The College Fix

UPDATED

As the insanity surrounding US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh came to a head this past week, we at The College Fix have compiled some of the laziest, irresponsible, and just plain guffaw-inducing coverage of the judge regarding his college days … and from current college newspapers.

Being that Kavanaugh is a graduate of Yale and then Yale Law School, it stands to reason that the Yale Daily News would take more than a passing interest in the nomination imbroglio, most especially since allegations of a 36-year-old sexual assault came to light courtesy of Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford.

The News’s latest “story” is titled “YLS professors said Kavanaugh picked attractive clerks.” It cites a Guardian article which features a married Yale professor couple saying it was “’not an accident’ that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all ‘looked like models.’” One of the two is the best-selling author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” Amy Chua, known for assisting “female law students who were preparing for interviews with Kavanaugh on ways they could dress to exude a ‘model-like’ femininity to help them win a post in [the judge’s] chambers.”

It seems at least one student (the ‘ol “according to a source”) “was so put off” by Chua’s advice that she ended up not seeking a clerkship. But on Saturday, Chua vigorously denied allegations that she ever “groomed” students to work for SCOTUS nominee:

“Everything that is being said about the advice I give to students applying to Brett Kavanaugh — or any judge — is outrageous, 100% false, and the exact opposite of everything I have stood for and said for the last fifteen years.”

Elsewhere in the News, Yale women’s, gender, and sexuality studies (naturally) professor Inderpal Grewal took to the op-ed pages to complain about the “spectacle” of women who were “protecting” Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. Such “was designed to disguise the fact that the main reason Trump chose Kavanaugh is his anti-abortion politics,” she writes. Not to mention, it also was a spectacle “designed to undercut feminist politics”:

Rather than a politics that advocates for improving the lives of all women — of all classes, sexualities, genders, races and religions — this is a politics that only serves a few women personally. It is also a cynical strategy of using women to protect a powerful white man whose elite credentials and conservative rulings promise to bring harm to all the other women who are not as powerful or privileged.

Indeed, we can’t have a politics that doesn’t advocate for “women of all genders” … wait, what??

MORE: Anti-Trump Harvard Law prof ‘has lost his mind’ over Kavanaugh

But perhaps the News’s most inane offering on the whole nomination situation comes from Haily Fuchs and Britton O’Daly: “A flag of underwear: Photo from Kavanaugh’s time shows DKE hijinks.” That’s right, from Kavanaugh’s time. Get it?

A photograph that appeared in the Yale Daily News on Jan. 18, 1985, shows Kavanaugh’s fraternity brothers waving a flag woven from women’s underwear as part of a procession of DKE initiates marching across Yale’s campus. Kavanaugh does not appear in the photograph. But the portrait it paints of casual disrespect for women seems noteworthy in light of the explosive allegation by California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh attempted to sexually assault her at a high school party almost 40 years ago.

Emphasis added. Also note the “but” and “it seems.”

Over at fellow Ivy Harvard University, students at the ever-entertaining Harvard Law School are requesting that Kavanaugh be barred from teaching a winter term class “unless a full and fair investigation is conducted” into Professor Ford’s allegations against him.

Elsewhere at HLS, students “are organizing to stand in solidarity” with Prof. Ford by handing out buttons which read “I Believe Christine Blasey Ford.” (It sure is reassuring to see law students all in favor of due process, eh?) This is almost — almost! — as good a take as the former classmate of Ms. Ford who said she could corroborate the professor’s sexual assault allegations … that is, until she realized she would “have to go [in]to the specifics and defend them.” Indeed, Cristina King Miranda ultimately conceded “that [the assault] happened or not, I have no idea.”

The Associated Press chimed in Thursday with more “in depth” coverage of Judge Kavanaugh’s past, most especially that surrounding his past “What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep” quip. It points out that hundreds of Holton-Arms alumna “dating back to 1967” signed off on a letter backing Professor Ford’s story because her “experience is all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending” the school. (Holton-Arms is an all-girls school near Georgetown Prep.)

Now, note that “dating back to 1967” line. In other words, many of those hundreds attended the school nowhere near the time Kavanaugh attended Georgetown Prep. However, a second letter in support of Ford was sent to Congress, signed by 24 of the professor’s actual classmates at Holton; however, these two dozen have no knowledge of the actual alleged assault. Their letter merely points to Dr. Ford’s “honesty, integrity, and intelligence.”

Lastly, though technically not related to Kavanaugh’s school/college days, we just have to mention ‘ol Joe Biden’s comments on the matter for two reasons: One, he’s a serial groper, and two, he has a natural knack for being totally outrageous. On Friday, Biden compared the Ford-Kavanaugh situation to … the classic movie “Deliverance”:

I always say to men, they say why so hard, how about if you had been abused? You seen the movie Deliverance? How about if you were the guy strapped to the tree? Would you come forward? Would you want to relive that? I serious. I’m deadly earnest.

Of course, Joe being Joe, he couldn’t get the facts quite right. The guy strapped to the tree (Jon Voight) wasn’t the person raped, but the witness to the crime. Actor Ned Beatty played the victim.

UPDATE: Response from Yale’s Amy Chua was added regarding allegations she made sure potential female clerks for Kavanaugh had “model-like” qualities.

MORE: New group of Yale students, alumni support Kavanaugh

IMAGE: MSNBC/YouTube

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