of “boundary crossing” mentioned in the email have been repeated to us via anonymous emails, texts, and DMs from alumni that are known to us but do not want to go on the record until the investigation is complete. There are even public tweets which seem to speak to these matters, if you know what you are looking for.

Davis is a Title IX investigator of some note, so it's pretty clear what the bulk of allegations are about, and given that we have reports that, "Rubenfeld apparently warned a student to avoid working for two judges: Alex Kozinski, and Brett Kavanaugh," it is not a stretch to conclude that Kavanaugh's office was a hostile workplace, though hopefully not quite as bad as Kosinski, whose behavior towards women led to a forced retirement.

It does appear that, in addition to the obvious pain that this is causing for bad people Kavanaugh is  ……… Kavanaugh, Rubenfeld's writings show an antediluvian attitudes toward sexual harassment and assault, and, if her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is any indication, Chua makes Joan Crawford look like Barbara Billingsly, there are some positive consequences for the rest of us about all of this, which I will get into later.

Also Yes

It appears that people screening Brett Kavanaugh's potential law clerks, spoecifically Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother author Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld, both of Yale Law School, advised women who applied to clerk for Brett Kavanaugh to try to look like models:

A top professor at Yale Law School who strongly endorsed supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a “mentor to women” privately told a group of law students last year that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models” and would provide advice to students about their physical appearance if they wanted to work for him, the Guardian has learned.

Amy Chua, a Yale professor who wrote a bestselling book on parenting called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, was known for instructing female law students who were preparing for interviews with Kavanaugh on ways they could dress to exude a “model-like” femininity to help them win a post in Kavanaugh’s chambers, according to sources.

Kavanaugh is facing intense scrutiny in Washington following an allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford that he forcibly held her down and groped her while they were in high school. He has denied the allegation. The accusation has mired Kavanaugh’s confirmation in controversy, drawing parallels to allegations of sexual harassment against Justice Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill in the 1990s.

Yale provided Kavanaugh with many of the judge’s clerks over the years, and Chua played an outsized role in vetting the clerks who worked for him. But the process made some students deeply uncomfortable.

One source said that in at least one case, a law student was so put off by Chua’s advice about how she needed to look, and its implications, that she decided not to pursue a clerkship with Kavanaugh, a powerful member of the judiciary who had a formal role in vetting clerks who served in the US supreme court.

In one case, Jed Rubenfeld, also an influential professor at Yale and who is married to Chua, told a prospective clerk that Kavanaugh liked a certain “look”.

“He told me, ‘You should know that Judge Kavanaugh hires women with a certain look,’” one woman told the Guardian. “He did not say what the look was and I did not ask.”

It turns out that Chua and Rubenfeld are, "Towering figures at Yale and were described by one student as being the centre of gravity at the elite law school," and also, "The Guardian has learned that Rubenfeld is currently the subject of an internal investigation at Yale. The investigation is focused on Rubenfeld’s conduct, particularly with female law students." (Karma, neh?)

Well, now we know why Yale reflexively endorsed Kavanaugh when Trump nominated him, the law school hip deep in his sh%$.

More #MeToo

Only this time, the accused is a female feminist academic who is widely acclaimed in her community, and people who have previously espoused zero tolerance are calling for restraint and further investigation.

As the saying goes, where you stand depends upon where you sit:

The case seems like a familiar story turned on its head: Avital Ronell, a world-renowned female professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University, was found responsible for sexually harassing a male former graduate student, Nimrod Reitman.

An 11-month Title IX investigation found Professor Ronell, described by a colleague as “one of the very few philosopher-stars of this world,” responsible for sexual harassment, both physical and verbal, to the extent that her behavior was “sufficiently pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of Mr. Reitman’s learning environment.” The university has suspended Professor Ronell for the coming academic year.

In the Title IX final report, excerpts of which were obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Reitman said that she had sexually harassed him for three years, and shared dozens of emails in which she referred to him as “my most adored one,” “Sweet cuddly Baby,” “cock-er spaniel,” and “my astounding and beautiful Nimrod.”

Coming in the middle of the #MeToo movement’s reckoning over sexual misconduct, it raised a challenge for feminists — how to respond when one of their own behaved badly. And the response has roiled a corner of academia.

Soon after the university made its final, confidential determination this spring, a group of scholars from around the world, including prominent feminists, sent a letter to N.Y.U. in defense of Professor Ronell. Judith Butler, the author of the book “Gender Trouble” and one of the most influential feminist scholars today, was first on the list.

“Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor Ronell,” the professors wrote in a draft letter posted on a philosophy blog in June. “We have all seen her relationship with students, and some of us know the individual who has waged this malicious campaign against her.”

Critics saw the letter, with its focus on the potential damage to Professor Ronell’s reputation and the force of her personality, as echoing past defenses of powerful men.

