Sometimes it's useful when people say the quiet part out loud. Candor strips away false pretenses and gets to genuine motives. In the case of a longtime journalist, the quiet part is being shouted out loud, in written form, for the world to read. We've spilt much digital ink on the blatant double standards with which many leftists, elected Democrats and members of the media have handled decades-old allegations against Brett Kavanaugh and Joe Biden, respectively. Our working thesis, which has not been refuted, is that the yawning disparity is attributable to political and ideological bias, arising from the pursuit of power. Not facts. And certainly not believing women.
In the wake of a truly hilarious New York Times editorial arguing that the Biden allegation is too serious a matter to be adjudicated by the press and recommending an "independent" investigation by...the Democratic National Committee, a Times veteran wrote the following letter to the editor to express his dissent. Helpfully, the Times printed it:
Frame it and hang it on a wall. pic.twitter.com/QeBH2P9jnT
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 5, 2020
I am not arguing that all journalists operate this way or share this mindset, though it's telling how many of them retire from prominent, decades-long careers as 'down the middle' reporters and begin to air their liberal opinions openly, finally revealing their long-suspected rooting interests. But I do believe that this letter encapsulates the mindset underpinning the Kavanaugh/Biden double standard very honestly. They weren't concerned with truth about the former figure because defeating a conservative jurist was seen as the greater good, plus there were zeitgeisty standards ('believe survivors') to preen about. Now that the accused party is on their team, with very high stakes, the zeitgeisty standards are gone because the political outcome is just too important. "I don't want justice, I want a win" lays it all bare.
If Biden is guilty of sexual assault, the writer -- who served in the Times Washington bureau and reportedly helped create Politico -- literally does not want to know, because that could harm The Cause. In expressing this frank sentiment with none of the usual deflections, rationalizations or obfuscations, Mr. Tolchin is putting his finger directly on the artery of what's going on. He's writing only for himself, but he's channeling the deep-down feelings of millions, including most people in his former industry, and most of the elected members of his preferred political party. In that sense, his letter is a public service.
Many on the Left realize coming out and saying what Tolchin has, the way he has, is suboptimal, so they're engaged in dishonest contortions and shameless whiplash, hoping few will bother to notice. National Review writer David Harsanyi dissects some of the more egregious recent forays into extreme gaslighting:
One of the most egregious examples of revisionism can be found in a column by the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg, who employs nearly every attack Americans were warned never to use against alleged sexual-assault victims during the Kavanaugh hearings — questioning their motivations, asking why they didn’t file charges, attacking them for not remembering specifics, etc. And yet, even if we adopt Goldberg’s new standards, Tara Reade still emerges as a more credible accuser than Christine Blasey Ford...It’s not a mystery why liberals want Ford to seem more credible. At first the media completely ignored Reade’s allegations. But once reporters began responsibly reporting the story — a professionalism that wasn’t afforded to Kavanaugh — the same liberals who had demanded we “believe all women” began flailing to rewrite history.
In USA Today, Kirsten Powers argued that “there is no ‘double standard’ in the way Kavanaugh was treated vs. Biden,” because Democrats had merely called for the accusations to be investigated. That, too, is revisionism. Almost every Democratic senator had called for Trump to withdraw the nomination over the assault charges — many of those calls, in fact, were based on even flimsier accusations, recklessly spread by the press and politicians. It’s possible that Reade’s credibility would suffer, as did Ford’s, if an investigation took a deeper look. Yet, none of the Democrats who dispensed with due process and embraced Ford’s accusations have shown the slightest interest in speaking with Reade. They’ve simply adopted new guidelines for “believing women” and left liberal pundits with the job of justifying their actions — which they dutifully do.
Read the whole thing, as it succinctly dismantles much of the revisionism being undertaken by hacks, while offering a reminder of how incredibly weak Dr. Ford's claims were, based on the virtually nonexistent evidence. Nearly the entire collective Left believed Ford, while they're overwhelmingly twisting themselves into pretzels to disbelieve Tara Reade, who has far more contemporaneous evidence than Ford ever even attempted to put forward. Why? See the letter to the editor above. But there is a chance that some lefties aren't as inclined to totally change their tune, including many who are disappointed Biden is the presumptive nominee in the first place. This could create a vulnerability for the Democratic ticket on enthusiasm and turnout:
NEW: We showed voters a clip of @JoeBiden's denial of Tara Reade's allegations of sexual assault.
— Cameron Easley (@cameron_easley) May 4, 2020
After watching, 26% of Democrats -- including 40% of those under 45 -- said the party should select a different nominee.
Read @eyokley here: https://t.co/KwiMxKRdTd pic.twitter.com/d9kIkwe4Cn
I'll leave you with this, which cuts to the core of another outrageous double standard at play:
If we Judged Joe Biden under the Title IX standards he championed for accused student rapists, he would be guilty. https://t.co/RdQE220DqZ via @reason
— David Freddoso (@freddoso) May 6, 2020
Under the system Biden helped foist upon virtually all college campuses in the country, students accused of sexual misconduct are routinely denied the ability to effectively defend themselves. They often do not even receive hearings—Obama-era federal guidance pushed a single-investigator model in which even presenting evidence on one's behalf becomes a tough task.
Why should Biden get the benefit of due process when he's literally championed anti-due process regulations for other accused parties? Will someone get around to asking Biden about this, in detail? Is he remotely capable of justifying himself convincingly or cogently?
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