Men Behaving Badly

Two outstanding non-fiction titles made it onto my ipod over the past couple of months. Perhaps I needed something else to be outraged about as the covid-19 virus barreled down upon us. Anything to keep my overactive imagination in check with each tickle in the throat.

Ruth Marcus, opinion writer for the Washington Post, has always been a favorite of mine. I knew that she had covered the Supreme Court. I did not know that she was a Yale and Harvard educated lawyer. Who better to write the definitive book about the travesty that was the election of Brett Kavanaugh to the

Supreme Court? I remember listening raptly to the public hearings at the time and having to pull over to the side of the road to cry in despair. I knew he would be elected no matter the facts that were uncovered against him. But in "Supreme Ambition" Marcus makes it clear that the facts the public never heard were even, if possible, more damaging.

From the moment that retiring justice Anthony Kennedy visited with Trump in the White House, making a deal with the devil, the table was set for Kavanaugh, Kennedy's protegee, to take the seat. But what should have been a shoo-in, turned into a contentious debacle when Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford came forward with allegations of a sexual assault by Kavanaugh in high school. What upset me so much was the incredible amount of background information that was unearthed that not only backed Ford's accusation but proved a long history of Kavanaugh's pathetic frat-boy behavior and severe alcohol abuse. None of the other witnesses against him were allowed to be heard in the FBI's rush to push Kavanaugh's nomination through.

Marcus takes readers behind the scenes of the incredible machinations and maneuvers that result in placing a name in front of the president and the judicial committee and shows us how the groundwork for skewing the court to the right had been laid as much as thirty years ago. Democrats do not get off easy either and, in fact, Marcus inadvertantly makes the case for term limits when implicating the complete failure of Senator Diane Feinstein, head of the judiciary committee, to persue the accusation in a timely matter. Kavanaugh's despicable behavior throughout his hearing, uncontrolled anger and blatant partisanship, made Justice Clarence Thomas look like a choirboy. 

And then there's the poster boy of sexual predatory behavior, Harvey Weinstein. Wunderkind, Ronan Farrow, who earned his bachelor's degree at the age of fifteen and went on to also earn a juris doctorate from Yale, has written a spell-binding book about his two and half year attempt to bring Weinstein's story to light, initially for NBC news but finally winning a Pulitzer Prize for The New

Yorker. "Catch and Kill" reads like a spy thriller and Farrow is a fabulous narrator, revealing a surprisingly self-deprecatory sense of humor and a knack for accents.

But there is nothing funny about the incredible journalistic sleuthing that went into paving the way for justice for Weinstein's accusers and peeling back the layers of criminal conduct that pervaded the NBC studio heads who were in Weinstein's pocket. Weinstein even employed a shadow agency of Israeli intelligence to follow and intimidate Farrow and the victims he was trying to persuade to come forward. The power of white, male money is terrifying in its reach.

Most disturbing of all is the way women turn on women and how attorney Lisa Bloom, a supposed defender of women's rights, posed as a helpmate to Farrow and the victims, but was actually gaining information to aid Weinstein in his fight against the charges. If you were reading this as fiction you wouldn't believe it but it is mind-blowingly and oh so sadly true. If by chance you felt a moment's bit of empathy when you watched a frail-appearing Weinstein leave court after his conviction leaning on his walker, just read this book. You'll get over yourself, quickly!