Popehat: /4 I guess this NYT story has softened my view on WaPo’s decision not to run the story earlier, at least a bit. Mrs. Alito comes off as Facebook-addled and entitled but Justice Alito doesn’t particularly. He does PLENTY of stuff on the record on his own.

On further reflection, I guess there’s more than one way to look at the stories about Martha-Ann Alito. One way is she’s the spouse of, and very possibly influential over, a Supreme Court justice, using their home to convey political messages, and that’s news. /1 www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/u...

The Alitos, the Neighborhood Clash and the Upside-Down Flagwww.nytimes.com Inside the escalating conflict on a bucolic suburban street that Justice Alito said prompted a “Stop the Steal” symbol at his home.

/2 The other way is that she’s a banal neighborhood dingbat. Every neighborhood (and family) has one. Is it news when Uncle Wayne goes on a Thanksgiving rant? Is it news when Great Aunt Claudia yells at the neighbors for celebrating Lunar New Year?

/3 Now, Virginia Thomas using her high-level access and influence to promote a conspiracy to interfere with election results is absolutely news, particularly when her husband is ruling on related cases. But how much is Martha-Ann Alito being a cranky old Karen news?

/4 I guess this NYT story has softened my view on WaPo’s decision not to run the story earlier, at least a bit. Mrs. Alito comes off as Facebook-addled and entitled but Justice Alito doesn’t particularly. He does PLENTY of stuff on the record on his own.

/5 So I don’t strongly object to stories about a SCOTUS justice’s spouse flying spicy political flags, but as I think about it, I wouldn’t want it to distract from the absolute wealth of more important public data about Alito being a thin-skinned, entitled, result-oriented totalitarian ideologue.

I still don't see how these things are supposed to be mutually exclusive. They're both bad! Can't we cover both? It's not like anyone is forgetting who Alito is because of this flag business.

I think that the flag story is worth covering because it conveys Alito’s awfulness in a way that many people who don’t follow law/politics closely can immediately relate to. It would be great if the media educated the public on the broader issues, but I won’t hold my breath for that.

I think his wife’s work as a recruiter for firms that practice before the court and him leaking Dobbs to a bunch of dinner guests has so much more juice than this flag drama. Americans do not like it when their judges are pulling down fat stacks of cash. The flag drama distracts from that.

John Roberts's wife is the legal recruiter.

Yeah, I also thought this was the case, but didn't have time to check.

Why not cover everything?

Because people have a limited bandwidth for this stuff and no reporters want to be in the boy who cried wolf situation if they find something even more damning on Alito.

Don't disagree there's a bandwidth limitation, but cannot foresee how we're anywhere near it. This story will maybe run for another few weeks -- we've got a legitimate *decade* left to cover Alito's radicalism. Ugh.

I don’t believe that Samuel Alito was ignorant and helpless with regards to the flag(s). I think his story about his wife’s dispute with the neighbors located down the street and out of sight is an excuse akin to, “the dog ate my homework”.

Yup, and the second flag proves it. Folks need to brush up on what evangelicals believe and what their policies look like so Alito can’t troll us so easily. The second flag is one that says his wife must defer to him in all things, and that she is not allowed any opinion in public that is not his.

So hand waving “oh my wife did some crazy shit” is something a liberal or non-religious man can do, but it is NOT something an evangelical can do, since that is directly admitting you don’t have control over your wife, and are thus a failed man and your household is led by Satan.

It's more complicated than that. Alito professes to be a Catholic. The underlying beliefs of that flag are (very much) at odds with orthodox Catholicism. So either he acquired it with no idea of what it means, or (for some reason) doesn't care about the inherent conflicts of theology.

Seems to be a truce between the far right Catholics and the born agains, an intersectional movement of hatred of women, LGBTQ+, POC, Jewish people, etc. That flag IMO is simply the flag of religious white male supremacy. If they subjugate us, they’ll return to fighting each other w/o shared symbols.

Sincere question : would you consider something like “Supreme Court justice hears case concerning Microsoft stock; spouse owns substantial amount of MSFT stock” to be newsworthy? This seems to me to be at least as substantial a conflict, only with the republic at stake instead of just Microsoft.

I would say financial conflicts are much much easier and the rules for them far better documented www.pbs.org/newshour/eco....

Supreme Court justice took part in case despite wife's stock ownershipwww.pbs.org Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer had a conflict of interest under federal law when he heard arguments in a case this week despite his wife's ownership of stock in a company involved in the dispute...

