To put it kindly, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee may be auditioning for future employment, most likely with Barnum and Bailey. For once, the public hearing on the freshly minted accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was scheduled, it was clear at once that we are in for another circus, reminiscent of the Anita Hill testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991, at which point it seemed Washington politics couldn’t sink much lower. But it has. As committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said, Senate Democrats now have “hit bottom and are still digging.”

After the days-long hearings on the Kavanaugh nomination had been concluded, and only days before the scheduled committee vote, came the accusation that Kavanaugh, in his high school days, sexually assaulted and attempted to rape a teenaged girl. And in a political and media culture in which an accusation becomes a stampede in a matter of minutes, the Judiciary Committee scheduled a hearing on the 36-year-old alleged incident instead of giving it the time and attention it deserves, or something less than 10 seconds.

That has given the national media a full week before the hearing to dwell, day after day, night after night, hour after unrelenting hour, on the yet unsubstantiated accusation before the hearing even begins. Who knows how many legitimate news stories will have been buried in this spectacle before the spectacle, the political equivalent of Super Bowl week? Because news has become a major part of America’s entertainment menu, both print and electronic media strive increasingly less to inform readers and viewers and more to provide us with spectacles we can hardly ignore.

No sooner did we hear the breaking news of the startling accusation than we began hearing of the alleged victim’s “repressed memory,” one of the abracadabra phrases of modern psychology. Then came news that she has her therapist’s notes showing she discussed the alleged event in 2012. We have also been told that she took and passed a “lie detector “ test on the matter, a test so unreliable that most courts won’t allow its admission as evidence. Still, it is enough to focus the minds of Senate Democrats on “the character issue,” something they were eager to overlook during both the candidacy and the presidency of one William Jefferson Clinton.

So in a classic “she said-he said” case of accusation and denial, how will the Senate Judiciary Committee, and later the full Senate, determine who is telling the truth, and how will that affect Judge Kavanaugh’s chances for confirmation? Well, committee members will question and “assess the credibility” of both the judge and his accuser. And we all know how highly skilled members of Congress typically are at assessing credibility. Recall how well they assessed the “intelligence” affirming Saddam Hussein’s ongoing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program that provided the rationale for the great Bush War II in Iraq. Remember how calmly and shrewdly Congress assessed the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 and how quickly it passed the resolution that led us into the disastrous Vietnam War.

A full week before a word of testimony has been given, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer declared the accusation “credible.” Then Committee member Kamala Harris, former attorney general of California, announced her verdict in the matter: “I believe her,” she said of the alleged victim, soon no doubt to follow Anita Hill into the ranks of celebrated martyrs. Harris has called for a “complete and thorough” FBI investigation, despite the fact that Kavanaugh has already been put through six of them. And how long might such an investigation take? If it moves at the pace of former FBI chief, now special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russian meddlers in the 2016 election, Judge Kavanaugh may be old and gray or even dead of old age before it is completed.

This is clearly an attempt to both stain the reputation of the nominee and delay a vote on confirmation until after the November elections, when Democrats hope to win back the Senate and further delay the vote until the new senate is in place next year. In the meantime, there’s no business like show business, and the spectacle must go on. And we will all watch, though we probably shouldn’t. “I will not set before my eyes that which is base,” declared the psalmist. (Psalm 101:3) But the psalmist lived long ago, when there was no television.

What a blessing!

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