How Awkward Was That, Shtraya?
That was a really uncomfortable press conference. I can't recall a press conference that was more awkward than that one including the one where Bill Clinton wagged his finger and told us he "did not have sex with that woman". And we know how that one turned out. Christian Porter's press conference was much more drawn out and filled with bewilderment and pointed, accusatory questions.
You can see parts of it for yourself here.
All of it is here.
It's pretty gruelling to watch.
I Hate Christian Porter But...
It goes without saying but by dint of him being on the infernal side of politics, I don't like Christian Porter. I don't much like the smug smirk and condescension that he usually throws around, and as for this notion that he might be a future Prime Minister, well, if Scomo can be our PM a monkey's ass can do it too. When we all started playing the game of"who-is-the-rapist-minister?" his name was the slam dunk favourite. And your name doesn't become the front-runner in those stakes if you weren't some kind of entitled fuckwit that invites that judgement - more on that later.
I really can't stand the guy; but I have to say that I'm inclined to believe him based on that interview. We might quibble with the way he played politics at the edge by bringing up allegations against Bill Shorten some years ago, and implied that the press were part of the public lynch mob. I mean, come on, if it were the other way around you know he would be using the press to drum up the very same lynch mob. So the pleading for politics didn't really elicit my sympathy.
What did get my attention was the scenario. It was January 1988. He and 3 other students were in Sydney for a debating competition. He as 17, she was 16 when the alleged rape took place. And it took 32+ years for this to surface as a case. Keeping in mind the man was in the Western Australian state government Assembly since 2008. The woman accusing him of the rape committed suicide late lats year, having battled mental illness. They're the facts as presented to us.
Look, I'll be honest with you - Porter didn't look like a guy who got found out for a transgression from years ago. He looked like he was bewildered that the rumour mill had found him as the target of a wild allegation. Believe me, there are not that many people who would love to see him go down more than me, but I couldn't bring myself to think he was the perpetrator as described, based on how he presented himself at the presser.
People are going to believe the accuser and that's fair enough. I was on their side right up to the point I sat through that miserable, nerve-shattering press conference.
Maybe In The Confirmation Bias Wheelhouse?
If we were to nominate one cabinet minister out of Scomo's veritable lineup of misery-makers, Porter fits the bill like no other. Most of the prominent men in Scomo's cabinet look like Incels. Porter alone looks like he can play the player and maybe get laid in a way that is beyond say Greg Hunt, Josh Frydenberg or Peter Dutton. If you had to pull a name out of that bunch as the likely culprit, Porter would have been at the top of a lot of people's lists, not just mine.
He's the obvious person to think the worst of, and just maybe there's a problem in that. Just because we think he's the odds-on favourite to be the one to do it, doesn't mean he did it. As much as I would like to believe out of malice and schadenfreude that Porter was the likeliest to be a teen rapist, that doesn't mean he was a teen rapist. It's not a matter to be left to conjecture or random judgments of character. Belief alone isn't going to get you anywhere meaningful. This isn't some joke about figuring out who farted in the lift. It's as grave an allegation as grave allegations come.
Worse still, we're not going to get to the bottom of this because the accuser is now deceased. No court case can be brought, no investigation can really be completed. The people calling for an independent inquiry are on principle correct to do so, but in light of the circumstances it is doubtful meaningful answers can be gained. And by meaningful, I mean those that stand up to some kind of epistemological interrogation, with conclusions that are justified and true.
As it is, it's left in the world of he-said, she-said. The allegations are just going to sit in the half-light of social media and mainstream media without ever seeing the inside of a court. If anything the press conference drew the line under the need for presumption innocence especially in such murky circumstances.
Making Sense of The Bits That We Were Told
Porter had the look of a man who wanted to say "look, I am an arsehole and you can think me a tremendous, awful, entitled, arsehole but I am not that arsehole."
It reminded me of the Nixon adage "let the bastard deny it". Or the fart joke "He who denied it supplied it." If you're out in front of the press denying something, you look guilty any way. Which is to say, that right there is the court of public opinion running wild, independent of any real court or rule of law. It's not that I don't believe the allegation or that I believe Porter is a more reliable human being than the accuser or any of that. No. None of that. It's just that right up to seeing the press conference, I was smugly convinced he was the rapist and he should go down regardless of the circumstances.
What I discovered in the process of watching his press conference was that I got squeamish. I realised I would much rather this whole business went through courts and got litigated and contested by eminent, studied, venerable lawyers. Except it can't because the accuser is dead. This stuff of journalists hurling loaded questions - the "when did you stop beating your wife?" variety of questions, did not make me feel any closer to the truth or a just outcome. And Porter looked just as frustrated as we were in that what he was being asked to do was to prove a negative in a court of public opinion and anything less should mean his job and career. He's certainly correct to see it that way.
In turn, I had to ask myself am I happy being a juror in a kangaroo court? You know me, I hate jury duty even in real life. Sure I'd love to see him gone, but he'd only be replaced by the next entitled jerk-off Tory, so what would be the point of a gratuitous send-off in real world terms? Meanwhile Porter can't even name his accuser in the press conference defending his name. A wag pointed out even his surname rhyming with daughter is going to kill him at the next election: "would you trust your daughter with Christian Porter?" It's a circus of malice and innuendo.
This is so murky and awful that if the ALP ran with it against the Coalition, they too would suffer a tremendous blow to their own prestige and integrity. They would never be able to argue anything from principle in Parliament again. That's how toxic this scandal has become. It's one thing for this sorry government to cover up the Brittany Higgins rape. That's terrible enough and the government deserves to be castigated. Yet I thoroughly understand the government's perplexed aporia about this allegation. I guess that's why they sent him out to face the press today.
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