I have to hand it to Ketanji Brown Jackson. She’s a better person than I am. Granted, that’s not a high bar. She went to Harvard Law School and is on the cusp of a historic Supreme Court confirmation. I have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and am on the cusp of my fifth fudgesicle of the day. She’s displayed poise and patience unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, whereas I invariably look like the last known photo of a guy who fell off a cruise ship.
So as a white dude raised on countless subtle messages designed to convince me my whiteness made me special, I’ve found Jackson’s nomination hearings particularly noxious. Oh, the dog whistles! I heard them loud and clear, assholes.
Because she was a public defender who represented Guantanamo Bay detainees, she must love and cherish terrorists. Yup, that tracks. I mean, just look at her. And because she weighed complex issues and mitigating circumstances in deciding child pornography cases—instead of automatically throwing the book at defendants—she must be a soft-on-crime child pornography superfan. It all makes sense now! After all, young men who commit sex crimes shouldn’t be handed truncated sentences. They should get lifetime appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court! Everyone knows that. Sheesh.
Of course, it’s easy for the fatuous fucknuts on the right to evoke any kind of image they want. “The Black lady wants to release all the perverts and terrorists” is an easy narrative to sell in places like Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the lily white Midwest backwater that disgorged me into the wider world some years back. I can almost hear them clucking away in their boozy redoubts, confident that no one would ever dare gainsay them in their own holy temples (e.g., Chili’s, Applebee’s, the buffet restaurant that used to be a Hardee’s before the Shopko closed down, etc.).
The reason Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham, and Tom Cotton kept flogging the same dead horses during these hearings is they knew it would work. People in Manitowoc and other predominantly white American towns will scarf down these sound bites like bonbons and give their loathsome authors undue credit for their disingenuous dog and pony show. Guaranteed.
Had I been in that chair, after the 80th time they asked me the same child pornography question in a slightly different way, I’d have answered every subsequent query with “I like beer.” Because fuck these flagrant fuckholes. But, again, she’s a better person than I am.
Of course, as angry as I am right now, I have to think we can turn some of these bitter lemons into lemonade. You see, one thing I’ve learned from 10-plus years of marriage is that women love being interrupted and especially love seeing other women being interrupted, and in no way do they ever hold a grudge over it. Hey, I’m not a video guy, but I imagine a supercut of the infinite Cruz-Graham-Cotton-Hawley interrupt-a-thon we just witnessed might be useful in future fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts. Just a hunch. If they want to dishonestly play to their base, the least we can do is show the ugly truth to our own peeps.
I don’t know if you watched any of these hearings. If you did, I can only imagine you’re spitting nails, too. If you didn’t, and you’d prefer to feel inspired instead of grievously pissed off, I’d recommend skipping over the child porn-obsessed Republican shit-weasels and starting today’s testimony at 8:34:00 to hear Sen. Cory Booker’s eloquent and passionate take on Jackson’s nomination. Or fast-forward to 9:58:45 to hear the nominee’s own stirring story about her early days at Harvard.
Here’s the gist of that:
I haven’t been this pissed off at Republicans in a while, and they piss me off every blessed day. If you feel the same way I do, I sincerely hope you can hold onto that righteous anger up through, and well beyond, the midterms. Having spent the past five years propping up a treasonous tub of goo who clumsily cosplayed as president, that party deserves its comeuppance. For the love of God, let’s give it to them.
Conservatives currently have a 6-3 SCOTUS majority, and yet they can’t stop crying about how unfair everything is. By all means, let’s make them cry some more.
End of rant.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Cruz Sucks Wrinkly Goat Balls Talk.
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