Late yesterday, CNN published an article alleging that Second Circuit nominee Steven Menashi “has a history of denouncing women’s marches against sexual assault, dismissing education about multicultural awareness and accusing a major LGBTQ group of exploiting the brutal murder of a gay student for political ends.”
Carrie Severino has already done a virtuoso job of exposing the distortions in the CNN article, so rather than repeat her critique, I encourage you to read her post carefully. In this post, I’m going to add only a few small points on top of Carrie’s post. In my next post, I’m going to address the broader question of what bearing Menashi’s writings during and immediately after college ought to have on his nomination.
Let’s start with the smaller points:
1. As Carrie points out, when Menashi criticized the Human Rights Campaign for exploiting the horrific death of Matthew Shepard, he embraced (and quoted extensively) the very criticism that Andrew Sullivan offered. Sullivan, of course, is openly gay and was an early prominent proponent of same-sex marriage. It’s curious that the CNN article doesn’t even mention Menashi’s reliance on Sullivan. Of course, had it done so, it would have been less likely to invite the reader to conclude that there was something anti-gay about Menashi’s criticism.
Similarly, the CNN article oddly states that “Menashi insisted that he wasn’t suggesting a correlation between homosexuality and homicide.” In fact, Menashi emphatically disclaimed any such correlation:
To some, the Dirkhising murder portrays gays in a devastating light. Human Rights campaign believes it is in their interest to keep the Dirkhising case out of the public view. Of course, it plainly isn’t. The notion that this murder somehow establishes a widespread correlation between homosexuality and homicidal tendencies is, to say the least, unfounded. Only the most militant and unreasonable of HRC’s detractors would adopt that thesis.
(The CNN article quotes part of the last sentence, but none of the preceding one.)
2. While Menashi was a student at Dartmouth, there were controversies over one fraternity’s “ghetto party,” another’s “luau party,” Dartmouth Indian jackets, and various T-shirts alleged to be offensive. In an editorial in which he made a free-speech defense of the “unsettling, and, yes, even offensive” speech by students, Menashi expressly acknowledged that “much of the controversial expression has been puerile, even offensive.” CNN quotes (in a misleading way, as Carrie explains) from this editorial, but somehow sees fit to omit these words.
3. CNN’s assertion in its opening sentence that Menashi “has a history of …” is tendentious—rather like saying that someone “has a history of alcoholism.”