Cathy Young explained the problem as well, and as clearly, as possible, so no need in redoing what has already been well done.
Should Reade’s accusations be taken more seriously? And if not, what does that mean for the Democrats’ post-#MeToo commitment to the principle of believing and supporting women who come forward as sexual assault survivors?
The Democrats, in general, and Joe Biden, in particular, have a problem, and it’s not the accusation by Reade that while as a Senate staffer, Biden forced himself upon her. The problem is that this is a watershed moment between being principled, even if wrong, or being flagrant hypocrites, plus wrong. Naturally, the turning point is when the paper of record decided to say her name.
Do you think that, in your heart, you’re reluctant to promote a story that would hurt Joe Biden and get Donald Trump re-elected?
I can’t make that calculation. I won’t. I won’t let my head or my heart go there. I think once you start making those kinds of calculations, you are not a journalist anymore. You’re some sort of political actor.
That’s the answer of Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, who apparently isn’t a Rush fan.
Look, I get the argument. Just do a short, straightforward news story. But I’m not sure that doing this sort of straightforward news story would have helped the reader understand. Have all the information he or she needs to think about what to make of this thing.
Long or short, but a straightforward news story, the kind where a reporter reports these things called facts, and the fact was that Tara Reade made the now-adored “credible accusation” against presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden. What’s there for the NYT to make the reader “understand”? It’s news about a newsworthy accusation against a newsworthy individual. But not newsworthy enough for Baquet?
Why was Kavanaugh treated differently?
Kavanaugh was already in a public forum in a large way. Kavanaugh’s status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious allegation. And when I say in a public way, I don’t mean in the public way of Tara Reade’s. If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case. So I thought in that case, if The New York Times was going to introduce this to readers, we needed to introduce it with some reporting and perspective.
How does the “average person in America” learn of news, dear newspaper editor? The point here isn’t that journalism might compel the media to be somewhat circumspect in its presentation of an outrageous accusation that might be real or might be fabricated, might destroy a career over nothing, might impact a nation if presented with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel.
The point is that every accusation demands the same scrutiny. And who better to make that point than the New York Times’ most millennial of unduly passionate columnists, Michelle Goldberg.
It would be easier to know what to do with Tara Reade’s accusation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her if her tale were more solid, or if it were less.
No reading of the laundry list of excuses. No litany of rationalizations to explain why she didn’t go to the police at the time, couldn’t get her details straight, might change her story from time to time. No hashtag #BelieveTheWoman. No gymnastics to argue that it must have happened because Tara Reade said it did, and that’s enough for every #MeToo accusation by definition. Nope. Goldberg has discovered facts and reason, with her trademark mix of snark and ad hominem.
Since Reade made her latest accusation, people on both the left and the right have been demanding, with a mix of genuine outrage and gotcha glee, that the Democratic Party live up to its #MeToo commitments and #BelieveTaraReade. “For Elite Democrats, Joe Biden’s Candidacy Means Ditching #MeToo,” said a headline in the socialist magazine Jacobin. “Joe Biden, Brett Kavanaugh and the #MeToo hypocrites,” said one in The New York Post.
So must Democrats, for the sake of consistency, regard their presumptive presidential nominee as a sexual predator?
One could qualify the question with more forceful language, such as principle, integrity, honesty or, you know, not to be a flaming hypocrite, but the “sake of consistency” (which ironically is the hobgoblin of a small mind if it’s foolish) will do. So what’s your answer, Michelle?
As I’ve written repeatedly, I think Biden is a weak candidate, and I wouldn’t be unhappy if the Democratic Party were forced, by some last-minute emergency, to replace him, maybe with one of the Democratic governors who has shined in response to the coronavirus crisis.
That’s not quite responsive to your question, Michelle. It’s what adults might call a non sequitur. Care to go for two?
But, absent other accusations, that is not going to happen. Reade seems almost engineered in a lab to inspire skepticism in mainstream Democrats, both because her story keeps changing and because of her bizarre public worship of President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
So no, you don’t want to answer your own question, and will rationalize around the edges as hard as you can to challenge the accusation against Joe Biden. It’s entirely fair to make the argument that Tara Reade’s accusation isn’t sufficiently credible to be worthy of destroying Joe Biden. Whether Goldberg’s done a decent job of it is another matter, but she’s playing to her echo chamber of simpletons, so it’s understandable that she uses the arguments her audience can grasp.
But what she’s done by her desperate avoidance of the only real question at hand, even though by avoidance rather than confrontation, is proven that reliance on facts, reason and due process to determine whether a rape has occurred hasn’t changed at all, and the laundry list of excuses is just that, facile nonsense to cover up the failure of facts, reason and due process. The only difference is whether the man, this time, is a guy they want to destroy or not. Nothing more.
