Lying To Make Friends

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts was very, very uncomfortable when President Obama criticized the Citizens United case during the State of the Union speech in January.  But it’s not because Obama is black!!  It’s because the State of the Union has “degenerated into a political pep rally” and it’s just Not Fair that the justices have to sit there and silently Take It (which is exactly, of course, what they didn’t do).

As a result of his “discomfort,” Roberts is considering taking the Scalia-Thomas route and just not going next year.  “I’m not sure why we are there,” he says.  Unless Roberts is talking about why he has a place on the Supreme Court, I do not share his confusion.  You’re there, Roberts, because you were invited.  And it’s not like being invited to an Edward Fortyhands party — this is a Constitutionally-mandated address by the President of the United States to both houses of Congress.  It’s really quite an honor that they let your sorry self in the door after that Citizens United debacle, if you ask me.

As for the “political pep rally” comment, that begs the question: who are the “cheerleaders,” exactly?  Roberts’s metaphor is both offensive and partisan.  After all, whether or not there is a “big game” coming up, the president is required (again, by the Constitution) to give a report to Congress.  And where is the crazed excitement for a common cause that characterizes a pep rally?  From where I sat behind the tube, the “pep” of the State of the Union was distinctly muted, and politically divided.  But by calling it a “pep rally,” Roberts impliedly paints Obama as the cheerleader to Bush’s dignified statesman — a distortion of reality perhaps appropriate to Roberts’s status as an elite, appointed-for-life justice.

And what about the partisan-pep-rally-of-one that was Justice Alito’s inappropriate reaction at the State of the Union?  Granted, the president’s statements were louder than the mouthed words of Justice Alito.  But then again, the president had, you know, the microphone as he was the official speaker.  Alito, by contrast, was just supposed to sit there quietly for once in his long life, isthatsomuchtoask?

It seems clear to me that, like most 5-year-olds, Roberts is simply upset that someone has told him that he is wrong.  The thing is, Roberts, you are wrong.  But I don’t think anyone will be that upset if you don’t show up next year.

- AS