Imagine a conservative saying on MSNBC that female Dem senators were being "so emotional, almost hysterical....behaving as if it's their time of the month." Does anyone doubt that said conservative would be forcibly escorted off the set?
Yet on Ari Melber's MSNBC show The Beat Thursday night, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, speaking of Republican senators who had spoken out on the Kavanaugh confirmation, said:
"First of all, I just want to comment on that appearance by those senators today. They are so emotional, almost hysterical. I mean, I would make a joke about it, that they're behaving as if it's their time of the month, but this is very, very serious."
Somewhere, the great James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal is nodding, because Rubin gave a perfect illustration of one of his favorite terms — apophasis — a rhetorical device wherein the speaker brings up a subject by saying it shouldn't be brought up.
Far from rebuking Rubin, host Melber said, "you have the right to call the male Senate press conference hysterical on this show. You have that right."'
Rubin continued, declaring that Ford indeed was "a victim of sexual crimes" at the hands of Kavanaugh (click "expand"):
Yes, I mean I think what we saw in the last week was a transformation. They decided instead of going from a respectful vein where they were going to defend their guy but not attack her, they decided to make women the object of their ire and their malice. This is a deliberate strategy to whip up mostly male, mostly white, mostly non-college-educated base and they do this at the expense of women. They don't care whether they're dissuading women from coming forward. They don't care whether they have made a mockery of own words, assuming respect to these people. This is a strategy and that’s why you see the hysteria. That’s why you see the President viciously mocking a victim of sexual crimes.
What makes Rubin's statement that much more outrageous is that Melber twice described Rubin as a "conservative." In fact, Rubin is a consummate Trump hater who has pleaded for the election of a Dem Congress. Can the liberal media please forgo this farce? As reported at The Hill:
A group of conservative leaders from the American Principles Project is calling on The Washington Post to stop promoting columnist Jennifer Rubin as a conservative and to “hire a true conservative” to better give voice to those on the right.
“We, of course, respect the right of The Washington Post to employ whatever writers it pleases — even Jennifer Rubin," reads the letter addressed to the Post's editorial board from more than three dozen conservatives. "However, we ask for the sake of intellectual honesty that the Post cease to identify her as in any way 'conservative.'"
