The 2018 cultural moment: The Kavanaugh hearing TV spectacle laid bare the country's deep divisions
On a rainy day in a Senate chamber, they swore their oaths and did battle: she of the blue-suit and measured voice; he of the tears, rage and denial. It was epic and sad. It seemed a fiction, but it gleamed in real time, a grand, messy entertainment, like a spectacle in the Colosseum of ancient Rome, but one fit to the fury of our age.
That day - Sept. 27, 2018 - Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford held a nation rapt. Their star testimonies, and the scheming and conniving of bit players and opportunists, were a mesmerizing, sordid saga for a country that had slid into a caricature of itself. They were the avatars of our divisions, symbols of our political intransigence and injustices. They were a man and a woman in a post
