Justice Kavanaugh vs VEEP Biden,

AR-14 Joe

VOV sends us an essay on the obvious discrepancies between the treatment of Biden and Kavanaugh in the media, and how their accusers are treated.

VOV

Justice Kavanaugh, Joe Biden, and the hypocrisy of #metoo and their Democratic Party benefactors

If you haven’t seen much in the news about a woman named Tara Reade, well you’re not alone. There’s good reason for that lack of coverage, she has accused Joe Biden of digitally penetrating her in 1993. That’s a fairly serious charge of molestation against one’s will.

Well the good news is that the media (completely unbiased of course) has investigated those claims and found a complete lack of evidence regarding her nearly 30 year old claims. Consequently the media has declared her unsubstantiated claims as “troublesome”, in fact the New York Times, The Nation, and a host of others have all pronounced the lack of evidence in this claim as the very reason they aren’t keeping it in the spotlight. That’s a good thing, it really is but it also illustrates exactly how full of hypocrisy our media outlets are and exactly how hypocritical our #metoo folks are at the moment, many of whom are Biden supporters.

Let’s take a quick review of how Justice Kavanaugh’s accuser was treated in the media versus former Vice President Joe Biden’s current treatment shall we? Dr. Ford’s account involved a drunken teenager attempting to grope her while a friend watched, neither the accused nor the friend corroborate her story. She is immediately hailed as a hero for coming forth to tell her unfortunate story in the media, and the #metoo circus goes wild will all manner of attacks on Kavanaugh. Most media opinion pieces indicate that even without any evidence the mere mention of these things should disqualify the judge from consideration to SCOTUS as someone unfit to take office. The Ramirez and Swetnick stories about Kavanaugh are even more suspect with zero evidence and self admissions of “gaps” in memory. Yet these allegations against a backdrop of NOT ONE SINGLE SIMILAR INCIDENT DURING HIS ENTIRE ADULT CAREER were sufficient for our unbiased investigative journalists to call for his immediate removal from consideration and his impeachment as a judge. All without evidence, or any formal due process. At that time I wrote an article discussing my concern about the rabid reactions to sensationalist reporting minus any actual corroborating evidence during the timelines in question. Had there been documentation of school discipline, other eyewitnesses, or a historical series of incidents post high school and college I would have been inclined to believe there was an issue with Kavanaugh. However with the lack of evidence and the subsequent career long associations with women all of whom found the Judge to be warm person with integrity who never once acted inappropriately I wrote there was no reason for any of these accusations to receive the airplay that they were receiving at the time, nor should those accusations even be allowed to be presented into any sort of historical document as there was a complete lack of actual evidence to support any of the three questionable claims. My opinion was a rather singular one in public media, although it was a more well received opinion here at This Ain’t Hell for which I am grateful.

Enough Kavanaugh retrospective, let’s take a peek at the current coverage of Ms. Reade’s accusations.

The Nation: “The Troublesome Tara Read Story-Biden haters demand the media investigate. It did-and uncovered many reasons to doubt.

The New York Times: What to do with Tara Reade’s allegation against Joe Biden? A sexual assault accusation is being used to troll #metoo.

#metoo’s own Alyssa Milano — I stand in solidarity with Dr. Ford // I don’t believe any man’s misogyny should take precedent over a survivor’s humanity.

Just a couple of unbiased headlines and articles…feel free to read them if you enjoy such nonsense.

Now onto our presumptive Democratic nominee, regardless of how you feel about Kavanaugh or Biden when I examine the two cases side by side there is a significant difference between the two regardless of the lack of evidence. When Kavanaugh was accused he was accused of being a drunken teenager with another drunken teenager as his alleged victim. Kavanaugh was not her employer, nor was he in a position of power over Dr. Ford at that time to harm her future prospects. Two drunken teenagers and alleged act that no one but Dr. Ford remembers. Joe Biden’s accuser is discussing a sexual misconduct that took place between a subordinate staffer and US Senator. A situation where the alleged perpetrator not only held current power, but the ability to damage future prospects as well simply through telling others she was a troublesome employee. That is a significant difference and one where you might believe the media would be interested in determining if there were any evidence either situational on the timeline or historical with respect to a pattern. And you would be wrong to assume that. However if you do a little reading there is an interesting nugget of information from of all places the New York Times (they are blissfully unaware of their unintended revelation) where they wrote the following information:

(Regarding Ms. Reade’s story) “No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of our reporting, nor did any former Biden staff corroborate the allegation. We found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden, beyond hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.” (Bold face added by me for emphasis)

The Time has since removed the bold component of the above comment, but not before I took a screen shot for posterity. The hypocrisy of the current coverage versus the previous coverage of Kavanaugh could not be more obvious and yet our media insists the two are in no way related. Of course the Biden staffers know the difference and they have been frantically scrubbing their Twitter messages they wrote during the Kavanaugh debacle. However the internet is forever and those staffers will be pilloried with their own words by members of their own party. The Sanders supporters are not letting this issue go quietly into the night at the moment, the right has been mostly silent because of the lack of evidence.

I think the hypocrisy of the Democrats can be summed up best with Ms. Milano’s attempt to explain her own hypocrisy as a Biden supporter, “I sent the #MeToo tweet two years ago, and I never thought it would be something that would destroy innocent men,” she said in the Cohen interview. “So we have to find this balance in the ‘believe women’ movement, and also giving men their due process and realizing that we are destroying lives if we don’t go through the right steps.” She finally has arrived at the correct default position, but of course she only got there because it now affects the candidate she prefers.

Here’s hoping as we move forward that we all take a moment to consider if there is evidence before we slam the guys we dislike.

As always let me know your thoughts and where I went wrong (grin)…

VoV

Thanks, V. Another great read.

Category: Democrats, Guest Post, Media, Politics