Note that what we’re talking about here is publicly branding Kavanaugh as an attempted rapist and denying him a seat on the Supreme Court based on a completely unsubstantiated 36-year-old allegation. Ford can’t even come up with a specific place or date the attack supposedly happened.
In response to these allegations, Republicans in the Senate have offered to let Ford talk to them publicly or privately, by herself —not at the same table as Kavanaugh, as her lawyer claimed. At this point, she appears poised to turn them down. Before she talks to them, she’s demanding an FBI investigation which she and her lawyer know will never happen because no federal crime was committed. Even if the FBI were to look into it, how is it supposed to pin down what happened 36 years ago given that Ford doesn’t know the most basic details of her own story?
In other words, Ford apparently intends to offer up nothing but her word that something happened 36 years ago, exactly as she described it, and many people seem to believe that Kavanaugh’s life should be wrecked as a result.
This is insanity, but it is what the #MeToo movement has wrought. Forget innocent until proven guilty. If you’re a man, it’s innocent until accused.
If something bad happened to Christine Blasey Ford 36 years ago, that is terrible. However, the time to investigate those allegations was 36 years ago and the people to do it were the police. Allegations made long after the fact in the court of public opinion instead of a court of law should be assumed to be false as a matter of course unless there is extensive evidence that convinces people of a “there” there (see Bill Cosby). No woman should ever be sexually assaulted and no man should ever be falsely accused of sexual assault. Because we don’t live in a world where all of us get what we deserve, the rights of both the woman AND the man need to be treated as important in situations like this one. The #MeToo movement may not believe in innocent until proven guilty for men, but the rest of us should.