FIRST ACCUSER IN: Instant belief!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2017

Part 2—Willey versus Corfman: Assuming her account is accurate, we're glad to see Leigh Corfman pushing back against Roy Moore.

Corfman's pushback is recorded in this new report by the Washington Post. Assuming her account in accurate, we're glad she's pushing back in this way.

On Friday morning, November 13, Corfman became "first accuser in" regarding Roy Moore. In a news report in that day's Washington Post, she said Moore had molested her in 1979, when she was 14 years old.

The report had appeared on-line on Thursday, November 12. By Friday afternoon, fiery liberals were assailing the silly, immoral people who didn't rush to state their belief in Corfman's (extremely serious) accusation.

The people who were withholding belief were quickly assailed as the "If true" crowd. Believe it or not, these horrible people were only willing to condemn Moore if Corfman's assertions were true!

Fiery liberals rushed to assail this horrid "If true" crowd. In our view, this was the latest display of the massive dumbness of our own liberal tribe.

Why did we think these instant believers were perhaps maybe jumping the gun? In part, we had that reaction because we recalled Kathleen Willey.

On March 15, 1998, Willey went on 60 Minutes to deliver an accusation against Bill Clinton. Because she was conventionally attractive and upper middle class in appearance, a succession of lovesick pundit boys rushed to affirm their belief in every word their newest darling had said.

These silly people had never set eyes on Willey before that night. They had no apparent way to assess her general credibility. But at the time, a stampede was on, and these lovesick boys rushed to affirm full instant belief in the latest accuser.

Who were these "instant responders?" If you want to review their professions of faith, you can just click here. They were sure—just very sure—that Willey could be believed.

We'd say their judgment was poor. In November 1998, it was revealed, in a document dump, that Linda Tripp, in sworn testimony, had undermined Willey's account of her interaction with Clinton.

Linda Tripp had worked with Willey in the White House. In sworn testimony, she described Willey's appearance and reaction of the day in question.

Tripp's account of what happened that day—and of what had happened in the months before—undermined Willey's account. But alas! Because the mob was sworn to true belief, the press corps worked very hard to avoid reporting this new fact. For background, you can click here.

A few months later, something very bad happened. Willey made a provably false, ugly accusation against a Washington journalist. To her semi-credit, she kept refusing to name the journalist when she aired her complaint on the crackpot "cable news" program, Hardball, but her grotesquely irresponsible host, Chris Matthews, crazily blurted it out.

The crazy accusation was quickly disproved, but not before a man with a history of mental illness appeared at the journalist's home with a gun. Luckily, the man was arrested before anyone got killed. But this was an earlier, dangerous version of Pizzagate. It followed directly from Matthews' appalling conduct—and from Willey's crazy false claim.

(For real-time reports, click here, and then click this. A few months later, Matthews began airing irresponsible claims about nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee, who had supposedly helped Bill Clinton sell the country to the Chinese. The predictable death threats followed. Later, formal apologies were issued to Lee for the wave of false accusations against him, false accusations Matthews had excitedly bruited.)

Are we possibly starting to get a certain picture here? When Ken Starr's successor atop the Whitewater probes finally issued his final report, he said he's considered charging Willey with perjury, she'd lied to his staff so much. Do we feel sure that those lovesick boys should have believed every word she said, the very first time they beheld her?

What, if anything, actually happened between Bill Clinton and Kathleen Willey? We have no way of knowing. (For the record, it's very, very unwise to structure a nation's politics around such questions.)

We do know this. The brainless stars of our Washington "press corps" showed extremely bad judgment when they stampeded off to state their undying belief in every word Willey said.

Granted, Willey was conventionally attractive. She seemed to be upper middle class, which made the schoolboys admire her even more.

But as would eventually come to be known, her accusations had arisen from within a rather disordered life. A later crazy false accusation came close to getting someone killed.

So it can go when silly children stampede to voice instant belief in accusers. They stampeded this way in Salem Village; they're inclined to do so today.

That said, it's hard to get a whole lot dumber than we liberals routinely are. Our fiery leaders endeavored to prove this point on November 13, when Corfman's accusation appeared.

Should people voice instant belief in serious accusations? After Willey, but before Corfman, the gods tried hard to help us see that this is an unwise practice.

First, they sent us the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case. The professors stampeded to affirm their belief in her serious accusations.

In part for that reason, the accuser didn't get the help she plainly needed. She's now in jail for murder. The prosecutor who also believed her accusations (or at least was prepared to pretend) went to jail for a day.

After that, the gods sent us the UVa case. Jugglers and clowns at Rolling Stone expressed true belief in Jackie's accusations. They've ended up paying millions to some of the people they slandered. Rather plainly, that accuser seems to have needed help too.

How many cases must the gods send before we liberals stop acting like fools? Sadly, anthropological evidence suggests that this behavior will never stop—that it's deeply bred in the (prehuman) bone.

At this point, we apologize for a possible appearance. We apologize for suggesting the possibility that Corfman's accusations against Roy Moore could perhaps be untrue.

We know of no reason to think that. Beyond that, the credibility of Corfman's case was greatly strengthened on November 16 when Beverly Young Nelson became the "second accuser in"—when she accused Moore of having committed a violent sexual assault on her person.

That said, it was very unwise—actually, stupid—to assail the "If true" crowd on the very day that Corfman's accusation appeared. It was very, very, very unwise. We would be inclined to say it was Pizzagate-level dumb.

Still and all, some fiery liberals will surely say that we've left something out. They'll say that Young wasn't the second accuser of Moore—they'll say she was really the fifth.

These people will say that three other accusers were quoted, by name, in that original Post report. Tomorrow, we'll review what those other three people said.

Spoiler alert:

We think our tribe's reaction to those other "accusers" has been extremely dumb. Sadly, we think our reaction was dumb in the way The Others can see.

Multiplied a thousand times over, this helps explain why our pitiful, unlikable tribe has trouble winning elections.

As our crazy president continues to spout, even we liberals have started to see that something has gone extremely wrong within our politics and within our national culture. Sadly but typically, we liberals have come to this insight extremely late in the game.

We liberals mugged and clowned and postured and played as the deeply dangerous Donald J. Trump made his way to the White House. In a rather typical manifestation, our "resistance" started one day after this disordered man was sworn in.

Our fiery leaders have mugged and clowned for decades now. They've endlessly betrayed our interests in search of career advancement. Rachel Maddow just luvvvs Chris Matthews! Greta Van Susteren too!

Absent serious leadership, our reactions tend to be dumb. We'd say this pattern extended through our reaction to that first Post report.

Corfman has decided to stand and fight. Our tribe needs to sit down and think.

Tomorrow: How many accusers?