The Kavanaugh hearing was a master class in misreading anger as honesty

Long read, but it describes the differences perfectly:

Thursday’s judiciary committee hearing was a study in contrasts whose differences were oddly erased by their result. Christine Blasey Ford seemed terrified but brimmed with good will. The extent of her cooperation is measurable: She went to great lengths to be as painfully precise as she could be, clarifying her comments at every turn. She was considerate of the committee and answered every question, repeatedly going out of her way to offer more than was asked. Her effort to comply under difficult circumstances was unrelenting, even as she downplayed the negative effects of all this on herself and her family. (Asked how her husband and children were doing, she said they were basically “OK.”) She came across as dedicated, responsible, and motivated by a sincere desire to help.

She was called credible by most observers.

Brett Kavanaugh launched his half of the proceedings without an iota of graciousness or respect for the body charged with advancing his confirmation. He began yelling his grievances at the committee. Though this may have been intended in part to be strategic, his demeanor quickly careened away from controlled chaos to just chaos as he attacked the committee’s Democrats in a hissing second person, his mouth curled in a sneer of contempt: “You have tried hard. You’ve given it your all. No one can question your efforts. Your coordinated and well-funded efforts to destroy my good name and destroy my family will not drag me out.” He used phrases like lying in wait. Take me out. So shocking was it to see a judge abandon reason and decorum in order to lob accusations and float conspiracies—at Americans whose offense was requesting that a serious charge against him be investigated—that many watching thought he must be about to withdraw from consideration. But no. He did not admit defeat in a blaze of glory. He denied, he attacked, and he obstructed, all the while making himself the victim of a proceeding he would later repeatedly claim to respect.

He, too, was called credible.

This, in short, is the power of anger: who gets to use it, and how it’s misread.

Vox charted the actual number of questions answered by each witness. See for yourself whether—per the actual information each offered—it’s appropriate or fair to call them equally candid. So: What happened? Why would some rush to call Kavanaugh authentic and sincere when his testimony brimmed with sarcasm and scorn? In a culture that instructs men to hide their emotions, this is the unfortunate side effect: a tendency to see anger—male anger, specifically—as a sign of candor because it’s broken through the wall of repression. Male outrage frequently functions—in our clumsy social calculus as outside observers—as a proxy with which we gauge a man’s honesty and even righteousness.

This means that anger is the kind of weapon that works on more fronts than we’re necessarily aware of. Rage, like tears, can be exploited for sympathy—but only in certain hands.

Kavanaugh’s performance wasn’t exactly a surprise: I’ve written about what I see as Kavanaugh’s strategy, which is to exaggerate his innocence in every matter, big or small—counting on male support—while tailoring his personal conduct so as to earn the approval of his latest target. In his TV interview, Brett Kavanaugh believed he needed to be a buttoned-down choirboy for the Fox News audience he hoped to win over. He sat with his mostly silent wife and portrayed himself as a nice, quiet, decent man. On Thursday, his intended audience had changed: It was now Trump. The president prefers those who are more like him, so Brett Kavanaugh obliged. He shouted and sobbed, insulted half the country, and claimed the system was rigged, tying Ford’s allegation that he assaulted her into (I can’t believe I’m typing this) “revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.” It was an appalling, partisan, unhinged display. But it worked as intended: The president called it “riveting”!

The thing about male anger, no matter how pouty and infantile it is, people respect it.

To be clear, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Kavanaugh’s anger. No one doubts (least of all me) that Brett Kavanaugh feels passionately sorry for himself. He wanted this confirmation badly, and my impression— while watching that damp, extraordinary tantrum—was that he hasn’t had much experience coping with not getting what he wants. One can lightly sympathize: For a judge accustomed to holding other people accountable for their behavior, having the public combing through one’s yearbooks and asking about his drinking and sex life would not be pleasant. That is unfortunate. It is unpleasant, too, to be accused of assault. But his inability to cope is not, perhaps, what one looks for in a Supreme Court justice. This isn’t a trial; it’s a high-profile job interview for a big promotion. But it’s worth noting anyway that conduct like his wouldn’t be acceptable from a run-of-the-mill defendant—even one who was falsely accused—for whom the stress and stakes would be infinitely higher. We expect ordinary people in those circumstances to comport themselves with a modicum of dignity and restraint. For a lifetime appointment, one would think the standards for conduct and temperament would be rather higher, but Kavanaugh ground those expectations into the dust with his heel and stomped on them.

…

This hearing offered indirect evidence, then, of how much we value male anger, and how little we rate female sadness. Women and men who have been sexually victimized have torn themselves open, laying bare their most traumatic experiences in an attempt to educate those in power on what this is, how it works, how it hurts. On Thursday, it didn’t matter. There was no performance so credible and sympathetic on Ford’s part that would have made a difference to these men, and no performance so unhinged by Judge Kavanaugh that would have changed their vote. This is bad for the court. If Kavanaugh is confirmed after that disqualifying display in which he lied under oath, spewed partisan invective, and disrespected female questioners, the Supreme Court as an American institution will no longer be able to sustain even the fiction of its legitimacy.

There may be lessons here for the rest of us about anger and the way it is used and interpreted. As observers, we probably need to learn to uncouple male anger (or tears) from sincerity—or to at least apply as much skepticism as we do to angry women. For another, there’s no point in containing one’s anger anymore. If a potential Supreme Court justice can behave that way, so can the rest of us. Bottling one’s rage into an acceptable social performance is enormous labor, and we’ve learned this week that it’s not worth doing. It does not work. All it does is condense the rage into a numbing grief that erodes the self and weakens the will to action. If this is how it’s going to be, lesson learned.

There are lessons for Republicans, too, should they want them. When you break a system so badly that even an unimpeachable performance by a credible witness fails to be taken seriously, you play an extremely dangerous game. A small number of senators may have been able to force a delay in the confirmation vote, but Thursday has made its mark. Kavanaugh said it himself: “You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwinds.” The hearing revealed what the way forward must be: Anger is less than a truth test but it’s also more than a feeling. It’s a strategy and a tool. And women’s anger must come out. We’ve been left no other choice.