Take My Wife--Please!
They say that behind every successful man there's a woman hanging a flag upside down
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr., during confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee January 6, 2006. Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner Alito is in blue behind his left shoulder. Photo Credit: Rob Crandall/Shutterstock
Early on in one of his classic sketches, comedian Henry Youngman would deliver the line: “Take my wife—please,” and the audience would dissolve into laughter. It was Youngman’s most famous one-liner during the mid-to-late Cold War years, when sexist commentary on the tensions and travails of married life was a staple of the genre. As philosopher Daniel McInerny has observed, the line is funny (and really, only when spoken) because the word “take” allows Youngman to head fake the audience. “On the one hand, there is take in the sense of `consider,’” McInerny writes, consider my wife as an example. “On the other hand,” He explains, “there is take in the sense of `physically remove.’”
Since the kerfuffle about United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s MAGA flag collection began last week, I have not been able to get that Youngman line out of my head. Why? Because Alito is yet another government official—I am also thinking of New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who has chosen to defend himself against bribery charges by blaming his wife Nadine for the cash and gold bars hidden around the house—who has made a transparent attempt to protect his own reputation by throwing his spouse under the bus.
Take my wife. Please?
For those of you who have not been following the Alito story, an upside-down American flag appeared on a pole outside the Associate Justice’s residence in Alexandria, Virginia on January 17, 2021. That was three days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, and 11 days after a MAGA mob, allegedly inspired by Donald Trump and his circle, violently interrupted the symbolic, but constitutionally necessary, counting of electoral college votes. Some members of the mob carried an American flag hung upside down, which has long been a signal of democracy is in distress. It now signals affiliation with the Stop the Steal movement.
If it was not unsettling enough for someone charged with defending democracy to be identifying with insurrectionists, we learned this week that the Alitos (who are, I guess, flag-loving people) hung the “Appeal to Heaven,” a Revolutionary War banner also known as the “Pine Tree Flag” outside their vacation house on Long Beach Island. This flag was also carried by insurrectionists on January 6, and today means that you are a person who supports Christian nationalism and Donald Trump. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also has one hanging outside his office door, but notably, has not told anyone that it actually belongs to his wife.
Although none of the rest of us knew about the 2021 upside down flag, word that it was hanging outside the Alito home filtered back to the Court as the Justices were considering a request by Trump partisans to grant certiorari in a suit that proposed to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Alito, along with Associate Justices Neal Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, wanted to hear the case, but were overruled.
However, Alito says that personal pique over being on the losing side of this case had nothing to do with the treasonous flag outside his house. Why? Because (wait for it) it was Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, who hung the flag, amidst a neighborhood political dispute that got out of hand.
We know this because, when asked for comment by New York Times legal reporter Jodi Cantor, Justice Alito replied in an e-mail:
“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
As I understand it, the neighbor’s sign said “F*ck Trump,” and as the quarrel played out, the neighbor said to Martha-Ann: “See you next Tuesday!” And then Martha-Ann beetled home and put the flag up.
Okay, in a perverse way this all makes sense so far. I mean, do you even remember January 2021? Everyone was fried: fried from four years of Donald Trump being President; fried from both the 2016 and the 2020 campaigns; fried from two impeachments; fried from the MAGA faithful invading and trashing the Capitol; and fried from the knowledge that even though Joe Biden had won, none of this was going to end any time soon. So, while I, personally, would like to think I would not have played out a “Real Housewives of Alexandria” episode on my own cul-de-sac, who are any of us to judge?
Except, of course, that Samuel Alito is a judge, he is supposed to have better sense than that, and you would hope that his family did too.
But what is disconcerting is this. First, that Alito did not come home and say some version of “Jesus Christ on a cracker, what have you done, Martha-Ann?” take the damned flag down and write a note to Chief Justice John Roberts apologizing for the whole episode. No! He thought about it for a year, invested in another insurrection flag and hung it on his beach house!
Furthermore, now that the whole episode with the neighbor has come out, instead of taking the opportunity to apologize to the Court and the American public, Alito has blamed the 2021 episode on Martha-Ann.
Take my wife! please!
Obviously, the most important aspect of this little demi-scandal is the corruption of the law itself. As Kantor, Aric Toler and Julie Tate wrote earlier this week in the Times, the Alitos’ flag-waving has
prompted concerns from legal scholars and ethicists, and calls from dozens of Democratic lawmakers that the justice recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6. The news also drew criticism from some conservative politicians, including Senator Lindsey Graham, who said that displaying the inverted flag was “not good judgment.”
During the period the Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying at the justice’s New Jersey house, a key Jan. 6 case arrived at the Supreme Court, challenging whether those who stormed the Capitol could be prosecuted for obstruction.
