Act One. The staging, pure drama: a horseshoe of senators, facing down one woman in a navy blue suit. The bright hue of her impeccable hair, in sharp relief against the shadowy chambers. The witness—alleging that in 1982, at the age of 15, she was assaulted by a man now within striking distance of the Supreme Court—spoke in a tremulous voice, thin but clear, cracking under the strain of tension and terror. When Christine Blasey Ford faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, she stared down a lineup of 11 Republican senators (all men, several gray with age) who, to a man, ceded their five minutes of questioning time to Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell. Mitchell was a curious but deliberate casting choice who provided a politically expedient buffer—between the senators re-election campaigns and the nasty business of smearing an alleged sexual assault victim.
Mitchell, a former journalist and a prosecutor since 1993, was chosen because she is a woman. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell referred to her, in an insulting bit of metonymy, as the “female assistant” who would ask questions on the Republican policymakers behalf. The production, orchestrated by committee chairman Chuck Grassley, was an attempt to deflect attention from the optics of 11 men separately trying to cast doubt on Fords allegations of sexual assault at the hands of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when Ford was 15 years old.
Optics were a chief concern for Grassley, who as chairman led the proceedings with insistent direction that read more like querulous nitpicking than the iron fist of power. But the optics presented were of a different stripe than what he intended: His constant interruptions to emphasize the purity of his actions made him look small; the array of men using a public servant to do their dirty work made them look even smaller. The lineup of interrogators across from the witness sat like a silent firing squad. Nevertheless, Ford radiated a serenity that blunted the trivial questions posed to her: Did she pay for her own lie-detector test? Is she really afraid of flying? Was she aware that the committee was willing to meet her in California, where she lives, to hear her there?
The questions were irrelevant, but the questioning was of course paramount. Mitchells role—as the mouthpiece for an array of men who did not want to be filmed questioning Ford themselves—was to all but officially put Ford on trial. Her recollections were questioned; a poster-sized map was produced and pointed to. Fords letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein, as well as her texts to the Washington Post reporter who broke her story, Emma Brown, were scrutinized one line at a time.
The proceedings were controlled and polite; the room was quiet, respectful, and restrained. In a few moments, when Ford paused to speak, microphones picked up errant background noise.
And then, after a recess, came Act Two. The sound and the fury. Reportedly with the encouragement of the White House, the nominee came in with a statement he had written the night before, barely able to contain his rage and indignation. It was a tantrum, one that left no room for anyones pain and suffering except his own. Like a toddler—or the president—Kavanaugh alternated between wheedling the committee to understand the transgressions of his teenage years, threatening the assembled for falling into a trap that would ruin the discourse of American politics (that ship has sailed, your honor), and accusing the Democrats, in broad terms, of springing Fords story on him in the eleventh hour of his confirmation. His opening statement was desperate to prove his character, using mountain of circumstantial character evidence—the number of female law clerks hes mentored, the pedigree of his law school—that neither eliminated the possibility of misconduct while drinking nor are mutually exclusive with assaulting women. The collection of endorsements and indignities amounted to a puffed-up, emotional man asking “do you know who I am,” producing his privilege as proof of his character.
Where Ford was professional and thoughtful, Kavanaugh was belittling and belligerent. Ford contained her physical footprint; she controlled her facial expressions and her gestures; she made a point of politely exchanging words with Grassley. Kavanaugh evaded direct queries, obfuscated the intent of the questions directed at him by Democratic senators, and at several points spun the questions back at the sitting senators.
When they asked him if he drank to excess, he asked if they had done similar things, seemingly trying to alter the basic power structure of the interrogation. At the lowest point—which he apologized for, after a hastily called recess—Kavanaugh asked Senator Amy Klobuchar, who had just shared that her father is an alcoholic, if she had ever blacked out after drinking.
Ford entered the theatrics of the hearing as a supplicant; Kavanaugh entered as a deposed king. His entitlement was contagious.
Graham, whod already complained to the press about Feinsteins handling of the Ford testimony, set alight the Republicans own strategy, reclaiming his time from Mitchell to vent his spleen at the Democrats. It was an alarming display of temper; it marked the fulcrum on which the hearings pivoted. Kavanaugh seemed markedly soothed by the transference of his anger to the other conservative men in the room. Orrin Hatch scoffed at the idea that a porn stars lawyer should be taken seriously—or that Kavanaugh should be held accountable for the actions of his teenage years. John Cornyn compared these hearings to Joseph McCarthys—except apparently, these were worse. And in the final moments of this endless and excruciating display, John Kennedy asked Kavanaugh to look him in the eye, “swear to God,” and refute the charges against him. (In doing so, the nominee unwittingly echoed Fords own remarkable certainty: “100 percent.”) A long day that began as a foray into a new understanding of trauma ended with foolishly reductive dialogue that would not be out of place on a playground.
In two acts, the hearings broke down the vast distinction between how men are interrogated and how women are; what women can get away with, and what men can. The proceedings changed so abruptly from one act to the other that even the committee-appointed “female assistant,” who was there to distract the viewers at home from the visual of a male-dominated chamber, was quickly dispensed with. Instead, the latter half of the proceedings were dominated by angry male voices, condemnation of the highest-ranking female member of the committee (thats Feinstein, who used a point of personal privilege to defend her handling of Fords letter and her office against the accusation of leaking), and disparagement of the only party fielding women for this committee.
The filter of decency came off. And as the assembled men decried the media circus surrounding them, the hearing became exactly that: a cluttered, showy, three-ring spectacle, where the paramount issue became not ascertaining what really happened between Kavanaugh and Ford, but which party knew what and when. (Despite several direct and indirect attempts to induce Kavanaugh to shift his indignation into a call for an F.B.I. inquiry, Kavanaugh hemmed and hawed for ages. Finally, Kamala Harris pointedly took his evasion down “as a no.”)
The Republican men did not speak to Ford directly, save for Grassley—but each G.O.P. senator on the committee went out of their way to individually offer their condolences to Kavanaugh for being accused of sexual assault. At times, Kavanaugh was clearly looking to the men seated at the committee table for their sympathy, comfort, and acknowledgement; on camera, you could see slight smiles or moments of recognition flit across his face. Ford had Mitchell. Mitchell, who has no power; Mitchell, who was dismissed from the position she was asked to fill as soon as the conservative men could speak among themselves once more. The distinction between the way Ford and Kavanaugh were each treated could not have been made more plain.
Ford did not invoke God during her testimony. Kavanaugh evaded direct questions about his drinking and the slang used in his yearbook in order to make bold assertions about his character. That meant leaning into his background of faith including his church attendance at the time of the allegation. An early anecdote about how his 10-year-old daughter had asked that their family pray for Ford sent him into tears. It strikes me that the concept of testimony, the sworn statement of evidence, is rooted in the idea of religious expression: One testifies to an experience with the divine, or hears the decree of God through the testimony of others. In one definition, “testimony” is another term for the Ark of the Covenant.
This day was full of testimonies, yes. But the proceedings themselves are also testament to how completely different the rules become, all else being relatively equal, when the gender of the person in the hot seat changes. Ford and Kavanaugh are both respected thinkers in their fields; educated well; raised similarly, and near each other. They share many of the same privileges. Ford distinguished herself by not just being a woman, but declaring that she is a victimized woman. And as soon as this body tried to sensitively handle that difference, the structure of justice—the structure of this exhausting, ludicrous two-act play—practically fell apart.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:The Confirmation Circus of Brett KavanaughSonia SaraiyaSonia Saraiya is Vanity Fair's television critic. Previously she was at Variety, Salon, and The A.V. Club. She lives in New York.
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