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September 21, 2018 - Image 4

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O

ftentimes
when
Americans think about
a
person
exemplifying
patriotism,
they
conjure images of a
courageous
soldier
defending
American
values and protecting
her country against
enemies, foreign and
domestic. If you take
that same framework
of
someone
acting
with
courage
even
when
at
direct
personal cost, it is
evident that Christine Blasey Ford,
a professor at Palo Alto University,
demonstrates this courage and
determination.
In July, Ford sent a letter to U.S.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who
later passed it on to Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., who sits on the
Senate Judiciary Committee. In the
letter, Ford describes being sexually
assaulted by current Supreme
Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh
and his friend, Mark Judge. The
assault included the two men
shoving her into a bedroom, playing
loud music with the intent to drown
out her cries for help, repeatedly
and violently groping her and
drunkenly attempting to remove
her clothing. Though the initial
letter was anonymous, she has since
allowed The Washington Post to
publish her name in coordination
with her allegations.
Since her story has become
public, Ford has faced atrocious
personal attacks and questions
about the veracity of her claims,
including an assertion by The Wall
Street Journal that she might be
misremembering
the
incident
because she had discussed it in
marriage counseling with her
husband dating back to 2012.
Many conservative politicians and
pundits, including Fox News host
Tucker Carlson, have asserted that
she has come forward solely for
political reasons and cited abortion
as top among them. And on Friday,
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the
chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, released a letter of
support for Brett Kavanaugh signed
by 65 women who, according to
Kavanaugh, knew him in high
school (it is important to note that

he attended an all-boys school). If
Kavanaugh’s first line of defense
is citing a group of women he did
not assault to prove that
he could not possibly
have assaulted another
woman,
then
surely
his qualifications as a
lawyer and a nominee
to serve on the Supreme
Court should be called
into
question.
Either
way, this letter was
released with the cruel
intent
to
undermine
her allegations against
Kavanaugh by painting him as the
nice guy incapable of what Dr. Ford
claims.

Despite these malicious attacks,
Ford has offered to testify before the
Senate Judiciary Committee, which
is currently scheduled for Monday,
Sept. 24. With the re-opening
of the Senate hearings based on
sexual
misconduct
allegations,
Kavanaugh’s
Supreme
Court
nomination has become parallel
in mind to the hearings for Justice
Clarence Thomas’s confirmation.
In the early 1990s, Clarence
Thomas was nominated by then-
President George H.W. Bush for
the Supreme Court of the United
States. When the Senate Judiciary
Committee
hearings
ended,
Thomas’s nomination looked to be
in a fine position for confirmation.
However,
an
FBI
interview
leaked that contained allegations
claiming Thomas had repeatedly
sexually harassed Anita Hill, a
lawyer who had worked with
him. After the leak, the hearings
were reopened and Hill was
subjected to extraordinarily sexist
questioning, including “Are you a
scorned woman?” asked by then-

Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala. She
endured vicious personal attacks by
both the committee and the media,
often shaded by misogyny and
racism. Others threatened Hill’s
life, attempted to get her fired and
discredited her work as a lawyer.
The virulent treatment of Anita
Hill by the all-male Senate Judiciary
Committee, the media and a large
part of the American people is
enough evidence to explain why
Ford might forgo making public
something
that
is
extremely
personal, and that occurred over
three decades ago. And for many
survivors of sexual harassment,
assault
or
rape,
the
cultural
shame and deep trauma they have
endured can silence them for years,
decades or even lifetimes. Even
after Ford’s name became public
and she demonstrated evidence of
the assault, many downplayed or
repudiated the allegations against
Kavanaugh outright.
When Kavanaugh was officially
nominated to serve on the Supreme
Court of the United States by
President Donald Trump, Ford
chose to defend her country from
generations of extremely radical
judicial decisions by a man she knew
to have heinously committed sexual
assault. She chose to speak out in
the same world that destroyed Hill
in the 1990s when she too stood up
against her harasser, a world that
also went on to confirm Thomas to
the highest court of the land. Ford
spoke up in a world where that same
man, Thomas, continues to sit on
the Supreme Court, despite clear
evidence of wrongdoing.
Ford knows she lives in a
country that would rather excuse
the disgusting and violent behavior
of powerful men by sweeping it
under the rug or discouraging
reporters
from
investigating
credible allegations than deliver
justice to their victim(s). She knows
exactly what is at stake and did
not silently sit back, even at great
personal risk. Instead, she stood
up and told the story of her sexual
assault in hopes of stopping the
destructive path of yet another
powerful man. And for this, Ford is
a true American patriot.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Friday, September 21, 2018

Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman

Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Lucas Maiman
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

DAYTON HARE
Managing Editor

420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

ALEXA ST. JOHN
Editor in Chief
ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND
ASHLEY ZHANG
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

KENDALL HECKER | COLUMN

Chasing mistakes
“S

tories live where things
go wrong.”
I still remember
writing this down in the Notes
app on my phone, a
hopeful mantra for and
from myself, on the day
I graduated from high
school. I was in the car
with my parents on the
way home from dinner
when
my
dad
was
prompted to retell one of
his famous stories, which
I had been hearing since
I was a toddler, about
him and his idiot college
friends.
Let me be clear, my father is not
an idiot, and neither are his friends.
But when they were 20, they were
prone to significant lapses in
common sense, and when they get
together now, they still revert back
to that sophomoric state, losing
several hundred collective IQ points
along the way. Their shenanigans as
young men are like folk tales in my
family, and they seemed to promise
that similar antics, adventures and
flat-out blunders (made hilarious by
hindsight) would fill my young adult
years.
I was on the verge of leaving for
a summer of travel and my freshman
year of college not long after, so my
parents were frequently prompted
to break into reminiscence of
their own time at school and as
young adults, providing insights
and advice along the way. I don’t
remember which story my dad told
that night in the car. Maybe it was
about the time they scaled a wall
to sneak into a castle in Salzburg,
Austria, a “Mission Impossible” feat
embarked upon simply to avoid the
$6 cost of the ticket. Or it could have
been the one about hiking down the
Grand Canyon for spring break, in a
surprise snowstorm, and realizing
they all forgot to bring water (no
worries, though, they each had a
snake bite kit and a bottle of Wild
Turkey). There was also the time
they rented a houseboat on Lake
Mead for the weekend, flew the Jolly
Roger pirate flag and proceeded to
pelt an unamused Coast Guard boat
with water balloons from a giant

slingshot.
Needless to say, my dad has a
lot of stories. They generally involve
poor judgment, alcohol and a series
of
miscalculations.
Yet he survived and
has been telling the
tales for almost 40
years.
They
still
make
him
laugh
every time.
I have never been
one to make mistakes
if I can help it. What
does
that
even
mean? I love order
and
preparation,
completing
assignments at least 24 hours
early and making no undue noise
in public spaces. In middle school
and high school, I quickly earned
the reputation of the “mom friend,”
hanging around with a group of
guys who, like my dad, scaled new
heights of lovable stupidity. I made
sure they didn’t get themselves
killed doing things no common-
sense person should have to be told
not to do (there is no situation in
which you need to duct tape kitchen
knives to your hands, and yet …).
In the car that night of
graduation, I started thinking about
my aversion to stupidity. Since I
was little, I’ve always been praised
for being responsible and mature. I
got good grades in school and could
carry on coherent conversations
with my friends’ parents. I was the
one left in charge when the adult
left the room. I started to wonder if
that was always such a good thing.
Was I too controlling? Would I miss
out on years worth of adventures
because I was too caught up in
potential
consequences?
Could
I be missing out on something
disastrous enough to still make me
laugh 40 years from now?
I mentioned this to my dad, and
he just sort of sighed. “Yeah,” he
said, “You need to learn to be stupid
sometimes.”
So, I wrote down the line
that began this column as a little
reminder to myself, that stories so
often are grown in the places where
things are calamitous or out of
control, or not particularly smart. I

