It’s not just the bias. It’s the incompetence. Too many journalists, even the “veterans,” are simply bad at their jobs. In no other profession can such blunders result not in pink slips but promotions. I recently read Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover by Ruth Marcus, a writer at the Washington Post. The tome is nearly 500 pages.

Yet in one sentence Marcus makes it clear that she has no business being a reporter.

Grifters Gonna Grift

Supreme Ambition is about the 2018 Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. As Stream readers know and as I recount in my book The Devil’s Triangle, I was a target of the Stasi left during that dark time. Ford accused Brett of sexual assault, and claimed I was in the room when it happened.

The whole thing was a set-up. The point was to dump a bunch of opposition research on us and give us no time to respond, and then use my wild youth to sink Brett. My book was my final word in that trauma, but out of morbid curiosity I dove into Marcus’ account. This was shortly after I learned that Christine Blasey Ford is coming out with her own book next year. Grifters gonna grift.

Perhaps in her book Ford can answer a question I raise in The Devil’s Triangle … a central question that Ruth Marcus doesn’t even address. Namely, why didn’t Ford contact me at any time in the summer of 2018?

The answer: Ford, her lawyers and the media never contacted me or Brett in the months leading up to the story coming out. Because that would have meant a private and thorough investigation, protecting everyone involved. Without a circus, the plot would fail.

Poor Widdle Christina Couldn’t Use a Computer

In Supreme Ambition, Marcus glancingly addresses this: “One possibility: Ford would call Mark Judge, remind Judge of what had happened, tell him to call Kavanaugh, and advise him to spare his family the ordeal. She dug up Judge’s Twitter handle but wasn’t sure how to go about contacting him.”

Wait. What? Let’s repeat that.

“She dug up Judge’s Twitter handle but wasn’t sure how to go about contacting him.”

I’m a journalist who has written for most major publications and many minor ones. I’ve been on Fox, CNN and EWTN. I’m on Facebook Instagram and Twitter.

Ford didn’t know how to contact me?

The Incuriosity of the Chronically Mediocre

Incredibly, Marcus does not follow up. I can’t imagine, say, Bob Woodward hearing such bunk and not saying: Hold on a minute. This guy Mark Judge is all over media and lived in D.C. his entire life, and you’re not sure how to contact him?

Woodward, I feel sure, would suspect a set-up. He would put things together. They didn’t contact Kavanaugh or Judge because the entire thing was a political hit.

If Ford’s book doesn’t address that question, and in a much more rational way than Ruth Marcus, her book won’t be worth the trees used to print it.

Or will the book suddenly contain the details the Senate never heard? Six years later, Baby Voice Chrissy, who couldn’t name the time, place or even the year the assault supposedly happened, can finally remember things.

Recklessness Has Consequences

The Washington Post, whatever reputation it might once have had, is no more. I trace this to July 2016, when the paper ran a piece by New York University professor Jay Rosen, who argued that Donald Trump made it necessary for journalists to change tactics.

Trump isn’t behaving like a normal candidate; he’s acting like an unbound one. In response, journalists have to become less predictable themselves. They have to come up with novel responses. They have to do things they have never done. They may even have to shock us … they may have to call Trump out with a forcefulness never seen before … they will have to explain to the public that Trump is a special case, and the normal rules do not apply.

​No they don’t. Such recklessness leads to books like Supreme Ambition, which took a long time to type, but takes one sentence to implode.

Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C. His new book is The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.