Oh Look! It’s more evidence that the liberal left thinks child abuse is no big deal

Supreme Court hearings show us once again the mainstream media's SOP: ignore any justifiable concern, go straight to smearing the opposition as conspiracy theorists

Hello to all my new subscribers. Thanks to all of you for being here! I got a raft of new sign-ups over the last few weeks, and I’ve been incredibly moved by the comments you have made on my posts. At the risk of sounding soppy, your comments mean the world to me! 

If you ever needed evidence of the liberal-left’s hypocritical, two-tier views on what makes an Approved Victim, then this week’s Senate confirmation hearing of Biden’s pick for Supreme Court Justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, provided ample fodder.

Compared to the god-awful, histrionic, spectacle that was the 2018 confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, this week’s hearing over the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to America’s highest court was practically a love-fest.

It was also a very illuminating to see the differing treatment of two the judges, both of whom came under fire for sexual matters.

Kavanaugh’s hearing four years ago was characterised by shouting, crying, and a yelling protestor being dragged from the chamber.

What was all that drama about? An accusation — and a rather dubious one, in my view — by a woman in her fifties that Kavanaugh had groped her at a party in 1982 when they were both prep-school teens in suburban Maryland.

“And for that, you are the hero of millions,” wrote Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian.

On the days that I watched Jackson’s hearing this week, both the judge and her Republican questioners were polite and professional. Nobody cried.

And that is despite the fact that Republicans have brought up troubling evidence that she has been lenient in sentencing defendants who were charged with viewing child sex abuse online. 

On Tuesday, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley drilled down into the details of one of the multiple convictions Republicans brought up as egregiously light: Brown-Jackson’s sentencing of Wesley Hawkins, an 18-year-old caught in possession of 17 videos on his laptop of children being raped.

Hawley, reading from the court records of the 2013 case, described the evidence against the defendant: a 24 minute video of a 12 year old performing a sex act, an almost two minute video of an eight year old performing a sex act, an 11 minute video of an 11 year old performing a sex act and being raped by an adult male, and a fifteen minute video of two 11 year olds committing sex acts.

Some of the materials, Hawley read from court documents, were described by prosecutors as “sado-masochistic.” 

Truly evil stuff.

Congressional guidelines for such cases recommend sentences of up to 10 years. The prosecution in the Hawkins case asked for 2 years in prison. Judge Brown-Jackson sentenced the defendant to 3 months.

Hawley quoted from Judge Brown Jackson’s sentencing of the defendant, saying: “I don’t feel that it’s appropriate to increase the penalty on the basis of the number of images or prepubescent victims as the guidelines require, because these circumstances exist in many cases, if not most, and don’t signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offence.”

She also claimed that 18 year old Hawkins was “viewing sex acts between children not much younger” than him, and described him as merely satisfying his “curiosity.” She told him she felt “so sorry” for his family and for him and “the anguish this has caused all of you.” Hawley quoted her from the trial as saying: “I feel terrible about the collateral consequences of this conviction…sex offenders are truly shunned in our society.” 

Sen. Hawley then noted that there was a victim impact statement given in the trial, but it was not read into the record. So the children whose torture was viewed by this man are nameless, faceless, unheard.

Some commentators on the right claimed that Jackson did a poor job defending herself. I disagree. She was masterful in evading the crux of the problem — the rape of children for the entertainment of adults — and her response to Senator Hawley was both forceful and nuanced.

Applied to literally any other crime, I would have applauded her. Sentencing, she said, “is not a numbers game.” She and the senators discussed the fact that the Supreme Court in 2005 shot down Congress’s attempt to take away judicial discretion in handing out prison time, a decision that under any other circumstance I would agree with. I think mandatory sentences are a terrible idea, in general.

But then I remembered the crimes that Judge Brown was sentencing for — again, children being tormented for the pleasure of adults — and I thought, really? Is this bland reasoning best she can offer?

I find myself agreeing with Mike Davis, a former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer who runs the conservative advocacy group Article3 Project, when he described “an explosion of child pornography because of high speed internet all over the world.”

“The one way you can stop these creepy Americans watching Third World child porn is by having a mandatory minimum sentence as a deterrent.” 

My question is: why isn’t the mainstream media debating this stance instead of maligning those who espouse it? Surely robustly protecting poor children across the world from being sexually exploited for the entertainment of men in the United States is a cause these crusaders for truth and justice want to enthusiastically support?

Perhaps I’m being unfair. As a mere normal person who cannot imagine any circumstance in which “curiosity” would lead me to watching a child being raped, I do not have the wisdom to discern proper sentencing of pedophiles.

I should leave that to my betters in mainstream media, those brave defenders of vulnerable victims of sex abuse, like middle-aged academic Christine Blasey Ford.

I wondered, after watching Jackson’s tepid position on prison time for pedophiles, did the media rise up in unison to decry this judge?

Er, no. CNN’s John Harwood signalled that the liberals would be going for their standard line of defence, and that is —  smear everyone who questions them.

So let me get this straight, CNN. Your response, upon hearing about the hideous suffering endured by forgotten children, is to describe the people concerned about it as “loons”? 

This is the standard operating procedure for the entire media establishment at this point. Take a serious and troubling reality, sail right past the relevant details and credible evidence, then throw in a few choice keywords which signal to your audience that should they question further, they too will be in league with the Pizzagate freaks. 

And the media have the cheek to complain about right wing dogwhistles.

Going back to 2018, I wonder what kind of callous treatment was meted out to Ford by liberals for her shaky recollections of a minutes long encounter with Kavanaugh, one summer’s day after hanging out at her local country club?

Wrote the Guardian: “Around the Capitol, demonstrators wearing pins that said ‘I believe Dr Christine Blasey Ford’ and #MeToo wept openly as they huddled over their phones to watch a livestream of the hearing.”

One senator called her “heroic.”

One woman told the Guardian: “I can’t cry any more. I’m too angry.”

I know how you feel, lady. Because clearly, for liberals, upper middle class women who had an unpleasant encounter with a teen boy forty years ago are far more worthy of concern than children being raped now.