In October, when he returns to his seat at the center of the Supreme Court bench, will colleagues and courtroom spectators see the same golden youth whose trajectory was unmarked by setback or sorrow? Or will they see someone suddenly vulnerable, with a medical condition that, while treatable and shared by millions, can still inspire fear?This is like a script for a movie starring Tom Hanks or Steve Martin. A cold, bloodless man wields power over millions. One day, seemingly for no reason, he falls down and hits his head. At first, he seems all right, unchanged. Then, in October, he returns to his work as Chief Justice of the United States, and something is different. John Roberts... has a heart! Once he thought only about money and elite power, and now, suddenly, he feels the pain of the homeless, the prisoner, the poor, abused little child...
Or to dig deeper, might this encounter with illness even change the way John Roberts sees himself, his job or the world?...
Could adversity temper a jurisprudence that critics of the chief justice have discerned as bloodless and unduly distant from the messy reality of the lives of ordinary people who fail to file their appeals on time?
IN THE COMMENTS: Paul a'barge brings up "Regarding Henry." Bill writes:
... Harrison Ford, in Regarding Henry: successful, jerk lawyer, is shot in the head and becomes a better person.John Stodder writes:
To you pitiful humans, it looked like a "seizure." But during those few moments, Space Agent Roberts entered a wormhole to make a 1,000-year roundtrip to his home planet to receive further instruction from the Interplanetary Council of Space Fiends. His last visit, 14 Earth-years ago, programmed him for his rise to power. His masters were well pleased with his progress, but it was only the beginning of their diabolical plan. Roberts has been sent back with a new set of instructions to prepare Earth for its ultimate fate. The changes in him are undetectable by mere mortals. Even his wife and children see the same "man" they knew before.
But there is one threat to his masters' scheme. One who through years of diligent study has developed the vision to see the truth. Today, she is a reporter for the New York Times, but soon, she will be Earth's only hope...
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73 comments:
I don't see that as a Steve Martin role. Tom Hanks, yes. Kevin Kline, yes. Steve Martin strikes me more as Anthony Kennedy.
I wonder if James Gandolfini could do a good Alito?
Now, I'm having a flashback to an old post where we talked about which actors we'd cast in a movie about the Supreme Court.
Wasn't it Obama who said he would appoint someone with a heart to interpret the Constitution?
We can go from a country with the rule of law to a rule by hearts.
Yeah, or a movie starring Harrison Ford Regarding Henty.
What a tedious analysis. I thought Greenhouse was a little better than that.
Slow news day, Linda?
Could adversity temper a jurisprudence that critics of the chief justice have discerned as bloodless ...
Why does Greenhouse write "critics of the chief justice" instead of "I"?
Since paul a'barge misspelled it, I'm claiming first mention.
Or Harrison Ford, in Regarding Henry: successful, jerk lawyer, is shot in the head and becomes a better person.
Good thing he didn't get robbed at gunpoint by a minority or we'd be reading how he might turn into a cruel and heartless person. Oh, she already thinks that.
It's a vapid bit of writing that occasionally detours into the outright insipid ("[i]t is John Roberts for whom the country now holds its breath"). And it's pervaded by a smug sense of superiority, submerging in its suggestion that illness may change Roberts' approach to law the assertion (or assumption) that legal conservatives are such because they're heartless, uncaring people, basically devoid of human feelings, but who might yet be shaken back to their senses by a reminder of their own mortality. Greenouhouse condescends that this heartlessness may be curable rather than congenital.
Nor does the piece explain why Greenhouse's soothsaying is more likely than the possibility that this humanizing event ("out of the blue, ... [Roberts] became a middle-age man in need of emergency medical treatment, hospitalized and confronting the implications of a condition that could affect his life in big and small ways like requiring daily medication or making it inadvisable to drive a car. ... [Will we now] see someone suddenly vulnerable, with a medical condition that ... [is] shared by millions...?") make it harder for for people to swallow the line urged in some quarters (including this very op/ed) that these conservatives are somehow less than fully human, missing a heart?
Like the commenters on various lefty blogs we talked about he other day, Greenhouse wishes he Chief a speedy recovery - as long as the experience changes him.
