Supreme Assault
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 2, 2003; 9:45 AM
The liberals have found a new pinata.
He holds no news conferences, raises no money and is usually seen in long black robes.
They've never been fond of this particular jurist, but since last week Antonin Scalia has been the target of some withering abuse.
The left, of course, has had it in for the Rehnquist Court for a couple of decades now. A generalized distrust over a whole host of decisions on social issues turned into disgust with a certain 5-to-4 ruling that decided a certain presidential election 2 1/2 years ago.
But now, in the wake of last week's rulings, the media assault on Scalia has turned harshly personal. Other than Clarence Thomas, who came to the court under pretty unusual circumstances, it's hard to think of another Supreme Court justice who has aroused these kinds of passions in the modern age.
Everyone knows Nino is incredibly smart, providing much of the intellectual firepower for the court's conservative decisions (or sharp-tongued dissents). He was, after all, approved by the Senate on a 98-to-0 vote back in 1986. Scalia has been viewed by liberal critics as a determined ideologue but accorded a kind of grudging respect.
That was before the affirmative action and gay sodomy decisions. Scalia was on the losing side in both cases, but his incendiary rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and "culture war" has gotten the other side riled up.
The irony here is that the court, thanks largely to Sandra Day O'Connor, has delivered several victories to the left, from the Michigan admissions case and Texas sodomy law to a redistricting ruling on black voter strength that took the Democratic side. Conservatives, for once, are angry at the Supremes. But politics is often motivated by villains, and even in defeat, Scalia has attained public-enemy status for some commentators -- not all of them liberal, by the way.
Maureen Dowd twists the knife in the New York Times:
"He's so Old School, he's Old Testament, misty over the era when military institutes did not have to accept women, when elite schools did not have to make special efforts with blacks, when a gay couple in their own bedroom could be clapped in irons, when women were packed off to Our Lady of Perpetual Abstinence Home for Unwed Mothers.
"He relishes eternal principles, like helping a son of the establishment dispense with the messiness of a presidential vote count. (His wife met him at the door after Bush v. Gore with a chilled martini.)
"He's an American archetype, or Archie type. Full of blustery rants against modernity and nostalgia for 'the way Glenn Miller played, songs that made the hit parade . . . girls were girls and men were men." Antonin Scalia is Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair. Like Archie, Nino is the last one to realize that his intolerance is risibly out-of-date.
"The court issued a bracing 6-to-3 decision declaring it illegitimate to punish people for who they are, and Justice Scalia fulminated in a last gasp of the old Pat Buchanan/Bill Bennett homophobic conservatism."
Andrew Sullivan weighs in from the gay conservative side:
"What troubles me about Antonin Scalia is not so much the substance of his views (although I share very few of them) but the angry, sarcastic, bitter tone of his judgments. . . . Part of what it takes to be a judge, in my mind, is a certain indifference to passionate advocacy, a sense of moderation, and prudence. If someone cares as passionately as Scalia does about the moral issues in what he has called the 'culture war,' and if he isn't even interested in moderating these passions in his judicial rulings, then it strikes me that he is not acting as a justice should act: with dignity, care, distance, and respect for alternative arguments.
"It's the tone that's off. It can be amusing, bracing, shocking, interesting; but it certainly isn't a judicial tone. Ditto the arguments about the far right nominee, Bill Pryor, a man whose political language about abortion is so inflamed he has had to say to the Senate that he will simply lay it all aside if he is called to rule on the matter. No one can believe in this kind of psychological compartmentalization; and no one should trust anyone who promises it. The truth is: anyone whose views are that inflamed shouldn't be anywhere near a federal bench. A talk-show host or blogger, maybe. A politician surely. But not a judge.
David Broder, who rarely personalizes his columns, makes an exception here:
"During the last presidential campaign, whenever George W. Bush was asked what he would seek in a Supreme Court appointee, the first name he brought up as his ideal was Justice Antonin Scalia. Last week's historic rulings in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases show why Bush needs to find another model.
