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.