SteveR said...
Good thing he didn't get robbed at gunpoint by a minority or we'd be reading how he might turn into a cruel and heartless person. Oh, she already thinks that.
what is that saying?
a Conservative is a Liberal who has been mugged
a Liberal is a Conservative who has been arrested.
Based on that, Linda's thesis would work if Robert's had been arrested. (I expect that the perfect Lefty blogger story line would have Robert's name found in the DC Madam's little black book just before Vitter's)
Ann Althouse said...
"Now, I'm having a flashback to an old post where we talked about which actors we'd cast in a movie about the Supreme Court. "
This post. Since I made my suggestions there, I saw Girl, Interupted, and on the basis of his performance therein, would additionally propose casting Kurtwood Smith as William Rehnquist.
SGT: The idea that having a traumatic experience at age 50 will all of a sudden give him some feeling of vulnerability and thus increased compassion for his fellow man, is insulting.
That is an astonishingly ignorant piece Ms Greenhouse has written.
What person with any brains thinks a seizure and a conk on the head turns an uncaring jerk into a sweetheart of a guy?
Everyone knows such a transformation requires nothing less than a visit from a dead business partner and then three ghosts, each on the tolling of the hour.
Sarge, I think the saying comes from Irving Kristol, who described a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality. Hence that neoconservatism seeks to use liberal means to conservative (or quasi-conservative) ends.
Bissage - You've got it backwards. At the start of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge hates Christmas. By the end of it, he embraces Christmas (and implicitly, Christ). Clearly he is converted from a liberal to a conservative! ;)
Vlog question for Ann (first!):
Do you think the New York Times keeps Linda Greenhouse employed because they like her writing, or because they like her politics?
And what does that say about the New York Times?
It is classic lefty wish/hope that a traumatic occurrence will "Reboot" the conservative brain to it's default, natural condition.
Hopefully, the experience will reinforce the humility he already embraces from past dealings with his condition. He, and his family are courageous dealing with this on the world stage.
SCOTUS Roberts; Thank you for the inspirational message on how to deal with the vagaries of life.
Simon, LOL!
(And yes, Maxine, I really did laugh out loud.)
Ha!
I thought the Bulwer-Lytton contest was last month--what a piece of absolute tripe--
So what Linda Greenhouse is saying a liberal is a conservative who's suffered brain damage. Her writing would be exhibit 'A'.
"legal conservatives are such because they're heartless, uncaring people, basically devoid of human feelings, but who might yet be shaken back to their senses by a reminder of their own mortality."
I think it applies to conservaties in general Simon. When friends who assume I am liberal find out otherwise the typical question is something like "But I thought that you were supposed to have empathy!"
Honestly, I sh*t empathy! That is why I am a conservative! I care about people so I advise and promulgate the hard work of responsibility and self reliance. It comes from caring about people and understanding human nature enough to want to truly empower people.
Most of us conservaties are very caring, we are just also realists.
Trey
This is like a script for a movie starring Tom Hanks or Steve Martin. A cold, bloodless man wields power over millions. One day, seemingly for no reason, he falls down and hits his head.
William Hurt did a good job in the medical version of this ("The Doctor," 1991): An arrogant surgeon develops a heart when he becomes a cancer patient.
I care about people so I advise and promulgate the hard work of responsibility and self reliance. It comes from caring about people and understanding human nature enough to want to truly empower people.
Well therein lies the disconnect between liberals and conservatives. I used to think that the homeless and poor were in that situation because of a bad turn of fate. When I grew up, I came to realize through first hand experience that many of them are in their situation due to piss poor choices they made. We all make bad decisions throughout life but the key to success is not to keep making the same ones over and over again such as having a child out of wedlock at 16 and another at 18 and another at 20 and so on. Or dropping out of school because it ain’t cool.
Like you I have no issues at all with helping people and providing them with assistance. I do have problems with rewarding bad behavior on a continual basis and creating generations of couch potatoes. If that makes me heartless then oh well. Empowering people to become self reliant means one less person that is dependent on the liberal ideology of nanny statism and that is a direct threat to their sense of self worth.