"Virtually all of the majority and dissenting opinions in the divided court displayed serious jurists wrestling with an issue that tests not just legal principles but also fundamental social values. . . .
"But in the dissent Scalia filed to the O'Connor ruling, the tone was jarringly different.
"It was sarcastic, dismissive, polemical and smug -- everything that one would hope not to see on display from the president's judicial role model...
"During oral arguments, he had told Michigan's counsel that if the law school was so hellbent on including more minorities, it should simply lower its admission standards -- a stunningly patronizing and insulting comment. Having lost, he now said scornfully that the lessons of mutual understanding and tolerance Michigan was seeking to provide by building a diverse student body were more appropriately learned by "people three feet shorter and 20 years younger than the full-grown adults at the University of Michigan law school, in institutions ranging from Boy Scout troops to public-school kindergartens.'"
New York Daily News Zev Chafets resorts to ridicule:
"'The Texas statute undoubtedly seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are 'immoral and unacceptable,' Scalia wrote in his dissent. "The same interest [is] furthered by criminal laws against
fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity.'
"Scalia's lament was that allowing sodomy opens the door to the legalization of these other ungodly sex acts.
"Call me uninformed, but I thought most of this stuff was already legal. I mean, fornication? Don't they have office Christmas parties at the Supreme Court?
"And what about adultery? I know it can get you yelled at, but against the law?"
A Buffalo News editorial takes this whack:
"Incredibly, Scalia had the nerve to say, 'Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals.' You almost expected the next line to say, "Some of my best friends are homosexuals.'"
Ari Fleischer says the administration has no position on the Supreme Court's gay sodomy ruling, but The Washington Post checks the historical record:
"In fact, Bush has expressed a firm opinion on the Texas sodomy law that the court ruled unconstitutional. He supported it.
"Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, dug up an article from the Austin American-Statesman of Jan. 22, 1994, titled 'Bush promises to veto attempts to remove sodomy law.' The newspaper reported:
"'Gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush on Friday promised he would veto any attempt by the Texas Legislature to remove from the state penal code a controversial statute outlawing homosexual sodomy. Bush, a Republican, was asked about the sodomy statute shortly after speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ladies Auxiliary. "I think it's a symbolic gesture of traditional values," he said.'"
On to foreign affairs. Having taken care of Afghanistan and Iraq, is the White House looking for another country to rescue? "The Bush administration is considering sending troops to Liberia to lead an international peacekeeping force, as Pentagon opposition to a U.S. role appeared to be easing," says the Wall Street Journal:
"A plan developed by the State Department calls for sending a small contingent of U.S. troops to Liberia at the head of a multinational force, but limiting the U.S. deployment to three months, according to two U.S. officials. After a U.S. pullout, African peacekeepers would assume full responsibility for maintaining any cease-fire between rebels and troops loyal to President Charles Taylor.
"Pentagon officials have argued against taking on another international commitment while U.S. troops remain heavily engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. But President Bush, who is leaving on a trip to Africa next week, wants a decision soon on a plan to address the situation, officials said."
The Washington Times sees a case of (make sure you're sitting down) liberal hypocrisy:
"Some of the harshest critics of the U.S.-led war in Iraq are all but begging a reluctant Bush administration to lead a peacekeeping mission in Liberia."
The Bush team isn't doing so well on the WMD question, the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests:
"A majority of Americans think the Bush administration exaggerated the threat of lethal weapons in Iraq to justify the war, according to a poll released yesterday. But one-third disagree, saying government officials were 'being fully truthful' about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. One in 10 said the administration lied about the evidence, according to the survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
"The nationwide poll of 1,054 adults, conducted June 18-25, found that 52 percent agreed that the administration was 'stretching the truth, but not making false statements' about the weapons threat."
And this from Salon's Eric Boehlert:
"But Bush's current-day exaggerations about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, Saddam's fictional alliance with al-Qaida, or the reasons for flying in a jet fighter to a photo-op on the USS Lincoln? Or the deceptive White House spin on Bush's radical tax policy? Much of the press gives him a pass. Chattering cable pundits have no interest in chewing up TV time to examine what's behind Bush's conflicts with truth and reality, or what those say about Bush the man and how he's leading the country. In just two and a half years, the Beltway press has come to the hasty conclusion that presidential exaggerations are no longer considered deal breakers. Everybody does it, the reasoning seems to go; what really matters most are outright lies.
