This is what the Supreme Court nomination process has come to. We're now decoding high school yearbooks.
But before the Left gets too far down this rabbit hole, are they sure they want to declare open season on the high school yearbooks of public officials? I mean, they'll have to drag in cultural anthropologists to translate the archaic language of Dianne Feinstein's 1949 yearbook. And just imagine what groovy double entendres lie between the covers of Patrick Leahy's 1966 yearbook.
If you think a 35-year-old yearbook can be mined for vital character insights on a Supreme Court nominee, go ahead and dig into it. Seems like a total waste of time, but if you're going to do it, at least do an honest job. The New York Times failed at that part.
The 1983 yearbook apparently features a photo of Kavanaugh and some of his buddies with the caption "Renate Alumni." Oooohh – what could it possibly mean? According to The Times, the caption references a female student named Renate Schroeder Dolphin. In The Times story, two of Kavanaugh's classmates say that the caption is the boys boasting about having had sex with Renate.
Renate Dolphin told The Times that the insinuation is untrue. Kavanaugh, and four other men in the yearbook photo, also say the caption is just a reference to their dating Ms. Dolphin.
When The Times first posted the story, they referenced a Mr. Madaleno as one of their sources. He was a classmate of Kavanaugh's at Georgetown Prep. But just an hour later, The Times deleted his name from the article. Madaleno is a Maryland state senator who recently lost a Democratic primary for governor.
He is a staunch Trump opponent who ran a recent TV ad in which he says, "What's the number one way I piss off Donald Trump and the Republicans?" Then he kisses his male spouse and says, "Take that, Trump!"
Another Kavanaugh classmate quoted in the article is William Fishburne who worked on Madaleno's campaign.
The media is sick of "fake news" jabs, yet they keep producing sloppy work and calling it journalism.
The media is sick of "fake news" jabs, yet they keep producing sloppy work and calling it journalism. This New York Times yearbook investigation is not at all transparent about its sources with vendettas against Trump and Republicans.
Here's a fact: trying to parse an inside joke of teenagers from 35 years ago and applying it to a judicial nominee today is simply stupid.