Justly Revered

As I have said many times before, Jay Nordlinger is a national treasure.  His Impromtus column today is typically brilliant and touches on a topic that is close to me:  the treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas by the media:

We are all familiar with slurs on Clarence Thomas, including the one that goes, “He’s just a puppet of Scalia, you know. He has no ideas or opinions of his own, he just follows what Scalia and the other conservatives do.” Anyone who knows anything knows this is nonsense, of course. But a lot of people know nothing — and spout off regardless. 

In a 2003 Impromptus, I wrote about a disgusting cartoon in the Palm Beach Post. It depicted Thomas as a puppet on Scalia’s hand. Scalia made some pronouncement, to which Thomas replied, “Oh, yeah! Say what?” 

There is nothing a conservative can say or do that will not be described as racist. There is nothing a liberal can say or do — no matter how racist, no matter how vile — that will be described as racist. 

I thought of this last week when reading a column in the Washington Post. The writer said, “Early in the oral argument, the conservatives — Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts (a silent Clarence Thomas can be assumed to be their tacit tagalong) — explored the idea that . . .” 

What would happen is a conservative writer described a liberal black justice as the “tacit tagalong” of others?

The assessment that Thomas is a Scalia clone and follows whatever he does is frankly a pathetic argument that has been justly skewered in the past years (read here for starters).  The smears of Thomas by some in the media (Jeffery Toobin, I am talking to you) show that they haven't bothered to read a single sentence Thomas has written and instead report whatever his detractors say about him as fact.