All the Sturm und Drang at the Brett Kavanaugh hearings was pointless: The documents Booker released already had been cleared for public viewing.
Supreme Court confirmation hearings have mostly been theater for a long time. The dismaying thing about the latest episode — the Brett Kavanaugh Show — is that it became the theater of the absurd.
……..
The central complaint of the Democrats is that they haven’t been given access to records from Kavanaugh’s time working in the Bush administration. They demand their release by the current White House, or the Senate Judiciary Committee, or Kavanaugh, or, perhaps by this writing, Aslan the Lion, deity of Narnia.
Explaining the ginned-up controversy would be a waste of time, because the point of these demands merely is to put on an absurdist drama in which the finale is never in doubt.
……
The most obvious proof that this is all theater, isn’t The Handmaid’s Tale cosplayers outside the hearing rooms, it’s the senators most passionately shouting that they require more information despite already declaring they won’t vote for Kavanaugh, no matter what that information reveals.
One of the lead protagonists of this drama, New Jersey senator Cory Booker, exclaimed Thursday morning that “this is the closest I’ll ever get in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment,” and threatened to divulge confidential documents to the public, even if it meant risking losing his job.
“I am going to release the email about racial profiling, and I understand that the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” Booker declared.
Again, because nothing actually matters when the goal is to create dramatic sound bites for Twitter and TV and your 2020 presidential campaign videos, he later insisted that he wasn’t breaking the rules by releasing confidential documents.
He was right the first time: It is against the rules to release confidential documents.
Booker was hardly alone in the forced buffoonery. More than a dozen of his fellow Democrats joined in the rebellion against Senate rules, in effect shouting “I am Spartacus” too, and with mawkish bravery dared the Senate to expel them.
But all this Sturm und Drang on the public stage was pointless.
Indeed, the documents he ended up releasing had already been cleared for public viewing — and Booker reportedly knew that beforehand, but pretended otherwise. Gotta stay in character.
Oh, and the ominous email “about racial profiling” Booker released? It showed that Kavanaugh was opposed to racial profiling.
In Yiddish humor, which has its own absurdist bent, a schlemiel is a clumsy person who often spills his soup, and a schlimazel is the sort of chronically unlucky person the soup lands on. Booker achieved a double play: He spilled the soup on himself.
Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, in one of the best opening statements of any hearing I’ve ever heard, cut through it all.
……..
“This drivel is patently absurd,” he continued, “and I worry that we’re going to hear more of it over the next few days. But the good news is, it is absurd, and the American people don’t believe any of it.”
Sasse eloquently expanded on a point I’ve been banging my spoon on my highchair about for a while now: The legislative branch is becoming a parliament of pundits, in which both parties teem with people desperate to emote, preen, and shriek for voters and donors who follow politics like it’s a form of entertainment, and, in this case, a theater of the absurd.
- Discussion
-
None of you buffoons are Spartacus. https://t.co/WiMHXtBZo0
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) September 7, 2018
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.