For all the recent talk about facts versus “fake news,” telling the truth, and recapturing the public’s trust in the era of President Trump, some of our most important media blew it when it mattered most. Worse still, some demonstrated an immediate willingness to trade this industry’s already badly battered reputation for a political victory.
We are now at the unsuccessful conclusion of a four-week-long effort by certain media organizations to prove Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a violent sexual predator and a lying alcoholic. The reckless and grossly irresponsible scramble by the New Yorker, NBC News, the New York Times, and others to make Kavanaugh into a monster produced some of the worst journalism of the Trump era to date – and that’s a pretty high bar.
Journalists make mistakes, of course. But had all of the sloppy and often unethical reporting on Kavanaugh been the product of mere negligence or human error, the law of averages suggests that some of the errors would have been in his favor. None of them were. From great to small, they all tried to prove Kavanaugh unfit to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. It would be hard to blame a viewer or reader who concluded that these newsrooms acted not as the gatekeepers of truth, but as willing agents in the Democratic Party’s 11th-hour effort to destroy the judge’s good name, along with his chances of becoming the swing vote on the Supreme Court.
In this matter, the Rule of Law has been our dispassionate arbiter of justice.
She is depicted as blindfolded, with a sword in one hand and scales in another. She is blindfolded to accept parties who come before her with impartiality and without bias. We are equal before her.
The sword represents her authority and the force of government at her side. The scales represent the deliberative process that weighs the solid, verifiable evidence brought before her of the guilt of the accused of wrong doing. The scales must tip further to one side or another to establish guilt in a civil matter between parties. It evidence must show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in establishing a crime.
This is America’s icon of justice. To the degree we accept her as the arbiter of disputes and the decisions she reaches, we are in civil society together.
When large portions of society no longer agree to abide with her outcomes, and “resist” her system, we are simply no longer in civil society together with them.
When our Supreme Court Justices are no longer pillars that support her, we crumble.
Sure, she has flaws – she may be peeking or allowing a thumb to be placed on the scales or the sword to be brandished too heavily. We must always work together to correct that.
Should we replace her with the court of public opinion? The court of the talking head panel of experts? Should we place additional weights on the scales to compensate for past wrongs of “privilege” or “prejudice? Should we give extra credence to the weight of alleged survived victimhood?
As a person who believes that blind justice is “the best we got,” I will not agree to appease her resistors or to substitute Sharia or other international forms of justice in her stead. It is fundamentally not acceptable to me.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures“
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