Ted Cruz and the ‘racist baby’: sometimes reality threatens my political maturity | Emma Brockes

Try as I might to rise above it, I felt a visceral dislike for the men grilling Biden's supreme court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson

For sheer drama, we will probably never match the spectacle of Judge Brett Kavanaugh snivelling through his supreme court confirmation hearings in 2018. But this week's hearing by the Senate judiciary committee to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden's pick for the supreme court, came a close second. There was Republican senator Josh Hawley asking Jackson if she was soft on child molesters. There was Lindsey Graham, going on a rant that, if not quite expletive-filled, took on a playground quality with language like crap", ass" and how would you feel if we did that to you?" And there was Ted Cruz, straight-facedly asking Jackson if she thinks babies are racist. Along with someone throwing a pie at Rupert Murdoch and Zoom meetings of the Handforth parish council, it was up there with the best histrionics of the committee room canon.

Jackson herself was almost supernaturally composed, occasionally letting a pause extend a beat beyond normal to indicate the scale of the resources required to stay calm. The confirmation hearings at the supreme court have become a grandstanding opportunity for ambitious senators, rather than a useful extra-legal enquiry, and of course they are completely partisan. But while, four years ago, no one but the staunchest Republican could hear Kavanaugh's inarticulate address and conclude he occupied his seat on merit alone, the visceral dislike many of us on the left felt towards, say, Amy Coney Barrett, seemed to me not entirely premised on her performance and track record.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist based in New York