When the dust settles on the Kavanaugh saga the important actor may well not have been the bad boy belligerent drunk male "lead", Kav, the unprincipled Lindsey Graham, the mild mannered Jeff Flake or even Dr. Blasley Ford---the accuser. The significant player could well be Mark Judge, the all American boy side kick. Judge is wrestling with his conscience as we speak, perhaps at this moment talking to FBI agents. Will he tell the truth about Kavanaugh's behavior and what will that truth be? Or will Judge lie to protect the leader of the pack? Will he agree to a polygraph test?  By the end of this week we will see emblazoned in our media. "Judge denies Ford Assault". "Judge was at a party but can't remember". or "Judge refutes Kavanaugh's claims." 

The role of male side-kick in American culture, according to my best recollection, is well exemplified by Huck Finn. Huck Finn has a conscience, Tom most likely doesn't. Tom's behavior toward Jim, knowing all along that Jim has been freed, is despicable.

The role of "side-kick" includes being an enabler---especially to a dominant male like Kavanaugh---who obviously has a large following of male friends who enjoy his "bro" style. I have a male friend, a reformed drunk, who is a room-splitter. He can walk into a room of guys and within the hour half the men want to slug him and the other half thinks he is funny. I must admit I was on the fence sometimes, but he was the funniest drunk I ever saw, and I am the son of an alcoholic so I don't say that lightly. My friend finally joined AA after he blacked out while driving and nearly killed someone. I had let him drive home after a night out---more accurately, he was pissed at me, pulled me from the driver's seat so I couldn't drive him and then roared off towards home, which he never reached.

Mark Judge has written books, including the drink fueled one about "Bart O'Kavanaugh" but I doubt he will ever be considered a great writer But he may yet be considered a great person. I don't see how he or any male in our society can dispute the drunken and disorderly behavior and dynamics that are typical between a bad boy leader and a side kick who eggs him on---despite elements of a  better nature.  And our "bro" culture obviously doesn't doubt Kavanaugh's drunken behavior---they endorse it.

Kavanaugh's sarcastic remarks about his beer drinking were an obvious heads-up to that special brand of male-bro-jerk-ism cult which underlies a large swath of Trump's support. Ergo, they love ole Brett.

My affection for American Lit has as much to do with collecting rare editions as reading them and I leave it for others to do the analysis that I had the gall to introduce in this blog. As far as Mark Twain is concerned, I had an experience in which I nearly blacked out---from disappointment. It was an auction in L.A. several decades ago of over a hundred books from Twain's own library which had been discovered in a barrel in a garage. I successfully bid on a book which had a funny inscription in the margin in Twain's own handwriting. But after the last book was sold, the auctioneer said---in essence, "...previously we had a bid for the whole lot and it exceeds the total for this auction, so you can all go home."

I think that the saga of Kavanaugh and Judge is going to end somewhat like the Mark Twain auction---we're all going to go home disappointed. But in the case of the auction, the entire lot of books went to the Twain museum in Connecticut---which was the right outcome. I don't expect a good outcome on Kavanaugh. There's no question in my own mind about Kavanaugh's dark side, which Mark Judge could chronicle in non-fiction terms--- if he would only do the right thing.

In the case of my drunk driving friend, I like to think that if the worst had happened I would have told the truth. If Judge doesn't tell the truth, he will continue to rot from the inside-out.......and we will have a Supreme Court Justice who doesn't know truth from fiction---Brett Kavanaugh----who really doesn't mind lying to our faces as long as there are those who will drink beer with him and play that game of Devil's Triangle---which is a "quarters" drinking game, according to him, and I don't think Huck would have stomached a flat out lie like that one.