media, who demanded to know everything from the school’s current enrollment to the details of its sex education curriculum. The Jesuit school took the religious and moral instruction of its students extremely seriously, knowing that adolescent boys would occasionally disappoint, sometimes grievously. And such problems as Georgetown Prep had with sex, drinking, and other teenage failings were hardly unique.
Throughout the ordeal, school officials remained tight-lipped, but their terse and carefully worded statements seemed only to inflame the media’s passion for dirt-digging. New York Times reporters were showing up at football games and peppering alumni with questions. Eventually, the school’s director of marketing and communications, Patrick Coyle, denounced the smear campaign in a letter to the Washington Post’s metro reporter, Joe Heim: “The Washington Post’s coverage of Georgetown Prep in recent weeks has been marred by shoddy reporting and slanted, agenda-driven framing within those stories. Numerous articles were composed and published, for example, without the Post ever offering us the opportunity for reaction or comment.”
Coyle wasn’t exaggerating. A few days later, the paper ran a gossipy report about Georgetown Prep’s search for a new director of alumni relations, playing up the Kavanaugh controversy and asserting that the “listing went up after Georgetown alumni were very much in the news.” Coyle had previously informed the newspaper that the job had been posted since July, long before the Kavanaugh controversy. In response to a correction from Coyle, the Post altered the article as subtly as possible without acknowledging the error.34
Kavanaugh saw that more was at stake than his own career. For the sake of the people at Georgetown Prep and everyone else in his community, he wanted to fight the charges against him.
While the nominee waited to have his say before the Senate and the nation, the president traveled to New York for the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, where he expressed his opinion of the allegations with characteristic bluntness: “She thinks maybe it could have been him, maybe not. Admits she was drunk. She admits time lapses. This is a person, and this is a series of statements that is going to take one of the most talented intellects from a judicial standpoint in our country, keep him off the U.S. Supreme Court?” He added, “I think it’s horrible what the Democrats have done. It is a con game; they really are con artists.”35
The media were fixated on Kavanaugh’s revelation about his sex life. While it helped explain why he was so confident in his denials of the claims against him, it also exposed him to brutal attacks and ridicule. The news that he was a virgin for “many years” after high school “makes sense since the alleged behavior was disgusted, juvenile, emotionally stunted,” wrote the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.36
Jimmy Kimmel relentlessly mocked him, playing the clip about his high school and college virginity to audience jeers. After rehearsing all the unsubstantiated allegations against him, Kimmel said, “I think there’s a compromise here; hear me out on this. So, Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court, okay. Well, in return we get to cut that pesky penis of his off in front of everyone.”37
The Washington Post declared, “The virginity defense is a reminder of our ignorance about sexual violence.”38 “Kavanaugh’s ‘choir boy’ image on Fox interview rankles former Yale classmates,” read the headline of yet another Post piece.39 The New Republic argued that by his defiance in the face of the allegations against him, Kavanaugh had “already disqualified himself” and could no longer be a judge.40
The media had not forgotten Michael Avenatti, doing their best to keep his still unspecified charges before the public eye. His client had been fully vetted, he said, and he had spoken to multiple witnesses.41 In a lengthy interview on CNN, Avenatti said Kavanaugh was “lying” about being a virgin.42 Politico called him an “avenging angel,”43 while USA Today reported his assertion that the as yet unrevealed accuser was “100 percent credible.”44 Not everyone was impressed by Avenatti, however. Grassley’s staffer Mike Davis thought the absurdity of his charges emphasized the injustice of what Kavanaugh was having to endure. He called Avenatti “manna from heaven.”
Conservatives also began explaining the seriousness of the battle to senators. They had a simple choice, wrote Sean Davis of The Federalist: stand up to the smear campaign or lose their majority in the Senate. “The mood among GOP voters right now is unmistakable: they are out for blood,” he wrote. “If Kavanaugh is confirmed, they’ll eagerly turn out in