Whoopi Goldberg as Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas Story.
Madonna as Linda Greenhouse in 5 Angry Men
Bissage & Simon
Brilliant.
Wish I'd thought of that.
Will use it at lunch today!
Linda Greenhouse is looking for the Scotty the soldier/author creative writing award.
Roberts at Tarsus?
How about Chuck Carson?
How about James Joyce's Epiphanies.
How about St. Francis & the poor.
How about Cecil Rhodes?
How about J Beresford Tipton?
Maybe Rupert Murdock can suffer the same idiopathic benign incident & buy the NYT & all the merry crew on the NYT can have epiphanies! Nah, bad investment. He have to be really ga ga.
It's a classic soap questsion. Can a country girl be happy with a man twice her age, up next.
She writes for women.
Do you think the New York Times keeps Linda Greenhouse employed because they like her writing, or because they like her politics?
New York Times Stock 5-year Decline
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS BITCH SLAPPED BY GOD
"It is but a brush by hand of the Sun of God mocking his title as the Chief Justice and, too, His slight against the nation heralding herself as the greatest and most powerful nation on the planet," Yacub 7 Ali Prime Minister & national spokesman Lucifer Nigaros said. "Neither is he the Chief Justice of anything or this nation the greatest or most powerful."
I have to agree!
On top of the trite nature of Linda Greenhouse's anlaysis, there is this:
Every article I saw about Roberts indicated that he had a similar stroke/seisure 14 years ago. If that one didn't turn him into a liberal, why would this one?
Every article I saw about Roberts indicated that he had a similar stroke/seisure 14 years ago. If that one didn't turn him into a liberal, why would this one?
Well, once God took control of the celestrial congress, he instituted a Three Strokes And You're Out policy. Roberts has one chance to learn his lesson.
Since I made my suggestions there, I saw Girl, Interupted, and on the basis of his performance therein, would additionally propose casting Kurtwood Smith as William Rehnquist
Simon, for a brief second I feared you were going to say "Angelina Jolie as Ginsburg" or something, and we'd no longer be friends.
This episode is evidence of his divinity.
To you pitiful humans, it looked like a "seizure." But during those few moments, Space Agent Roberts entered a wormhole to make a 1,000-year roundtrip to his home planet to receive further instruction from the Interplanetary Council of Space Fiends. His last visit, 14 Earth-years ago, programmed him for his rise to power. His masters were well pleased with his progress, but it was only the beginning of their diabolical plan. Roberts has been sent back with a new set of instructions to prepare Earth for its ultimate fate. The changes in him are undetectable by mere mortals. Even his wife and children see the same "man" they knew before.
But there is one threat to his masters' scheme. One who through years of diligent study has developed the vision to see the truth. Today, she is a reporter for the New York Times, but soon, she will be Earth's only hope...
This uninformed babbling shows negligence in fact checking the points on which so much heavy moral hectoring flows, & much irrelevancy is shoe horned into this ideopathic medical event. This is no unbiased factual news report; it is a low, dishonest presentation of bien pensant Liberal political legend. Print The Legend!
Simon: Bissage - You've got it backwards. At the start of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge hates Christmas. By the end of it, he embraces Christmas (and implicitly, Christ). Clearly he is converted from a liberal to a conservative! ;)
Yes, after his transformation, Scrooge began giving of himself, rather than forcing others to do it for him.
There is nothing conservative nor Christian in empowering the state to steal from Peter via the IRS (making Peter a slave of the state) in order to buy Paul's continued vote (making Paul a slave of the Democratic Party).
Hoosier Daddy said: "I have no issues at all with helping people and providing them with assistance. I do have problems with rewarding bad behavior on a continual basis"
I've come to believe that one of the defining characteristics of a liberal is that they don't get the concept of incentives (both good incentives and, especially, bad incentives), or they just don't care. Welfare is an example. Health care is another.
