The Difference Between Ford and Kavanaugh
by tristero
This is an extraordinary chart, developed by Alvin Chang and others at Vox. Every line represents a question and answer from Thursday's infamous hearings of Ford and Kavanaugh. If the witness answered directly, the line is coded blue. If the witness tried to dodge the question, the answer was coded red. If you go to the article, you can click on each line and read the actual response from the transcript.
What the chart illustrates is how forthright Ford and Kavanaugh were. From the article:
[T]here was a striking difference in the content of their words. Both Ford and Kavanaugh fielded questions from senators and the prosecutor hired by Republicans, Rachel Mitchell.
But only Ford made an effort to answer every single question.
Kavanaugh actively dodged questions. He often repeated the same non-answer over and over. Other times, he insisted on answering a question with “context” — which inevitably was a long story about his childhood — but never actually answered the question.
Kavanaugh is not the kind of person anyone should want on the Supreme Court. But re: Vox, Chang and company: this is precisely the kind of clever, clear, and beautiful representation of data the world needs more of.
