In every war, there’s a Teruo Nakamura: Amanda Marcotte reveals herself as the lone true believer in that discredited NYT Kavanaugh story

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When you’ve lost CNN, you’ve lost!

The New York Times was reeling on Monday after its Opinion section fumbled a high-profile story about an allegation of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, drawing widespread criticism and condemnation of the newspaper….

The latter happened…over the weekend when The Times’ Sunday Review, which falls under Opinion, published an essay based on a forthcoming book written by two Times reporters, detailing a previously unreported allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, which he denied.

The allegation in the book hinged on the recollection of a Yale classmate who The Times reported contacted the FBI and lawmakers during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. The Yale classmate, who is now a prominent lawyer, has declined to comment publicly, according to The Times.

But the book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,” included a key detail that the essay published by the Times was lacking: The woman at the center of it, who’d been a student at the time of the incident, declined to be interviewed. Moreover, her friends said she did not recall the incident.

In addition to that omission of vital information, The Times’ Opinion desk also came under fire over a tweet it had published promoting the story. The tweet said that “having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun.”

By Sunday night, The Times had not only apologized for the “offensive” tweet, but also appended to the essay an editor’s note addressing the glaring omission in its original story.

But as in every lost war, there is always a lone true believer who refuses to surrender. And here that lone true believer is Slate‘s redoubtable political writer Amanda Marcotte:

On Sunday, the New York Times published an article by the authors of a new book about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, introducing more corroborating evidence for claims that Kavanaugh had a history throughout high school and college of getting trashed and then sexually abusing his female classmates. That story, almost a year after Kavanaugh’s momentous confirmation hearings, was interesting further evidence that Kavanaugh likely perjured himself before the Senate….

The Times later amended its story to clarify that one of the alleged incidents from Kavanaugh’s past involves a woman who didn’t speak to reporters and reportedly doesn’t remember the event in question. This detail was, of course, seized upon immediately by Trump and his legions of propagandists, who claimed that it undermined and discredited the entire story. In fact, the woman has not actually denied the account provided by a witness.

(There are many reasons someone might not remember something that actually happened. A lot of time has passed and it’s possible she was intoxicated. Since she won’t speak to reporters, we simply can’t know how she interprets this.)

She’s the Teruo Nakamura of Kavanaugh-gate.

Posted by Charlotte Allen