In coming weeks, the justices will rule on that case, which could scuttle some of the charges against Mr. Trump, as well as on whether he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances at regaining the White House in the next one.
I don’t deny that these things are important. But who in their right minds ever thought that Samuel Alito was “impartial” to begin with? That he approaches each case with an open mind, ready to see something new in the law every day?
Instead, I have a lesser complaint and a greater complaint about this episode. My lesser complaint is that, having behaved in a thin-skinned, stupid, and venal way, Alito—like Bob Menendez—chose to compound the offense by deliberately humiliating his wife, exposing her as a crazy person who neighbors feel free to address as a lower-level female body part. It’s really just disgusting, dishonorable, and misogynist, even if Martha-Ann is herself an insurrectionist, which it seems that she is, at least in her heart.
My greater complaint is that Alito is lying. Whether he technically raised the upside down flag or not, he is, in the end, responsible for such an incident, just as Clarence Thomas was responsible for Ginny becoming involved in the actual plot to overthrow the election. We know that both justices approved of and supported these actions by their wives because neither one has come out and said: My spouse (preferably “my spouse and I) made an error in judgment, and we both regret it.
Because they don’t.
Hey dude, that’s my troll you’re talking about:
I’ve had several serious trolls in my time, but this week was a first. I have never had someone who trolled me condemned in the middle of a congressional hearing. And yet, there I was, listening to the testimony of three (more) college presidents before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, when Republican Representative Jim Banks (IN-3) called out Medill J-School prof Steven Thrasher as a “professional prognosticator” who should be disciplined. I think what Banks meant was professional protester, because otherwise it literally makes no sense.
In real life, Thrasher is a (highly unprofessional and nasty, in my limited experience) professor who became one of many faculty across the country who linked up their own pro-Palestinian politics with the student encampment movement. Republicans had leaked their interest in Thrasher earlier, resulting in an article at Fox News that draws selectively on his X feed.
Why did Thrasher go after me? Because I tweeted something that caused him to believe I was not 100% behind the student movement, which in fact, I was not. You can read Thrasher’s rebuttal of the committee’s allegations about his role at the NU encampment here, and his decision to put his own body between the student protesters and the police (which I commend him for.)
It is also the case, however, that Thrasher’s activities in support of the NU encampment far exceeded that one incident. I say that as a statement of fact, not a criticism: he has a longstanding commitment to this cause that goes well beyond online trolling and alliances with student political groups. That Thrasher published his statement on someone else’s X account, has locked his own account, and Schill refused to speak about faculty pending ongoing procedures suggests that some kind of review may be underway, and perhaps we will learn more.
Short takes:
Citing figures originally compiled by the Washington Post, Burton D. Sheppard writes at The New Republic that by February 6, 2021, election denialism had cost American taxpayers over half a billion dollars, and it has only gone up since. How to address frivolous charges of election fraud? Make candidates sign a pledge that they will accept the result of an election, or put a very large sum of money in escrow. Deposits “will vary from office to office: A Senate candidate should have to put down more than a state legislative candidate,” Sheppard writes. “Also, they’ll vary from state to state: Candidates in expensive states like Florida will put down more than candidates in Vermont. But in every case, the amount should pinch—it needs to be big enough to encourage all candidates to sign.” (May 24, 2024)
The Biden administration had ood news for 160,000 more student borrowers this week: your debt has been paid! These Americans qualify under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which “is targeted towards borrowers who work as teachers, members of law enforcement or public safety and employees at non-profits,” writes Mary Claire Wooten at The Alabama Political Reporter. “Those who qualify would have their remaining loan balance forgiven after working in one of these disciplines for 10 years and completing 120 monthly payments.” (May 24, 2024)
You can still get an abortion in the state of Utah, but you have to wait three days and graduate from an online class. As student journalists Caroline Krum and Abhilasha Khatri report at the University of Utah’s Daily Utah Chronicle, “The required module includes preliminary questions asking about the length of the pregnancy and whether the pregnancy was a result of rape, followed by four sections: childbirth, abortion, adoption and aid resources.” The person in search of the abortion must take quizzes on each section to verify that they are giving “informed consent.” My favorite assertion? “Healthcare providers call an unborn child either an embryo or a fetus depending on the age.” Like, it’s really an unborn child and they just use these medicalized euphemisms to trick you into thinking it isn’t already a human being! (May 22, 2024; H/T Jessica Valenti)
And don't forget Ginny Thomas endorsing the January 6 rioters and taking money from Leonard Leo, although her husband's reaction to that has been his typical brooding silence. I long for the days of Martha Mitchell.