Cartoon by John Darkow

On Kavanaugh, a Changed America Debates an Explosive Charge

The New York Times: It was 36 years ago. The accusation: There was a party, alcohol. A 17-year-old boy was drunk and started groping a 15-year-old girl, pinning her down and covering her mouth so she couldn’t scream. Today, she doesn’t remember some of the details. He insists it didn’t happen at all.

It was 36 years ago. The culture: What 15-year-old girl would tell her parents she had been at a party where kids had been drinking, much less that a boy had attacked her?

It was 36 years ago. The country: Ronald Reagan was president. The Supreme Court had only one female associate justice, its first, Sandra Day O’Connor. It was nine years before the Clarence Thomas hearings, where the spectacle of an all-male Senate panel casting doubt upon Anita Hill would provoke the outrage that drove a record number of women to run for — and win — congressional office.

A very different United States is now deep into a debate over how long-ago allegations involving teenagers and alcohol should be regarded and treated in the confirmation process of the accused, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, in his nomination to the Supreme Court.

It’s unclear where the confrontation is headed: The Senate Judiciary Committee has called both Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, to testify before the Senate Monday, but she has not committed to appearing.

Both Democrats and Republicans have to carefully consider how their response affects their strategy just seven weeks before a midterm election where women are crucial voters. Democrats have to worry about older women and those who have raised teenagers, who may be skeptical that an allegation from adolescence should doom a person as an adult, no matter what they think of this pick by President Trump. Republicans have to be mindful of the generational shift that has made the country far more vigilant on matters of sexual misconduct, and of the women demanding that the allegations made by Dr. Blasey, now a research psychologist in Northern California, be taken seriously.

No matter their differing viewpoints, scholars, advocates for women’s rights, politicians and others see enormous consequence in reckoning with adolescent behavior during a high court fight in an unusually combustible election year.

“This is going to come back to bite women, I promise you,” said Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and the author of “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys.” “Teenage girls do crazy, stupid things also. Even if they have not attempted a rape, they will have done other stupid things. There’s a lot of confusion about what we expect of kids, boys and girls, when it comes to sex.”

Others argued that while it is reasonable to put the allegations in context — if they are true, he was just a teenager, that argument goes — Judge Kavanaugh is not up for an ordinary job >>>