"With the Bush administration leading an ongoing war on terror, it's possible that journalists, at least subconsciously, do not want to publicly question the president's character. 'There's a huge psychological need to believe and trust your president when we're being told every day we may be attacked by terrorists,' says Emmy Award-winning journalist James Moore, a coauthor of 'Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.' 'But I think there's a dangerous mentality among the press that says, Well, yeah, he needed to exaggerate to go after Saddam Hussein, but that's OK because it's for the good of the country and we shouldn't hold him accountable.'
"'I believe the press is in awe of the Bush juggernaut,' adds Jay Rosen, chairman of New York University's journalism department. 'Journalists respect a winner and those they think of as savvy and effective. Besides, what's a worse crime according to journalists, shading the truth or being naive about the way the world really works? It's definitely the latter.'"
A new political digest, NBC's First Read (including one refugee from The Note), makes its debut:
"We are struck by how the Internet has more than arrived in American politics. The proliferation of online organizing/fundraising, and of online campaign coverage, involve more people in the process and pick it apart like never before. The only frontier left is widespread, actual voting online, and the Pentagon already is experimenting with that. Among the flaws: the fact that the online 'electorate' is still largely white (Dean himself, former governor of Vermont, needs to expand his appeal beyond whites); all those voting issues with the MoveOn.org 'primary;' unsourced or politically motivated web 'reports' spreading rumors and false information quicker; hackers; system meltdowns; and with online voting, security concerns and questions about correct ballot reading."
The Note surveys the new landscape, beginning with Howard Dean:
"It is safe to say that there is
-- one (huge) political story: Inspiring protest candidate plus + Internet obsessed campaign manager = $$$
-- one other (possible) winner: Dennis Kucinich (if the $1 million plus figure quoted is correct)
-- one somewhat energized liberal Democratic base
-- one somewhat nervous gaggle of Democratic "centrists"
-- two (biggish) losers: Joe Lieberman and Bob Graham (in that order)
-- two still-dancing-as-fast-as-they-can-and-avoiding-a-bullet placeholders: Dick Gephardt and John Edwards
-- one largely-unscathed-on-money-but-where-is-everything-else? meta-frontrunner: John Kerry"
Slate's Diane McWhorter sees an omission in the recent Strom obituaries:
"In all the words spent on Strom Thurmond's life and times since his death last week, I have seen no acknowledgment of the most interesting of his sundry racial legacies. She is Essie Mae Washington Williams, a widowed former school teacher in her 70s, living in Los Angeles. Presumably she did not show up for any of the obsequies even though Strom Thurmond was almost certainly her father. Williams is black.
"Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson present persuasive evidence in their 1998 biography, 'Ol' Strom,' that Thurmond sired a daughter in 1925 with a black house servant named Essie 'Tunch' Butler, with whom he reputedly had an extended relationship."
Finally, the sad news of a breakup in Cuomolot is following by the inevitable spinning, according to the New York Post:
"Andrew Cuomo decided to end his 13-year marriage to Kerry Kennedy Cuomo after learning she was having an extramarital affair, The Post has learned.
"'She broke his heart -- he's devastated,' a friend of Cuomo's said yesterday. Sources revealed details of Kerry's cheating and the couple's struggle to keep their failing union together the day after Cuomo's lawyer publicly charged that Kerry 'betrayed' Andrew during their marriage.
"The statement about Kerry's conduct by Andrew's lawyer, Harriet Newman Cohen, sparked outrage yesterday from people who charged that Cuomo and his lawyer were trashing his wife. . . .
"Kerry is 'definitely' involved with another man, and Andrew knows who he is, said sources close to Cuomo. Andrew found out about his wife and the other man while the affair was still raging, the sources said."
This could get ugly.
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