Because irony isn't quite dead yet, SCOTUS Judge Amy Coathanger Barrett gave a Very Earnest speech Sunday about the integrity of the Supreme Court at the University of Louisville's McConnell Center, which was founded by Mitch McConnell, who gave Barrett a glowing introduction after having last year rammed her nomination through the Senate before the body of RBG was cold - protest signs at the time declared "Respect Her Dying Wish Mother F**kers" and "Supreme Farce" - and mere weeks before the election though he'd nefariously blocked an Obama SCOTUS confirmation for over a year, but that was then when it only seemed like an increasingly right-wing Court was working hand-in-sweaty-hand with the GOP, and this is now, when we know they are.
So the lady who turned her first public intro into a COVID super-spreader and her swearing-in into an Evita-like "Trump campaign commercial" said she was "concerned," bless her and Susan Collins' heart, that Americans today may view SCOTUS as, gasp, partisan, maybe because they just pulled this super partisan stunt of overturning 50 years of settled law by letting stand a clearly unconstitutional Texas abortion ban - with bounties, yet! - en route to overturning Roe v Wade just like she was installed, or shoehorned in, to do, and using a middle-of-the-night shadow docket so they didn't have to bother with oral arguments or other pesky legal niceties, which was cool. “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” Barrett told about 100 partisan hacks, adding justices must be “hyper vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions, since judges are people, too,” and def not patronizing ones.
Arguing she and her right-wing, corporatist, so-called jurists are defined by their "judicial philosophies," not personal political beliefs, Barrett charged the media and "hot takes on Twitter" make their decisions seem "results-oriented," though it does seem like a woman faced with the prospect of a forced birth would, yup, deem her desperate situation a real-life "result." Online, people weren't really buying the Aunt-Lydia-is-the-maligned-victim-here shtick. "I designed a sandwich in honor of #amyconeybarrett," went one response. "It's stale white bread with moldy partisanal cheese, hacked into pieces that are too big to swallow." Others noted the dark hilarity of the court's most egregiously partisan hack - though tough call with the drunken serial rapist guy - insisting she's not. As in, Brett Kavanaugh "expressed concerns (the) Federalist Society has too much power in judicial nominations" and former guy "expressed concerns about public perception of elections as rigged." Many argued Barrett must be trolling us "because nobody could be that obtuse." So is it just gaslighting? Stupidity? Virulent, arrogant, theocratic, beer-soaked fanaticism? Based on her description of the court and her role in it, yes. She said the court was "a warm, collegial place." She said a colleague brought Halloween candy for her children. She said she has "an important job, but I certainly am no more important than anyone else in the grocery store checkout line." She said her kids - like many of us, not that impressed by her job - keep her grounded in her Stepford Wife life, where she's busy “running carpools, throwing birthday parties, being ordered around." Dan Rather on the unholy disingenuousness: "We're apparently playing the 'Things you can't make up' game today."
Abby Zimet has written CommonDream's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.