Supreme Court Silliness
BY JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Web Today
Monday, August 1, 2005
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Roberts is conservative but not "extreme," whatever that may mean, so easy confirmation seems assured. But the Angry Left is unappeasable, so some Democrats and liberals are making efforts to discredit Roberts. The result is highly entertaining.
First there was John Kerry*, who "urged the White House on [July 22] "to release 'in their entirety' all documents and memos from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' tenure in two Republican administrations," according to the Associated Press:
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"We cannot do our duty if either Judge Roberts or the Bush administration hides elements of his professional record," said the Massachusetts senator who was his party's presidential candidate last year.
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Yes, this is the same John Kerry who claimed that his record as a "war hero" made him fit to be president but has yet to release his military records to the public.
A poster on the Daily Kos, a site as influential on the left as it is deranged, wrote (ellipsis in original):
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When Roberts thanked his family, he mentioned his son, Jack . . . Roberts' wife's face fell. It was like a poker tell. I think we should research Jack.
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Another poster wrote that Roberts's son "is probably gay," explaining that "extreme conservatives seem to have a lot of homosexual children." Jack Roberts is 4 years old.
Last week the New York Times weighed in with an editorial on a matter of grave concern:
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When news organizations reported last week that Judge John Roberts, the Supreme Court nominee, was a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, the White House forcefully denied it. But it now appears that if he was not a member, he had a status that looked very much like a member's. This apparent contradiction raises questions about how forthcoming Mr. Roberts and the White House have been. . . .
Mr. Roberts still has no recollection of being a member of the society or on the steering committee, according to the White House. It may be that Mr. Roberts was never formally a member of the society, which keeps its membership secret. But at his confirmation hearings, the Senate should make sure that there was no intent to deceive senators or the public.
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If Gail Collins & Co. had any wit at all, we'd think this was a conscious parody of McCarthyism.
But the funniest contribution of all comes from one Anita Hill, who, in an op-ed in Long Island, N.Y.'s Newsday, called the Roberts pick "a step back for diversity":
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Why not choose a woman to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court? Or use this as an opportunity to nominate the first Latino to the court?
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Here's another pertinent question: Who is Anita Hill? She is best known as a pioneer in bawdy broadcast humor, a sort of American counterpart to England's Benny Hill. In 1991 she made history by becoming the first person ever to utter the phrases "Long Dong Silver" and "pubic hair on my Coke" on national television.
Everyone knows what happened next. Americans turned out to have an appetite for juvenile sexual comedy. The following year they put Bill Clinton in the White House. In 1993 "Beavis and Butt-head" picked up where Anita Hill had left off. After Clinton's second inauguration, in 1997, "South Park" took televised ribaldry to new extremes.
Part of Hill's shtick was to allege that that Clarence Thomas had written her gags a decade earlier. Although he disclaimed authorship, some Democrats said that they believed her and that this made Thomas unsuitable to be a justice. Thomas was of course confirmed, but given Hill's role in trying to keep a black man off the Supreme Court, for her now to pose as a champion of diversity seems the height of hypocrisy.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam.
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