set off on my summer of travel and
hoped that I could heed my own
advice and learn to chase idiocy.
Anyone that knows me knows
I failed to do so. I am equally as
organized and controlling as I was
the day I graduated high school. But
as I sat down to write this column,
I started compiling in my head a
list of my stories, the ones I tell so
often that I begin to laugh on the
front side of the punchline. There’s
the time I skipped school for senior
skip day with two friends, but was
so stressed about missing classes
that I was miserable and later wrote
apology emails to all my teachers. Or
when I went on a first date and the
guy admitted to having imagined
a whole future together after our
hour-long chat (it was the first time
we had ever met). Or the one when
my friends and I were delayed five
hours on a standing-room-only
train from Edinburgh to Northern
England,
and
everyone
began
looting shortbread and Cadbury
chocolates from the snack cart. We
spent all day standing between cars
by the bathroom, laughing, joking
and gorging on stolen snacks. It is
one of my favorite memories from
the trip.
None of my favorite stories were
born solely from me letting my hair
down and suppressing forethought.
Stories so often live where plans
are lacking, but luckily for people
like me, you can’t plan life. You can,
however, choose how you react to
its randomness. As seriously as I
may take myself in my day-to-day
life, I have never been afraid to look
back and laugh. You can choose
to see something as a calamitous
embarrassment or inconvenience,
or
it
can
be
embroidered,
embellished and refurbished to
make your kids laugh 30 years from
now, as long as you’re willing to be
laughing at yourself too. There’s no
need to chase mistakes when they
will come rushing at you anyway,
so you may as well be ready with a
game, a group of friends and a bottle
of Wild Turkey close at hand.

The patriotism of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford

Crossing the line

DAVID HAYSE | COLUMN

I

n a recent history course of
mine, my professor told the
class that, when reading
any historian’s work,
their narrative says
just as much about the
time they were living
in as the period they
were writing about.
For example, Roman
historian Livy, who
lived from 59 B.C.
to 17 A.D. and wrote
about the centuries
before, had certain
biases that mutated
his transcription of past events.
Livy even says himself that
he writes with the specific
purpose of teaching certain
moral lessons.
This pattern of transcribing
and relaying “facts” in order
to fit an agenda is not one that
ended with Roman historians,
but like much else, has been
passed on to contemporary
times. This is common among
today’s historians, but more
prevalent among journalists.
Journalists
and
news
anchors
are
extraordinarily
important people in today’s
society.
News
anchors
Bill
O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rachel
Maddow
and
others
are
household names across the
country, even for people who
aren’t that attentive to the news.
Have you ever stopped to think,
“Who are these people? Are
they trustworthy journalists
or are they biased performers
looking to gain viewers?”
News anchors are part of
the medium through which we
get most of our information
on the world, and their shows
are
growing
more
popular.
Newspapers
are
losing
readership
while
evening
primetime
shows
are
how
57 percent of Americans get
their news. Can we trust the
front men and women of these
programs and their staffs to
credibly choose which stories
are reported on, and how they
are reported?
Let’s
start
with
Sean
Hannity of Fox News. Hannity
has his own primetime show
on Fox News in which he
disseminates
information
that is purported to be fact.
Recently, Sean Hannity lent his
radio show to two of Donald
Trump’s attorneys. He didn’t
have them on as guests to
answer tough questions about
the
potential
investigations
the president faces. He gave
them his show. Rudy Giuliani
and Jay Sekulow were allowed
free reign over the program
for three hours to spread their
views unchecked and even take
calls from listeners. This is an
egregious dereliction of duty
by a news anchor, to give away
his show knowingly to allow
a biased pair of partisans his
national platform.
Trump’s
now-former
lawyer Michael Cohen also has
proven issues with Hannity’s
credibility
and
ability
to
be
objective.
Hannity
was
also a client of Cohen’s. This
information was not brought