“We testify to the grace, the keen wit, and the intellectual commitment of Professor Ronell and ask that she be accorded the dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international standing and reputation,” the professors wrote.

And Harvey Weinstein produced some critically acclaimed movies.

Skepticism by friends and colleagues upon hearing the news is to be expected, but this response is literally the response to every episode of harassment from a top performer basically ever.

It's the same thing.

Let me repeat that, It's ……… the ……… Same ……… Thing.

Also the response from her peers, who dismiss the alleged victim as, "The individual who has waged this malicious campaign against her," is a classic circling of the wagons.

They are basically saying, "Bitches be crazy."

It's not acceptable.

It is never acceptable.

Shame on them.

My Childhood Is a Lie

Someone just did a quantitative analysis of Captain James T. Kirk, going through all the episodes of the original Star Trek, and rather than being the promiscuous and reckless character parodied in Futurama's Zapp Branigan, he turns out to be a lower key and far more cautious figure:

………

We reach the point of no return when the omnijerk (really I suspect there’s just one vast eldritch horror sitting in another dimension that extrudes its thousand tentacles into our own, and that each one of This Guy is merely an insignificant manifestation of the beast: they couldn’t all be so boring in precisely the same way by chance, surely) decides to voice some Dinner Party Opinions on original-series Star Trek. God knows why. It’s not five seconds before he’s on ‘Kirk and the green women’. He’s mocking the retrosexist trope, but smiling a little weirdly while doing it. His own insufficiently private enjoyment is peeking out, like a semi-erection on his face. A sort of Mad Men effect: saying, “isn’t it awful” and going for the low-hanging critical fruit while simultaneously rolling around in that aesthetic and idea of masculinity. Camp, but no homo!

“You’re thinking of Pike,” I say. “The captain in the unaired pilot. Some of that footage got reused for a later story, which made Pike into a previous captain of the Enterprise. And it never actually happened—it was a hallucination sequence designed by aliens who didn’t know what they were doing in order to tempt Pike. He rejected it.”
………

His [the loudmouthed boyfriend of a girl invited to the party] was a common enough error, and he can claim neither the credit nor the blame for the invention. The pop culture idea of Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise for the first Star Trek series (ST:TOS) and the original run of films, has become almost synonymous with Zapp Brannigan from Futurama. To quote Wikipedia,

[t]hough famed for his bravery and strategic genius, it soon becomes very apparent that [Brannigan] is sexist, vain, and often very cowardly and inept. […] Brannigan is also completely indifferent to military casualties. […] He is arrogant, completely incompetent, chauvinistic, and stupid.

Brannigan is supposed to be part comic exaggeration of the “real” Kirk, part reflective take-down of the source character ^[1] . Per wiki, in some ways the ultimate aggregator of the vox populi, “Kirk has been noted for ‘his sexual exploits with gorgeous females of every size, shape and type’ ^[11]; he has been called ‘promiscuous’ ^[66] and labeled a ‘womanizer’ ^{[67] [68]}.” (Note all those still-working footnotes for fan-publications and major papers and entertainment news sites.) The article “Captain Kirk’s 8 Most Impressive Love Conquests” gives us such bon mots as these:

For three glorious seasons, Star Trek‘s Captain James T. Kirk boldly seduced and explored women no Earth-man had been with before. Well, okay, some of them were from Earth, but Starfleet’s greatest discovery was that no women anywhere in the cosmos could resist the intense gaze and oft-exposed, tanned pecs of the Enterprise’s head honcho. Who can blame them, really? Of the many, many seduction [sic] committed by James T. Kirk, here are the 8 most impressive (not most exotic, which would totally include the green Orion Slave Girl, but this doesn’t, because Kirk had no problems getting under her Orion’s belt), which deserve to be recorded in the Captain’s Log for all eternity.

What follows is an inventory of Kirk's actual behavior, which is far milder, particularly by the standard of 1960's television, than I recall:

Let’s start, as people so often do, with those infamous Green Women.

Yes: one existed in ST:TOS. Sort of. It was a vision. On a planet Kirk wasn’t even on. A captain was there: it wasn’t Kirk. Captain Pike and this green, Orion woman ^[2] could literally never have done the deed ^[3].

(ADDENDUM: I should also mention here the first and only actual Orion woman we see in TOS, Marta: an inmate of an asylum who attempts to seduce a suspicious, wounded Kirk, who is himself interested in escaping dangerous captivity. She then immediately tries to murder him. Ah, l'amour.)

Over the course of three seasons and six films (though I hesitate to mention the films in the same breath as the series, because even the initial run of films represents a significant, reflexive re-working of the original material), we do meet some women Kirk has had romantic relations with. These previous relationships mostly seem of a type.

