“In fact young children are very dialectical, they see everything in motion, in contradiction and transformation.” A Companion to Marx’s Capital
The reopened FBI probe of Kavanaugh was a whitewash and my post suggesting the investigation might allow for a true synthesis now seems naive. I hoped FBI agents would press Kavanaugh about the shuck and bluster that marked his Q&A with Democratic senators since (to quote James Comey’s Times op ed): “They know that obvious lies by the nominee about the meaning of words in a Yearbook are a flashing signal to dig deeper.” But, apparently, Feds were instructed to let Kavanaugh skate. There was no follow-up interview with him.
Journalists, though, kept digging in the week after the hearings. The Times reported on Kavanaugh’s bar fight and wasted nights during his college years. They published a letter signed by a seventeen year old “Bart” anticipating Beach Week and acknowledging his crew were “loud, obnoxious drunks, with prolific pukers among us.” (A note that undercut his stonewalling response to Senator Leahy’s question about his nickname “Bart” as well as the little lie that his Yearbook page’s nod to “Beach Week Ralph Club” was a yuck about spicy food not hard drinking). But the Times’ most vital contribution may have been Sarah Hepole’s piece, “Kavanaugh and The Blackout Theory.” (H/t to First respondent Elizabeth Lloyd Kimbrel for focusing my attention on how blackouts work and the significance of aborted exchanges on this subject between Kavanaugh and Senator Klobuchar and GOP inquisitor, Rachel Mitchell, who asked him: “Have you ever passed out from drinking?” just before she was sidelined.)
Hepole notes blacking out is often conflated with passing out, but binge drinkers (and she was once one herself) may roll through hours seeming alive to the world, though nothing is registering in their memories: “you can remain functional and conversational, but later you will have no memory of what you did, almost as though your brain failed to hit the ‘record’ button.” Hepole goes into the physiology of blackouts, which are caused by a spike in the blood-alcohol level: “Crucial is not only how much you drink or what you drink but also how fast.” Her expertise illuminates the unforgettable moment in the hearing when Senator Leahy asked Dr. Ford about her strongest memory of that night:
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” she said. The word Dr. Blasey used, hippocampus, is significant. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that plays a central role in memory formation. And damned if it isn’t a part of the brain disrupted by a blackout. The hippocampus stops placing information in long-term storage, which means what happened, what you did, what you said, what hurt you might have caused another human — all of it turns to a stream of unremembered words and images that pour forever into the dark night.
So while Dr. Blasey’s brain was pumping the epinephrine and norepinephrine that would etch the moment on her brain, it is quite possible that one if not both of those men were experiencing something like the opposite: A mechanical failure of the brain to record anything. Such a dynamic is breathtaking in its cruelty…
Hepole muses on Ford’s uneasy encounter with Mark Judge at the supermarket a few weeks after he allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh’s assault on her. She suggests even if Judge didn’t recall what happened due to a blackout, he might still have been “queasy.”
I used to get a hideous gnawing sensation when I stumbled across people I’d blacked out around, because I did not know. What had I said? What had I done? The sheer unknowing rattled me.
Hepole zeroes in on a post-blackout scene in Judge’s memoir, Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, which suggests the not-knowing mannish boy might have had even more reasons than her to be rattled:
He tells the story of a wedding rehearsal dinner where he got so blasted he doesn’t remember the evening’s end. A friend informs him the next day that he tried to take off his clothes and “make it” with a bridesmaid. Mr. Judge’s response cuts me. “Please tell me I didn’t hurt her,” he said.
A PDF of Wasted was available online last week, but it’s been taken down. I don’t know if anyone was out to suppress the fear and trembling above, but it might be telling to know who made the book go away.
Judge’s memoir trades in self-laceration but he’s not defined by his regrets. Pop crit he’s published in right-wing journals and online mags reveal an unrepentant macho:
Of course, a man must be able to read a woman’s signals, and it’s a good thing that feminism is teaching young men that no means no and yes means yes. But there’s also that ambiguous middle ground, where the woman seems interested and indicates, whether verbally or not, that the man needs to prove himself to her. And if that man is any kind of man, he’ll allow himself to feel the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion.
That graph from an essay by Judge talking up a publisher of pulp crap by hard guy hacks ends with a link to a silly scene from the neo-noir flic, Body Heat (1981) in which the dupe (William Hurt), smashes a window in order to get with the femme fatale/tease (Kathleen Turner).
The sound of breaking glass reminds me Judge has trashed Barack Obama for taking Michelle to Do the Right Thing on their first date (in a piece of work titled, “Barack Obama: The First Female President”). Do the Right Thing famously climaxed with Spike’s Lee’s Mookie-character putting a trash can through the window of Danny Aiello’s pizza shop. While that act is presented as a justifiable protest against killer cops (and white prerogatives), Lee’s ambivalent facial expression—and self-aware, arms up gesture—is a reminder black artists (even those inspired by Malcolm X or late Fanon) tend not to treat violence as “awesome.” “The wonderful beauty of uncontrollable male passion” is a white thing.
Cue the Donald rapping with Billie Bush? Course there are those among the President’s men who worry loose lips sink ships. Kavanaugh’s Yearbook page may be on point. Per journalist Peter Maass:
It includes an altered quote from Benjamin Franklin that appeared to be a play on Judge’s last name, and it seemed to suggest that these two friends had secrets they should not share with others. The altered quote was this: “He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows, nor JUDGE all he sees.”