KnoxGirl,
Well, in my original suggestions, linked above, I proposed Catheryn Zeta-Jones to play Ginsburg, alongside Nic Cage (Stephen Breyer), Chris Barrie (David Souter), Charles Bronson (Antonin Scalia), George Clooney (Roberts) and "a cameo appearence from Sir Sean Connery as Robert Bork, who turns out to have been the arch-villain all along!" But I was mainly just mocking what I suspected would be Hollywood's tendency to cast glamorous but totally unsuited actors in such a movie, exemplified by (as chance would have it) Jolie's latest project - perhaps in view of which Jolie should play Anita Hill! If I was to be serious, I'm not honestly sure who could play Ginsburg, but if we were doing a flashback allowing Smith to play Rehnquist, Anthony Edwards ought to get a call for the Breyer part.
It's bad enough that Greenhouse writes such drivel in a "news analysis" (front page editorial).
It is journalistic malfeasance that she gets away with such left-leaning comments and inferences in every front page news report that has her byline.
The prayer of millions of Americans:
"Dear God, please allow Rupert Murdoch to buy the New York Times."
Simon said: "If I was to be serious, I'm not honestly sure who could play Ginsburg,"
Audery Hepburn (the mature Audery, not the young version).
I disagree. The obvious choice to play Ginsburg is John Travolta.
How insulting to epileptics. I thought the Times wanted to reduce Greenhouse gas? This is a great example of why the fight for Alito was so uncompromising. We want jurists that spent a career avoiding personal experiences interfering with their rulings. Can one imagine if Justice Harriet Miers were diagnosed with breast cancer? I don't know if she could have been Greenhoused, but I'm not willing to take the chance.
Ginsburg obviously would be played by Anne Ramsey ('Throw Mama From the Train').
Why does Greenhouse assume that Roberts' life hasn't been impacted "by setback or sorrow." He's at the top of his profession, but personally, how does she know he hasn't suffered? He & His wife adopted. Were they unable to conceive a child? If so, it must have been difficult to find out they could't have biological children. Are his parents still alive? If not, how did they die? Did he ever get his heart stomped on by a woman? Has he ever lost a close friend to disease or accident?
Greenhouse’s statement is utterly ridiculous. It assumes that because he’s not a liberal, he must not know what life is really like. How shallow.
Wow, Linda, you've got something here! I can see it now, Roberts taking the bench and then, hot tears of politcal righteousness springing from his eyes, stops the proceedings and delivers a passionate speech on the sanctity of Roe v. Wade! Just then, his children, now dressed in adrogynous GapKids, not 50's whitey togs, run in and hug him.
Cut to: His wife gazes wistfully, but proudly, at the monitor in her office. Yes, she's now a...NYT reporter, not a dopey conservative housewife. Suddenly she hears a sound from the newsroom behind her...one reporter hesitantly applauds...then another...and then the whole newsroom breaks into raucas, deafening applause. She smiles through her hot politically righteous tears; she works outside the home and is married to that man on TV, that brave new liberal.
Music swells, roll credits.
I agree with Fritz that it is pretty insulting for epileptics. A momentary seizure is supposed to alter your mental abilities, emotions, views on work-related matters?
It would be deeply insulting for someone who has had a seizure and cleared by doctors to be told on returning to work that the boss believes in the "Greenhouse Medical Effect" and wants the person monitored to see if "their heart, views, and work ethic have changed".
Not only epileptics.
I notice that Souter's mugging while jogging by black thugs did not trigger a Greenhouse column about how this "life-changing experience" may affect Souter's heart or the smaller New Hampshire flinty variant of it.
Nor did Greenhouse do any opining that Ruth Ginsberg's colon cancer was "her brush with mortality". That may change how she feels about the ACLU defense of killers and terrorists, and cause her to become "more vindictive, more prosecutorial" on murderers since she better understands how "precious life is now."
Her column was condescending tripe, selective in ignoring liberal judges who have had a traumatic incident, presumptive that conservatives or moderates will amend their stunted minds and hearts and rise to the moral authority of liberals once they embrace the rethinking obligated on them, by events conferring their Victimhood...Snidely assuming only conservatives have "personal defects" curable by embrace of their inner victimization...
