Caller: Hello. I’m calling on behalf of the Sierra Club
because Brett Kavanaugh might be nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, and…
Me (interrupting): He already has been.
Caller: What? He’s already been nominated?
Me: Uh, yes. He was nominated by the president some time
ago. You’re too late.
Caller: But not by the Senate. He’s already passed the House
of Representatives but not the Senate.
Me (heavy sigh): The Senate has already held hearings on the
nomination and we’re waiting for them to vote on confirmation.
Caller: On confirmation yes, but have they voted already?
Has he already been confirmed?
Me: No, not yet.
Caller: OK, well, that’s why we’re calling. Argle bargle, argle bargle Joe Manchin argle bargle, argle bargle I know it
might not mean anything argle bargle,
argle bargle call your senator…
Me (interrupting again): We have already contacted everybody
about this some time ago, but thanks for calling.
Click.
* * *
Now don’t get me wrong. I respect the Sierra Club and what
they do to defend the environment, and I don’t believe that this phone bank
volunteer (or whatever she is) accurately represents the organization or its
mission and goals. But here’s the thing…calling me this week was a waste of good
oxygen on both her part and mine, and the planet needs all the good oxygen it can get.
For the record, Brett Kavanaugh was nominated by
faux-president Donald Trump on July 9, 2018. That was about 10 weeks ago. He
has already held one-on-one meetings with many members of the Senate and
sat through three days of Senate hearings.
He has been in the news daily because of his controversial
positions on key issues such as birth control, abortion and executive privilege
and because the Republican administration is hiding tens of thousands of
documents they don’t want the public to see.
Now, some mysterious woman claims in a letter to Democratic
lawmakers that he tried to rape her when they were in high school. The FBI has
been asked to investigate the claim, but the woman refuses to be identified so
that’s probably not going anywhere. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on his
confirmation proceeding and time is running out.
It seems to me that the Sierra Club should have called me, say,
10 weeks ago when this nomination was first announced. That’s when my wife and
I – and other politically involved citizens – started attending rallies like the
one in downtown Fairmont and contacting our senators to oppose the Kavanaugh
nomination. Just this week, for example, I asked Shelley Moore Capito how much
she got paid for promoting Kavanaugh with her daily tweets.
“Do you get paid by the tweet or a flat fee?” I asked her on
Twitter. I'm sure she'll read and reply.
To start calling now suggests that I could somehow change
Manchin’s mind or convince Capito to do the honorable thing for once in her
Senate career. I could be wrong – and I hope I am – but I’m afraid the votes
have already been decided. The only thing left to learn is what promises Lisa
Murkowski and Susan Collins can wrangle out of Mitch McConnell in return for
their “yes” votes. Maybe Mitch will offer up some relaxed regulations on the Alaska
Pipeline or a new missile defense installation on the eastern coast of Maine.
To be fair, Kavanaugh still has to win the approval of the Senate
Judiciary Committee and then the full Senate, and that could take a couple of weeks,
so his confirmation is not a done deal, even though most experts believe the
outcome was never in doubt. And who knows? Maybe this sexual assault allegation
will turn into something.
But the main point here is this: Clearly the woman who
called me didn’t know what she was talking about. As I said, she started her
pitch by saying Kavanaugh “might be nominated” and later suggested that he had
“passed the House of Representatives,” even though the House has absolutely nothing
to do with the confirmation of Supreme Court justices.
If she was reading from a prepared script, then it needs to
be significantly revised or discarded altogether and replaced by one that
contains some actual facts. Political advocacy calls like this one – however well-intended
they may be – do not help advance a cause when the recipient of the call knows
more than the person making it.
I almost told the caller that, but I had already lost five
minutes of my life that I’ll never get back, so I was happy just to get off the
phone. When I hung up, my wife – who had heard my end of the conversation – was
laughing out loud in another room. When I relayed the other end of the
conversation to her, she said, “You have to write about that.”
And so I did.
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