• Ruth (“Shore Leave”) was a college girlfriend of Kirk’s while he was at Starfleet Academy. The script implies she was also in Starfleet. We see only a facsimile of her.
• Dr. Janet Wallace (“The Deadly Years”) was a biologist, and she and Kirk broke up in favour of their respective careers.
• Janice Lester (“Turnabout Intruder”) was a Starfleet-trained scientist. Their relationship lasted at least a year, and was strained and broken by Janice’s violent resentment of Kirk’s ability to benefit from institutional sexism (check the tapes, I’m not exaggerating, that’s what she says).
• Areel Shaw (“Court Martial”) was a dedicated JAG attorney.
• Carol Marcus (The Wrath of Khan), retconned into the history of Kirk’s life by the films, was a brilliant, ground-breaking scientist. In one draft of the script, this character literally was the aforementioned Janet Wallace ^[4]

At some point during his time at the Academy, Kirk “almost married” a blonde lab technician (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”). It seems probable that she was one of the aforementioned women (all of whom but Lester were blonde, though dye exists, and all of whom but Shaw were scientists, though majors can change—I know an attorney with a biology degree myself).

With the exception of Lester, all Kirk’s relationships that we’re aware of seem to have ended amicably. He and the women involved have often kept up communication to some extent, despite the impediments caused by interstellar travel (Wallace, Marcus). The relationships all seem to have been of some duration, and characterised by fairly serious involvement on both parts. They were distinctly emotional affairs, and no one accuses Kirk of having “womanised” during them. They all involved competent people drawn to demanding, intellectually stimulating fields—usually science—and the service of something greater than themselves—almost universally Starfleet.

Kirk’s storied history of womanising seemingly consists of his having seriously dated a fairly small number of clever women in Uni. We’re even told Kirk had to be manipulated into paying attention to matters of the heart and/or loins during that period (and that Kirk’s into “longhair stuff” like 17th-century philosophy):

………

A tumblr fan essay [6] puts it well:

Nearly every instance of Captain James T. Kirk seducing an alien woman was not because he’s some randy alien shagger extraordinaire, but because he needed to distract the enemy of the given episode in order to save the Enterprise. In the same way we wouldn’t say a woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon (flirting with the villains to distract them and ultimately defeat them) is just some intergalactic bed hopper, neither is Kirk.

………

Masculinity is not a fixed construction: it evolves over time. When we view Kirk as Zapp Brannigan, actually we’re retconning a more current understanding of the male action hero and superimposing it over an era where it doesn’t have all that much business being.

So, Kirk is not the compulsive womanizer that we recall him to be.

You should read the rest, it is a long and well worth the read essay, but it makes clear, with extensive citations, that our image of Kirk is not a reflection of the character in the original series, but rather a reflection of the overtones that we have assigned, and his risk taking occurs only when there is no alternative.

Read it, and expect to lose a bit of your childhood in the process.

It's worth it.

The DCCC Supports Enslavement of Women

If you oppose women having control over their own bodies, you support their enslavement, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) has said that he is fine with supporting candidates who want to strip women of control over their own bodies:

Democrats will not withhold financial support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, the chairman of the party’s campaign arm in the House said in an interview with The Hill.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as Democrats seek to find a winning roster to regain the House majority in 2018.

“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” said Luján, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.”

So, you are going to support segregationist candidates in predominantly white districts in Alabama then?

Of course not, but women are expendable to Luján and his ilk.

Dpo not give to the DCCC.

Yeah, "Possible" Arson

Tina Johnson, who accused Roy Moore of molesting her as a teen, has had her home burnt down, which authorities are investigating at as arson:

Roy Moore accuser Tina Johnson lost her home Wednesday in a fire that is now under investigation by the Etowah County Arson Task Force.

Tina Johnson, who first came to public notice for accusing Senate candidate Roy Moore of grabbing her in his office in the early 1990s, said her home on Lake Mary Louise Road in Gadsden caught fire Tuesday morning.

After neighbors and some utility workers called 911 shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, the Lookout Mountain Fire Department responded to the scene. By the time the flames were extinguished, Johnson and her family had lost everything they owned.

"I am devastated, just devastated," said Johnson on Friday morning. "We have just the clothes on our backs."

………

"That fire is still under investigation by the Etowah County Arson Task Force," said Natalie Barton, public information officer with the Etowah County Sheriff's Department. "A suspect of interest is being spoken to. But there have been no charges, to my knowledge, related to the fire at this time."

Barton later released a statement, saying, "The ongoing investigation does not lead us to believe that the fire is in any way related to Roy Moore or allegations made against him. More details will be released when warrants are obtained."

Yeah, right.  Nothing to do with Roy Moore allegations, because random arson is a common thing.

FWIW, there is a GoFundMe for her.