You could be forgiven for thinking we’re living in the bad old days of the early '90s again. Ever since Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations that Judge Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a party, conservative news outlets have been giving her the full Anita Hill treatment. Activists and movement conservatives, desperate for any hint of personal information about her, are trying—and failing—to paint Blasey Ford as a villain.
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Borking: Way back in 1987, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) rushed to the Senate floor the moment news of the nomination was at hand and gave a stemwinder of a speech labeled “Robert Bork's America” that blasted the Republican jurist for wanting an America “in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters,” among other backward-looking visions. The practice of defining a Supreme Court nominee in negative terms before the public gets to know them, dubbed “Borking,” has since become an infamous practice and a long-held grudge for Republicans. But while “Borking” is a well-known phenomenon in American politics, the version applied to nominees’ accusers isn’t often acknowledged. Just ask Anita Hill.
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The Anita Hill playbook: In the '90s, when Anita Hill came forward to accuse Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, Republican operatives unleashed a wave of smears against her. The most infamous of them came via then-conservative operative David Brock, who infamously dubbed Hill “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” in a hasty biography, The Real Anita Hill. Right now, we’re seeing a similar process play out in conservative media with Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser. Christine Blasey Ford initially tried to remain anonymous in large part out of a well-placed fear for her own reputation. Before we’ve even had a chance to hear her speak in public, an impromptu smear machine has sprung up to attack her.
Names, how do they work? The first attempt at an attack on Blasey Ford came from Gateway Pundit, which declared her an “Unhinged Liberal Professor who Former Students Describe as Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled.” Small problem: the professor review site Gateway based its article on was for Christine Adams Ford, not Christine Blasey Ford—an entirely different person.
Strike two: The next line of attack on Blasey Ford was that her allegations came about because she was bitter that Kavanaugh’s mother, who served as a judge in Maryland, was involved in foreclosure proceedings against Blasey Ford’s parents’ house. The gist of the attack—again, pushed by the likes of Gateway Pundit—is that Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are much-delayed bitterness at his mother for foreclosing on her family’s home. Only it’s not true. While her parents did indeed have a foreclosure case in the state of Maryland, they didn’t lose their house. The family refinanced and Kavanaugh’s mother merely signed pro-forma paperwork to dismiss the case after the parties settled.
#MeToo: Not everyone has been jumping to attack Blasey Ford. Former classmates at her elite Maryland prep school, Holton-Arms, have been circulating a letter of support. The letter expresses the signatories’ faith in her allegations and says they are “all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton.” The letter has garnered at least one famous signature: actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. On Monday, Louis-Dreyfus tweeted that she “was class of '79 & signed this letter.”
Partisanship: Right-wing outlets like The Daily Wire have also dug into Blasey Ford’s campaign contribution history and discovered that she has given money to Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic National Committee. For the moment, set aside the troubling implication that one cannot have both political opinions and be a credible sexual assault survivor—or that the latter might inform the former. The contributions themselves hardly mark Blasey-Ford out as a pillar of Democratic fundraising. As Twitter users pointed out, they amount to an underwhelming $72 given over four years.
Plain old threats: Because the internet is a terrible place full of terrible people, some didn’t even bother cobbling together a vaguely coherent attack on Blasey Ford’s credibility and opted instead for personal attacks. Some Twitter users—including at least one now-suspended account—responded to her allegations by posting her personal information, address, and contact information online.
Good neighbors: In the zeal to learn more about the woman at the center of the biggest Supreme Court story since the Anita Hill hearings, Inside Edition went knocking on the doors of Blasey Ford’s neighbors. At least according to her neighbors, she’s good people. The quotes Jim Moret got about her included “They are amazing neighbors,” and “They are great people.” People said they believe her story "100 percent.”
Nomination in trouble? Overnight, the Washington Post’s Robert Costa tweeted out a short thread about how Republicans in Congress and the White House are feeling about the Kavanaugh nomination. While there’s no sign Kavanaugh is going to drop out anytime soon, there are some hints that support for him is not as strong as it seems. As Costa reported, Kavanaugh was not Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s first pick and his strongest supporter inside the White House is Don McGahn, whose political capital with the president is waning as he heads for the exits. Republican campaign consultants, already facing a tough midterm election, are also reportedly loath to go through a brutal public hearing on the allegations.
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