Derek as Tom Stark in “All the King’s Men”
Wednesday
After recently writing that we need Jack Burden investigating Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the kind of dirt that Burden unearths in All the King’s Men has been discovered on Kavanaugh. While the judge in Robert Penn Warren’s novel is guilty of bribery, this judge has been accused of attempted rape when he was a high school student. Since then he has been operating under the maxim (these are Kavanaugh’s own words in a speech three years ago) that “what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.”
Actually, Kavanaugh’s alleged transgression more resembles another violation in the novel, this one involving Boss Stark’s son. Kavanaugh and Tom Stark are both examples of how privilege protects the children of the elite. Here’s the incident in All the King’s Men:
Tom Stark, a sophomore, had made quarterback on the mythical All Southern Eleven and had celebrated by wrapping an expensive yellow sport job around a culvert on one of the numerous new speedways which bore his father^s name. Fortunately, a Highway Patrol car, and not some garrulous citizen, discovered the wreck, and the half-empty bottle of evidence was, no doubt, flung into the night to fall in the dark waters of the swamp. Beside the unconscious form of the Sophomore Thunderbolt lay another form, conscious but badly battered, for in the big yellow expensive sport job Tom had had with him a somewhat less expensive yellow-headed sport job, named, it turned out, Caresse Jones.
As so often is the case, the privileged one suffers no consequences whereas the victim carries around scars for the rest of her life. For Christine Blasey Ford, the scars are psychological whereas for Caresse they are physical. Tom, we are told, “wasn’t hurt a bit,” but Caresse “wound up in the operating room of the hospital.” Burden writes that, while she “obligingly did not die,” “in the future she never would be much of an asset in a roadster.” In other words, she has been maimed for life.
So how do protectors operate? Kavanaugh’s GOP defenders are resorting to a number of different tactics, which Cornell law professor Josh Chafetz has summed up in a tweet:
Kavanaugh wasn’t at that party.
If he was, he didn’t do anything.
If he did, it was just “horseplay.”
And if it wasn’t, he shouldn’t be held responsible for something he did so long ago.
They are also going after Dr. Ford. Sen. Orrin Hatch said she may be “mixed up,” a lawyer on Fox News called her a loon, and death threats have forced her to hire security and move her family. Fearing such an outcome made her reluctant about telling her story in the first place.
Boss Willie Stark, whom I’ve compared to Trump, applies his own forms of pressure. He just spends money (as Trump did with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal) and uses his leverage as governor:
[Her father] stamped and swore that he was going to have blood, and breathed indictments, jail, publicity, and lawsuits. His fires, however, were pretty soon banked. Not that it didn’t cost some nice change. But in the end the whole transaction was conducted without noise. Mr, Jones was in the trucking business, and somebody pointed out to him that trucks ran on state roads and that truckers had a lot of contacts with certain state departments.
Thanks to the #MeToo movement and a lot of angry women voters, the GOP leadership can’t apply such heavy-handed tactics against Dr. Ford. We can thank our system that the rule of law still prevails. Trump and some of his GOP enablers would like to have Willie Stark’s power, but we’re not there yet.
