In my wife’s country, there is an old folkloric story from the time of small villages and horse-trodden roads of a monstrous woman called la Cegua. She only appeared at nights on lonely roads, asking late-night travelers for a ride to the nearest village. To drunk men returning home from a night at the bar she appeared as a beautiful woman, and would ask to climb atop the horse and sit behind him. Then suddenly, midway into the ride, she would change and reveal her true form as a monstrous demon with a horse skull for a head and eyes of fire. She would then grab tight onto the man, and the startled horse would begin to gallop, until they both fell. Only those men who had innocent intentions would escape alive; the rest would die.
Obviously, no such creature as la Cegua ever existed, but you can imagine how the story came about. You can imagine older men in town swearing to God and the Virgin that they saw la Cegua on a road one night years ago, that they in fact gave her a ride and looked into the flaming eyes in her skull, and escaped only because of the purity of their hearts. You can imagine a man on his way home on a dark night atop his old slow horse, convincing himself la Cegua wasn’t going to come out, until suddenly a woman on the side of the road causes him to send his horse off in a gallop.
You can kind of imagine what he says, breathlessly, as he arrives at his door:
“I saw her, la Cegua! She was on the road, looking like a beautiful woman. She was asking for a ride, but then a cloud shifted and the moon came out to shine full on her face. In a moment she changed, and her flaming eyes pierced out of her skull straight into mine. I don’t know how I made it back, except that I ran the horse as fast as I could. I’m sure it was her!”
Today, we are beginning to see the formation of a new folkloric monster. It is in the form of Brett Kavanaugh. Not the real Brett Kavanaugh, but the one that exists in the present leftwing imagination.
This folkloric Kavanaugh has evolved in a darker turn from the “Bill Brasky” stories. Rather than just being comically adept at drinking and picking up women, this Kavanaugh is more like a drunken ogre who emerges from a cave deep in the Mid-Atlantic woods and wanders forth into civilization, stumbling into parties, starting fights and assaulting women, before dragging a helpless victim back to his cave. Maybe he’ll show up at your boat party in Rhode Island and get into a fight while groping women. Maybe he’ll throw ice at you in a bar in Connecticut. Maybe he’ll drunkenly stumble out of a bar and pin you to a wall. Or maybe he and his companion Mark Judge (of equally folkloric proportions) will drag you into a cave and take turns raping you all night.
No one can know if or when they’ll be safe from Brett Kavanaugh, or where he’ll appear next.
One thing for certain is that he only appears on dark nights when the moon is hidden, and that he only comes to places with lots of beer. Kavanaugh likes beer. And then in a moment, he’ll rear up to 8 feet tall, an angry monster with poor temperament, beer on his breath and hands that end in knives for cutting off loose clothing. Will he wag his penis at you? Will he drop qualuudes in your punch and summon a gang of rapists to take turns having their way with you? Or will he just throw beer in your face?
It’s Brett Kavanaugh! As unpredictable as he is belligerently drunk! 80’s partiers beware!
More and more sightings are beginning to appear in the press, and I expect even more and more and more as the week drags on and the FBI finishes its investigation and what passes for a press in this country struggles to print anything at all that anyone at all is willing to say to stop Kavanaugh from becoming the fifth (now much more-so) conservative on the Supreme Court.
You can almost imagine an old man in a bar swearing to God and his mother’s grave that he saw Brett Kavanaugh one night in a bar back in the 80’s. Was it ’83? ’84? He came swaggering in, drunk as a goat and mean as sin. Demanded a whole pitcher of Bud Light, which he downed in a single enormous gulp. Then he smashed the pitcher over the head of the guy next to him and just slides over the bar and starts chugging Miller straight out of the tap. Bartender tries to stop him, but Ol’ Man Kavanaugh grabbed him and in a ferocious rage hurled the bartender clean across the room. Then he grabbed the nearest woman he could find, slung her over his shoulder, and with a hideous growl of anger at everyone walked back into the night. We never saw either of ’em again. I’m sure it was him. Brett Kavanaugh.
You can almost imagine, right?
Certainly, there are hucksters targeting those who oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination (Avenatti’s name springs to mind as a likely candidate) with stories that seem outlandish. But that’s to be expected when a legitimate investigation into his distant past and recent false testimony has been avoided for purely partisan reasons. Such behavior drives witnesses to talk to the press or opposing political operatives rather than authorities who don’t want to hear their testimony. But, while lying to the FBI is a federal crime, reporters and politicians outside Congressional investigations don’t have that protection.
If we don’t want to see similar myth-making for future nominees, we need to vet our prospects without determining the outcome in advance. President Trump does not seem to encourage the discovery of bad news.
Reece,
Thanks for some chuckles. I enjoyed the imagery. Reminded me of the scene in the movie the “Sand Lot” where they are in the tree house re-telling the story of The Beast.