Every argument Kavanaugh made about his high school behavior sounded like an argument that would come out of the mouth of a high-schooler. Son, what is the meaning of this line in your yearbook about a girl name Renate? That was “intended to show affection, and that she was one of us.” And the “Beach Week Ralph Club”? Just a “sensitive stomach” thing. Did you drink so much that you passed out? No, just “fell asleep.”

Throughout his testimony, Kavanaugh tried to prove his decency through elitist associations and self-exonerating invocations of privilege. He couldn’t have spent his nights drinking to excess and molesting young women, he said, because he was busy playing on the football team, spending time “at Tobin’s house workin’ out,” passing the weekends in an upper-crust beach community, and getting into Yale. At other times, he spoke a language specific to boisterous prankster bros, laughing about Roche moving their mutual roommate’s furniture out of their dorm room and asking Whitehouse if he’d ever played the drinking game quarters.