I appreciate your responding. I just think even if you accept Alito’s explanations, the fact that his spouse is so immersed in extreme conspiracy ecosystem is newsworthy.

Two things. First, noteworthy and recusal-required are extremely different. Second, sure, I guess the question is how noteworthy. Maybe it’s that flying a crazy flag is an easy story and the depths of Alito’s awfulness is complicated.

I agree the recusal question is distinct and more complex. I just can’t get my head around the Post not publishing the story when they had it. Flying the flag upside down in January 2021 isn’t like oh she called the HOA because the grass was too long.

Is recusal-required even a thing? If a SC justice doesn’t recuse himself, is there any way to make him?

I think it’s obviously “the flag is easy and Alito’s shitty opinions are complicated” Asking the average reader (me lol) to weigh the merits of constitutional arguments is a lot more difficult. Not only because the content is more meaty, but also because the headline wouldn’t be as click-baity.

After all, being the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice immersed in an extreme conspiracy ecosystem doesn't narrow it down as much as it should

Yup. "Judge owns stock in company" is much simpler than "Company owns stock in judge".

Corporate ownership is awful but not the cause. Thomas would have been the same flaming asshat whether he'd been bought or not. That $ is more 'Thanks for being you.'

A typically fair and even-handed analysis but I think there are two huge (related) issues with it. A) I don't have any reason to believe anything political journalists "report" about the justices, especially the conservative justices. B) Sam Alito has lied consistently about the incident.

I have experience in navigating a long term relationship so I feel as if I'm on good ground when I say: if as a SCOTUS justice you can't go to your wife and say "honey, I love you so much but you can't fly a flag that says the USA is in distress in front of our house" then you've got huge issues.

Corollary: If you can't do that but you *can* lay it all on her when you start publicly getting flack for it, you're a big fat liar.

Which I see you've already noted, sorry, going to fold up my parachute now until I have some coffee

lol the last time I opened my mouth before coffee I ended up with a timeshare so you're doing OK. 🤣

didn't alito appear to lie about the specific cause of the flag going up, not realizing that the texts would show he was lying

[slams table] Thank you! He lied. We all know he lied.

i think there's enough space in the airwaves and newspapers to chase both avenues of criticism at length pretending that we have to choose one in situations like this is a failure we've tolerated for too long

I think stories like this help prevent the public from so easily believing “Republicans just say these things to rile the base, they are civilized and reasonable at home and we can trust them.” No reasonable person is spitting at their neighbors over yard signs.

agree but the inconsistency between the explanation originally given for the upside-down flag and the details in the new story may fall in the second category

What grinds my gears is that if the reason for wapo to pull the story had been “there’s bigger fish to fry”, then there would be a trail of “and here’s what we published instead” pieces. But I don’t see those

It’s his lie about when it happened that is the issue for me, rather than her behavior.

What are the chances Alito and Thomas will be so enraged by this recent media attention to find a way to kill Sullivan in the next 1a case?

Honestly, I think of both Mrs. Alito and Mrs. Thomas as, to use your phrase, “banal neighborhood dingbats.” They have a homogenous circle of friends, watch way too much Fox News, and bitterly resent criticism of their husbands. Except for the last point, this describes Justice Alito as well.

A big part of the Republican Party’s authoritarian moment involves pretty banal stuff, like well-off people with too much time on their hands getting radicalized by their media diet. I wish I could say this makes the moment less dangerous than if it were produced by devoted ideologues.

I’m not sure it does. My theory as to what is driving the decline in our politics is mostly about decadence, after all, not extremism. Our big clue we were in trouble shouldn’t have been January 6, or even Charlottesville, but Republicans flocking to vote for a guy who’d been married three times.

I cannot agree with your take and have to say so. This is exactly the kind of milquetoast stuff that allows fascism to metastasize. In no world are spouses radical islands isolated from one another. Their long marriage is testament to their shared views. So, no. He must recuse and this is no excuse.

Moreover, one is a complaint against a sitting SCOTUS justice that has absolutely no effect. The other is a clear pathway to demand recusal. Why would we "soften" our understanding of a very clear matter in favor of griping about his public record? The veil was lifted, I don't want to see it back.

You can demand recusal all you want. I disagree that there’s a “clear path” when a spouse expresses a viewpoint on a public issue.

There is that "Social" media at work. And so fast and so....constructive.

Yes, we can agree to disagree on this. Thanks for your response, I maintain that recusal is warranted (I do not think it will occur).

Is there a Latin phrase for a judicial philosophy of “owning the libs”?