The whole truth? Well, that depends on who wants to know By: Melissa Martin Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Sep. 27, 2018

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/09/2018 (2290 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She raised her hand in front of her government and country, and swore to tell the truth, nothing but, so help her God.

That truth, as Christine Blasey Ford told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, was simple: when she was 15 years old, Brett Kavanaugh, now the Republicans’ Supreme Court nominee, sexually assaulted her.

“I am here today, not because I want to be,” she said, in the beginning. “I am terrified.”

Then she started talking, reading from the statement she’d prepared about the events that led her to that moment. She recounted the details of the assault 36 years ago — the house party, the hands shoving her into a bedroom, Kavanaugh’s weight on top of her.

She spoke about how, even before Kavanaugh became the nominee, she’d told her congresswoman and, in an anonymous tip, the Washington Post about the assault. She’d named Kavanaugh and his good friend, Mark Judge.

And she told the committee too, what she does not remember: the date of the assault, for instance. Or where the house was located. She doesn’t remember if she gave her therapy notes to a Post reporter.

One by one, she faced the Republican-appointed prosecutor’s parade of questions designed to discredit her. None of them change this fact: her account of the assault has never wavered.

Now, in the wake of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and Larry Nassar, in the wake of Me Too and a new story — seemingly weekly — of powerful men who hurt and abuse, it is easy to hope this is part of an ongoing cultural shift.

Even President Donald Trump, in a press conference the day before, said as much, calling the events to come “a very big cultural moment.”

But maybe it’s not so much a moment as it is a morass. Because even before Ford started speaking Thursday morning, the lines around her testimony had already been drawn; who would discredit her, shame her, attack her — all set in stone.

Her testimony may or may not derail Kavanaugh’s nomination. The fight to change the culture will not be ended.

To see how that plays out, maybe you have to start with the tale of three callers.

•••

On C-SPAN — the non-profit American public-policy broadcast channel — after Ford’s morning session, host Steve Scully invites calls from viewers. The first one is a man, James from Indiana. He’s “not a big Trump supporter at all,” he says, calling on the line for political independents.

“Good morning, how you doin’?” James says, and then, a moment later: “She’s lyin’ like a dog.”

On the screen, host Scully’s face retains its famous placid composure. “Why do you say she’s lying?”

“She’s just so much inconsistent in her statements, that you could drive a Mack truck through,” James replies.

Scully asks the caller to name one of those inconsistencies. For a moment, James hems and haws.

“She can’t remember, can’t remember, can’t remember,” he says.

The second caller is another man, this one a Republican named Tracy, from Wyoming.

“She’s really putting on an act,” he says. “All her inconsistencies, and whatnot, you can just tell she’s lying.”

But the third caller is different. She is a Democrat, and her name is Brenda from Missouri. She is 76 years old and says she was sexually molested in the second grade. As she speaks, the words catch in her throat. She is hurting.

“This brings back so much pain,” she says, her voice straining with emotion. “Thought I was over it, but it’s not. You never forget it. You get confused, and you don’t understand it, but you will never forget what happened to you.”

The tears break through the surface of Brenda’s voice, spilling out through the phone. “It’s breaking my heart.”

Somewhere in Missouri, a woman sees her own trauma in Ford’s testimony. She feels in herself the same fears, the same anxiety that Ford was describing. Sometimes the heart can feel truth, where minds don’t want to see it.

•••

When I looked at Christine Blasey Ford Thursday morning, I could never see a liar. I saw a brilliant 51-year-old woman, trembling a little in the spotlight, but sitting tall and calmly answering questions. But a liar — I could never.

To defend that calculation, I am forced to reach for the protective badges of success in a credentialist culture. Ford is a resespected professor, an expert in statistical data analysis. She’s been married 16 years. She has two sons.

If she were none of these things, she could still, obviously, be a victim of assault. But if the retort — as the two C-SPAN callers put forth — is that she’s lying, fabricating for political ends, then there must be a followup question.

Why would a middle-aged woman with an accomplished career, a stable and successful family life — why would she throw that away? Why raise her hand to be harassed, threatened and shamed before the eyes of the whole nation?

False sexual assault allegations do happen, albeit rarely. They also, as journalists and researchers who have studied the issue have concluded, usually follow predictable patterns around what is alleged, how the allegations are made and who is doing the alleging.

They tend not to be successful adults, willing to throw away their tranquility and personal safety on some sudden malicious whim. Ford had much to lose by testifying about an assault nearly four decades ago, and very little to gain.

Meanwhile, there is no particular evidence to suggest she is lying. Her testimony is backed up, in part, by who she told, and when. The first two callers hung their accusations on gaps in her memory; but those are not suspicious.

Human memory is a deeply imperfect recording. The data stored in our brains is routinely discarded, with the parts that left the most emotional impression most likely to remain. It would be unusual if she remembered every thing.

And in this situation, under oath, an inability to remember can also be taken as an indication that someone is being truthful. A person concocting a lie intended to harm, after all, would have endless choice of details to manufacture.

But none of that actually matters. Because putting Christine Blasey Ford on the stand was not about discerning truth, or about finding justice. It is about power: who owns it, who wields it, who can force their will upon others.

The two skeptical callers were just the tip of the iceberg, the mountain, the unimaginable and uncontainable cesspools of fury and reactive contempt to the idea that Ford might, as she swore to do, be telling the truth.

A Fox News contributor tweeted that Ford should “stop opening (her) legs and OPEN A BOOK!” and that “lying skanks is what these 3 women are,” referring to two other women who have made allegations about Kavanaugh.

That’s enough to illustrate that point. We all know these words, and we know they go on.

Because this is the cruelest part of this story of all, and it is playing out as expected: in stepping forward, in raising her hand, Ford became a Rorschach test for what you want to believe — about power, about trauma, about women.

“I am no one’s pawn,” Ford said, responding to accusations that she is part of some Democratic conspiracy.

That, she is not. But by raising her hand, by swearing to tell the whole truth before government and country and God, she stepped into the breach of a culture divided, a gulf too deep for any truth to fill when it confronts power.

And the truth is, that’s how it always has been. But maybe, with great effort, not how it always needs to be.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

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