To Comfort The Afflicted
And Afflict The Comfortable

To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Observercast

The Post-Kavanaugh Snooze

on

BY SUSAN ESTRICH

Were you angry?

Could you hardly believe those men?

I’m sorry to be Ebenezer Scrooge, or whoever the Halloween equivalent is. But wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that women were short of tears at the market, glued to the televisions, telling one another stories they had never told? Get up. Give.

And now everyone is making Halloween decorations.

It was supposed to be a teachable moment. We watched a brave woman come forward with a story that was so painfully familiar that wrinkled women winced. We knew she was telling the truth. Everyone knew. She didn’t ask for it.

And then he did what every guy has done at least once to every woman I have met.

He lied. He lied to his wife, and he lied to his handlers, and he lied on TV, and my guess is, he even lied to himself. Which kind of candy do you like?

And he got away with it.

He did. They do. Sorry, kids. Bad guys win quite frequently.

But we live in a democracy, right? Isn’t that what I cried for as Richard Nixon took off? No man was above the law. I dreamt of being Archibald Cox.

My kids get Brett Kavanaugh instead.

I wonder if he’s having fun on the court.

I wonder if she still needs security when she takes her kids to school.

But most of all, I wonder if all those women who were shaking their heads, all those woman who knew just what was and those women whose husbands did much worse will remember when they go to the polls.

There are three things you can do:

1. Shit work: That’s right. I don’t care if you’ve run 10 campaigns. At this point, so what? You don’t know what’s going on. Don’t pretend you can walk into a business and solve all the problems. Answer the phone. Drive.

2. Money: Having it doesn’t guarantee victory. Not having it makes defeat more likely. If your friends are running till it hurts, give till it hurts. I hate the system. I hate the ads. I hate the lies and the b.s. I hate it all. The only thing I hate more is losing.

3. Time: Find it. Move. Go door to door. Buy the pizza. Buy the bagels. I staffed 26 government locations with free bagels and good-looking bachelors. The places were hopping. A million websites will tell you where to go. It will also be the experience of a lifetime caring for something that much.

And then, just vote. One vote doesn’t matter; Malcolm Gladwell can prove it. But voting matters. Participating matters.

Or you can sit around and complain like a privileged millennial of any age – I think it’s an adjective and not a chronological measure – while secretly enjoying the fruits of an improving market and remembering to wear sunscreen.

My friends in politics used to say that Americans have the attention span of a gnat.

I’ve spent my life hoping they are wrong.

Susan Estrich’s columns appear regularly in The Oklahoma Observer

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Susan Estrich
Susan Estrich
Estrich served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1988, she was the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential run, even though she had never before managed a political campaign. She was the first female campaign manager of a major presidential campaign, and the first female campaign manager of the modern era. [5] [6] Estrich appears frequently on Fox News as a legal and political analyst, and has also substituted for Alan Colmes on the debate show Hannity & Colmes. She writes regular articles for the conservative website NewsMax, for which she is a pundit.[7] She is also on the Board of Editorial Contributors for USA Today.[8] She is currently a law professor at the University of Southern California Law School and a political science professor at its affiliated undergraduate school. Before joining the USC faculty in 1989, she was Professor of Law at Harvard University, where she was the youngest woman to receive tenure.[9] On January 10, 2008, Estrich joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, a law firm based in Los Angeles, where she chairs their Public Strategy in High Profile Litigation: Media Relations practice area. [10][11] She writes a nationally syndicated print column distributed through Creators Syndicate.
Mark Krawczyk
Mark Krawczyk
March 9, 2023
Exceptional reporting about goings on in my home state as well as informative opinion pieces that makes people think about issues of the day...........get a SUBSCRIPTION FOLKS!!!!!!!
Brette Pruitt
Brette Pruitt
September 5, 2022
The Observer carries on the "give 'em hell" tradition of its founder, the late Frosty Troy. I read it from cover to cover. A progressive wouldn't be able to live in a red state without it.