The column Greenhouse should have written would have been about judges that show they do a great job despite personal issues, and how many various traumas in life generally do not spill over and infect their professional judicial temperment and philosophy. Compared to other judges with far bigger blows than a seizure or two - Roberts was a poor subject to use to begin with. Try Ted Olson, wife killed by terrorists, doing his job afterwards with professional committment. The judge on appeals court fighting terminal cancer for 4 years not missing a day or a beat..
Charles Bronson (Antonin Scalia)
don't you mean Steven Seagal? : )
Regarding Henry and The Doctor are just the tip of that genre. How about John Travolta in A Civil Action?
How about every Bill Murray vehicle of the '90s? Maybe that wasn't a seizure, maybe he was being forced relive the same day over and over again until he learned compassion and empathy!
I wonder how many epilectics had seizures after reading this.
Ginsburg should be played by Linda Hunt.
Stodder, you're a genius. It makes perfect sense.
GRuth Bader Ginsburg should be played by Woody Allen in drag.
On Monday, John Roberts has a seizure. He is taken to a local hospital.
On Tuesday, he is released from the hospital. That late afternoon or evening***, Linda Greenhouse writes a column on Roberts' defining experience, its implications now and for the future, and even casts the movie.
Damn, she's good. Deliberate and measured, too.
***Wait! How presumptuous of me. Perhaps she wrote/starting writing it on Monday. Or maybe, as with obituaries of notable people, she had the shell already written, just waiting for "the day." Or ... ?
In any case: What a blecccchhhhh of an article, on several grounds.
Ruth Ginsberg should obviously be played by Ruth Buzzi
http://www.nndb.com/people/757/000023688/
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/justices/ginsburg.bio.clr.html
Ruth Ginsberg should obviously be played by Ruth Buzzi
oo, harsh!
If Catherine Zeta-Jones is playing anything I demand to play her love interest.
Lily Tomlin=Ernestine=Justice Ginsberg?
Here's something from one of the radio favs of many of the right wing nuts on this blog:
On the July 30 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage reacted to news that Chief Justice John Roberts had suffered a seizure that day by raising the possibility that "his health was in some way tampered with by the Democrats.
*And I know..."we NEVER listen to those people!!! Waaahhhhh!!!!
drill sgt asks: "what is that saying?
a Conservative is a Liberal who has been mugged
a Liberal is a Conservative who has been arrested."
No, I think it's...if you still support Bushie...you're delusional.
fritz,
Is that Bill Maher hugging the kid?
dbp says: "Every article I saw about Roberts indicated that he had a similar stroke/seisure 14 years ago."
And why do you suppose he never mentioned it during the confirmation hearings?
I am disgusted by all you arm- chair know-it-alls who know nothing. But mostly I am disgusted by the profession of the law which produces a bumper-crop of educated idiots like John Edwards. But mostly I'm disgusted by female lawyers who are destroying our world -like that poor jackass Hillary Clinton. See below:
HEZI ARRIS RADIO SHOW YPD COMM. ED HARTNETT,jyi #405
ON TUESDAY,7-31-07 I CALLED HEZI ARRIS RADIO (WVOX FM) SHOW TO SPEAK WITH YONKERS POLICE COMMISSIONER EDMOND HARTNETT
And I asked the following question: "Hey,Commissioner,this is Tom Courtney. And I know a policeman's job is never easy.
But,with respect to Al Sharpton and the overall state of black and white leadership in Yonkers and this country,dont you think its rather abysmal ?"
The Commissioner said "I'm not sure what you mean". Flatfooted,I said that Lieut. John Mueller would better know what I mean -as he is on my email list- but that its kind of hard to quickly say the substance. So Hezi said,"Why dont you think about it and call back in 5 minutes". Which I did.
And I said this: "In 1950,80% of black children were born to married couples but today -in inner cities like Yonkers- less than 10% are;and the real cause (but here I went off a bit,saying) is feminism which has become the national orthodoxy of the USA (and Hezi cut me off because he doesn't like it when I blame feminism for all the problems the world faces,even though it is the truth. What I meant to say was) the real cause of the decline of black people is feminism because as feminism triumphed black people's lives got ever worse -yet feminism is still the national orthodoxy of the USA." In other words,our leaders still uphold the garbage that is feminism.
