As the Senate vote approaches to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse laid into Republican senators for daring to question Biden’s nominee. In the Sunday Review, “On Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, How Low Will Senate Republicans Go?”
Greenhouse’s long-standing anti-conservative animus is usually motivated by her passion for the pro-choice movement, as shown by her loathing of Trump nominee Amy Barrett. This time she switched her outrage to phantom accusations of racism against Jackson’s Republican questioners.
Greenhouse, freed from pro forma expectations of journalistic objectivity, was tiresome in her predictably rancid accusations of Republican racism (also old hat for Times reporters, most offensively Carl Hulse).
Somehow her rant about the despicable treatment of Supreme Court nominees lacked the name “Brett Kavanaugh”:
When Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination reaches the Senate floor soon, every Republican who votes against her confirmation will be complicit in the abuse that the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee heaped on her.
Every mischaracterization of Judge Jackson’s record on the bench. Every racist dog whistle about crime. Every QAnon shout-out about rampant child pornography. Every innuendo that a lawyer who represents suspected terrorists supports terrorism.
Greenhouse warned:
So far, only one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, has said she will vote to confirm Judge Jackson. The Republican senators who don’t disavow their colleagues’ behavior during last week’s confirmation hearing will own it. All of it.
Every Republican voting no will be Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, asking, “On a scale of one to 10, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?”....
Each Republican will even sink so low as to be Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, moving her pen across the page as she read the right-wing talking points and demanding that the nominee define the word “woman.”….
Greenhouse left out Jackson’s risible retort, showing the nominee is afraid of offending the radical transgender lobby: “I’m not a biologist.”
Oddly, Greenhouse then praised the confirmation process of Obama nominee Elena Kagan in 2010, while presumptuously saying “There was no objective reason to oppose her."
She admitted “While the opposition was tedious and vapid, it wasn’t mean. No one accused her of coddling pedophiles or terrorists. The senators were following their leader. It was just business.”
Again, nothing about the "mean" questions directed at Kavanaugh by Democrats.
Flash forward to the Jackson hearings:
The difference between then and now is stark. The alternating question periods between Democratic and Republican senators induced a kind of whiplash. While the Democrats celebrated Judge Jackson’s accomplishments and the symbolism of her nomination, the Republicans oozed venom….
Another way of reading the hearings: The Democrats’ oozed emotive, simplistic praise for Jackson while reducing her to a symbol of black womanhood, while Republicans treated the hearings seriously and raised real-world policy issues.
