"[Judge Kyle] Duncan was treated like a politician, because that’s what he is..."

"... and politicians have long understood that, in the United States, shouting at them is our birthright.... The idea that a political speech deserves the quiet deference one brings to a golf course or a tennis match is an idea that runs counter to our American traditions. I’m old enough to remember the last State of the Union address, and I recall Majorie Taylor Greene spending the president’s entire speech braying like a howler monkey looking for a date. I see no reason for Stanford Law students to comport themselves better than Republican members of Congress."

 
Writes Elie Mystal in "Protesting an Anti-Trans Trump Judge Isn’t Disrespectful, It’s American/Judge Kyle Duncan lashed out at students who protested his appearance at Stanford Law School, but shouting at political figures is our most protected speech right" (The Nation). 

"Judges are not used to being treated like politicians. They’re used to being treated like they’re above the political fray, like they’re scientists musing about whether the laws allow for covalent or ionic bonds, as opposed to jackboots determining who gets to have a family. Conservative judges, like Duncan, have chosen to insert their unreconstructed thoughts into our national political debates.... But the rest of us aren’t allowed to scream and shout and stomp our feet when these unelected, unaccountable rulers poke their heads out long enough to indoctrinate the next generation of fascist sympathizers?"

ALSO: There's been a lot of talk about how the students (and the DEI dean) planned their protest, but did the Federalist Society and Judge Duncan plan to leverage what had to be the expected protest? Mystal thinks so:

Duncan seems to have come prepared for all of this. He arrived brandishing his cell phone and proceeded to record the protesters.

Well, everyone has a cell phone. Is Mystal saying Duncan walked through the door with his phone aimed at the students' faces or did he merely get out his phone and record defensively? 

And, almost as soon as he left the building, Federalist Society sycophants rushed out heavily edited videos of Duncan’s appearance on social media. Then they did their old song and dance about free speech (for conservatives, not the protesters) and civility (toward conservatives, not the marginalized people conservatives hate).

For that, I add the "civility bullshit" tag to this post. 

As is usual, they collapsed the difference between the right to appear at Stanford and the right to force Stanford students to sit there like docile automatons while Duncan held forth. Everybody has the right to speak; nobody has the right to be heard over the din of the crowd. But the conservative echosphere pretends not to understand this distinction.

You will have observed that I'm not in the conservative echosphere. 

In a more extensive recording of the event—one not edited by friends of the FedSoc—Duncan can be seen being hostile and combative towards the students who stayed to ask him questions. He called some of them “appalling” (later he would call them “dogshit”) and wouldn’t answer many of their questions....

The entire escapade sure seems like a set-up. Duncan went into a hostile environment spoiling for a fight, got one, videotaped it, and then ran to his media spokes-buddies to cast himself as a victim....

I don't know. I think a carefully scripted sequence of events would not have shown the judge exhibiting hostility toward students and calling them "dogshit"! But I do think that after the incident occurred, the "conservative echosphere" hit the ground running, and the other side stood flat-footed. Mystal's essay is the first strong support of the students I've seen, and it only came out today, and the incident took place 6 days ago.