For some background -and here I'm reflecting on an editorial by David Brooks in the New York Times today (7-31-07,p.A19),discussing US Pres. candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama
and their plans to solve such problems as Yonkers...inner city minority (black people's) plight- I
think that all our leaders,black and white,have no idea what they are talking about concerning race (or anything else) today,including John Edwards and Barack Obama. John Edwards is nothing but a white cracker,a high priced trial lawyer-turned-politician and Barack Obama -as
brilliant as he is- is sheltered and has no idea that he can do nothing to really help anyone as he is working under -and is directed by- the cocoon of nonsense that is our national ideology today: FEMINISM. Only someone who has been in and worked in and around the real problems we in the USA -and the world- face(like myself) could have any idea of what we really are up against and what any real solutions would be and are.
In truth no solutions based on our current national orthodoxy -feminism- will work. And I pointed all this out to Judge Sand and Michael Sussman 20 and more years ago during the Yonkers desegregation controversies. Of course these two were too foolish to realise that their thinking was mush as it was based on that feminist nonsense that men and women are equal -which they aren't (women are nurturers as workers and forcing them to be,and work as,men -as feminism does- only leads to the greatest emptiness and unhappiness in and for women;and such is reflected in our children,our world,our society...).
So you see why I have a problem with Hezi (who is my right-hand man otherwise) when it comes to feminism. As I see it,not only black people -especially boys and men- are facing destruction because of feminism but all boys and men. As feminism has more and more triumphed,masculinity has more and more diminished,to the point where it is hard to find a good man today -as any woman will tell you.
Believe me. For my studies have been widespread,covering every area of human knowledge -and more. And my lived experience* is more than almost anyone alive; I know because I know and I am because I am.
Nor am I in any way opposed to women. In truth,3/4 of the human race is "feminine" -a woman(xx) and a man(xy),a couple,are 3/4 feminine(xxx) and 1/4 male(y).
*much has -and does- come to me unsought (because I am a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) survivor),as a result of the 40 days I spent "dead" when I was 13 and the 6 months I was completely paralysed afterward
In addition,Epilepsy has been known as the disease of the gods,the sacred illness. And there are innumerable variations,including Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (re: Doestoevsky...)
Luckyoldson said...
"Michael Savage reacted to news that Chief Justice John Roberts had suffered a seizure that day by raising the possibility that 'his health was in some way tampered with by the Democrats.'"
Well, Savage has always been a prick, but that really is uncommonly silly even by his standards.
He had a seizure a decade ago. If he didn't change then, why would he change now?
He's probably used to these by now.
"And why do you suppose he never mentioned it during the confirmation hearings?"
Are you suggesting that Congress should have discriminated against someone due to a medical condition?
Well, Savage has always been a prick, but that really is uncommonly silly even by his standards.
Savage is a prick. And he has no standards.
But this was supposed to be a joke. He was arguing that since many on the left embrace every hair-brained conspiracy being promoted recently, that surely they can see the possibility of this one.
I think.
In any event, it's best to just ignore the jerk.
SMG
Luckyoldson said...
"And why do you suppose he never mentioned [the previous seizure] during the confirmation hearings?"
If you actually read the news reports, you'd know that this painfully obvious question has been asked and answered. The Senators on both sides were aware of it but didn't think it important enough to raise at the televised hearings.
It wasn't a stroke.
Ginsburg: Jane Alexander.
cedarford: even old Arlen Specter, who seems to have hardly missed a day of work while going through the ravages of chemotherapy.
And finally:
When my husband first had a seizure, I was amazed by how lightly doctors, across the board, took it once they knew it was "idiopathic." Doctors have literally said to me, "Oh, that's nothing."
A person who has had a seizure can be fully himself/herself and ready to get up and go in less than an hour.
IN THE COMMENTS: Paul a'barge brings up "Regarding Henry." Bill writes:
... Harrison Ford, in Regarding Henry: successful, jerk lawyer, is shot in the head and becomes a better person.
Correction: Harrison Ford is a Republican (conservative?) gets shot in the head and becomes a Democrat (liberal?). Only in the movies and you couldn't make that up.
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