forward
willingly,
but
was
“wrung
from
Mr
Cohen’s
lawyers by the judge’s order.”
If Hannity wanted
to be an impartial
journalist and show
a
commitment
to
objective truth, then
he would have come
forward with this
information, instead
of downplaying its
significance
after
it was revealed in a
courtroom.
Hannity is not
the only newsman, conservative
or
liberal,
to
have
shown
bias in both his personal and
professional life. For example,
Al Sharpton, whose past is
strewn with connections to
the Democratic Party and with
personal
controversies,
has
a 6:00 p.m. show on MSNBC
called
“PoliticsNation.”
He
also has a radio show called
“Keepin’ It Real” and uses it
along with his position with
MSNBC to spread his ideology.
Sharpton has worked in politics
for decades and has had his
fair share of controversies.
The
Tawana
Brawley
case,
perhaps better known to our
parents, is a stain on Sharpton’s
reputation. A grand jury found

that Brawley had lied and
made false accusations of rape
against
several
white
men,
including two police officers,
but only after Sharpton had
made slanderous remarks about
both the police officers and
the district attorney. These
remarks resulted in Sharpton
being found guilty and fined,
and, according to some, sparked
riots. In this case, Sharpton was
made to put his money where
his mouth was because he
jumped on a situation to incite
anger and gain publicity. He
attempted to run for office on
several occasions, but lost in the
Democratic primary for mayor
of New York, senator from New
York and president of the United
States. These issues, while not
the only in Sharpton’s past, are
clear markers of Sharpton’s
ties to a political party in one
case, and in the other, reckless
behavior and slander.
Political bias in the media is
not limited to Sean Hannity and
Al Sharpton. Plenty of others

across
all
networks
spread
their bias daily with the stories
they choose to report and how
they report them, with the
guests they invite to the show,
how they treat them and even
seemingly simple choices such
as the language they choose.
Word choice might not seem
important, and it is not always
intentional, but it affects the
tone of the speaker and reflects
biases.
The point of this article is
not to make you stop watching or
reading news, but rather to ask
that you do a little research into
those you’ve trusted to research
and report on the world for you.
Whether it is Chris Cuomo, the
host of CNN’s “Cuomo Prime
Time,”
whose
brother
and
father are staunch Democratic
politicians from New York, or
Laura Ingraham, host of “The
Ingraham Angle” on Fox News,
who worked as a speechwriter
for former President Ronald
Reagan’s
administration.
Ingraham, who has made her
political stances very clear, was
encouraged
by
Republicans
to run for Tim Kaine’s Senate
seat in Virginia, and, most
concerningly, endorsed Donald
Trump
at
the
Republican
National Convention in 2016. I
don’t mean to say that endorsing
Donald Trump is an issue in of
itself, but she set a dangerous
precedent. “It was the first
time in modern U.S. political
history that a prominent media
figure endorsed a nominee at
his convention,” according to
Newsweek writer Bill Powell.
“Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging
the freedom of speech, or of the
press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a
redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment and
its supposed guarantee of a free
and independent press have
almost become irrelevant with
the advent of more politicized
news. The political ties between
the news media and both the
Democratic
and
Republican
parties have made them neither
free or independent. They have
devolved
into
propagandists
of
two
power-seeking
organizations. This does not
mean that you can’t watch the
news or that you can’t trust
anything you see. It does mean
however that there is an implicit
or explicit bias in everything
you see, and in order to see the
full picture of any issue, this
must be recognized. Jack W.
Germond, a political reporter
for nearly 50 years, wrote in
his book “Fat Man in a Middle
Seat: Forty Years of Covering
Politics”:
“The
rules
were
clear then. If you once crossed
the line from journalism into
partisan politics, you could not
return. They were them and we
were us.”

David Hayse can be reached at

dhayse@umich.edu.

The First
Amendment
and its supposed
guarantee
of a free and
independent
press have almost
become irrelevant
with the advent of
more politicized
news.

MARISA WRIGHT | COLUMN

Ford has faced
atrocious personal
attacks and
questions about
the veracity of her
claims

KENDALL
HECKER

Kendall Hecker can be reached at

kfhecker@umich.edu.

DAVID
HAYSE

JOIN OUR EDITORIAL BOARD

Our Editorial Board meets Mondays and Wednesdays 7:15-8:45 PM at
our newsroom at 420 Maynard Street. All are welcome to come discuss
national, state and campus affairs.

MARISA
WRIGHT

Marisa Wright can be reached at

marisadw@umich.edu.

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