Projection is a fascinating phenomenon. Certain people, ascribing to others the darkness pervading their own souls, are just certain that everyone is hiding skeletons and some secret life — it just has to be uncovered, is all. So perhaps the disappointment was profound when, after a hacker stole then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s emails in 2008, they revealed that she was in private the same person as in public.
And now, 16 years later, a similar thing has happened with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (and Chief Justice John Roberts). After an activist who believes America may become a “Christian theocracy” secretly recorded the two justices at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, hoping to maneuver the men into damning admissions, the media sank its teeth into Alito’s responses. An example:
“Alito, in secret recording, apparently agrees nation needs to return to ‘godliness,’” reads an ABC News headline in what must be the scoop of the century.
MSNBC was perhaps even more overwrought, proclaiming, “’MAGA pilled’: As mask slips on Supreme Court bias, radical Christian agenda comes into focus.” “Just this week,” announced station teleprompter reader Alex Wagner ominously, “we heard Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito tell a progressive activist that he believes we need to return America to a place of godliness.”
Oh, the humanity!
For the record, Alito didn’t actually “tell” the activist the above. Rather, that individual, one Lauren Windsor, told Alito the above to try to evoke a certain response. He answered, “I agree with you, I agree with you,” perhaps in an effort to placate a persistent Windsor and exit the conversation.
Regardless, as The Wall Street Journal writes, striking an incredulous note, after Windsor paid $650 to attend the SCOTUS gala and conducted her “sting” operation, “all she got was . . . this?”
“The fact that her story led the news on Tuesday says more about the media’s obsessions than anything else,” the paper observes.
In reality, the real story here is that Windsor’s audio proves Alito was telling the truth — something the media disputed — about how the flags flown at his home were his wife’s handiwork, not his. As the Journal relates, wife Martha-Ann Alito told Windsor:
“You know what I want? I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag, because I have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. And he’s like ‘Oh, please don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I’m deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up.’”
If you didn’t hear about this, perhaps it’s because “We Were WRONG: Alito Told the Truth About the Flags” is not a headline that floats the media’s boat.
As for the reaction to the “godliness” sentiment, it’s especially telling. Tens of millions of Americans, not just Christians but also some Jews and others, believe we need to “return to godliness.” It’s a quite anodyne assertion, akin to stating we need to return to virtue or return to return to tradition. Only someone far outside the mainstream — such as the militant secularists inhabiting newsrooms — would fancy it a smoking gun.
But this reflects our day’s polarization, which, mind you, is something else Windsor played on. Again trying to goad Alito, she said, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” relates Rolling Stone. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.” The magazine continues:
“I think you’re probably right,” Alito replies. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. … So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
Again, where’s the “there” there? “It’s a common observation that the U.S. is polarized on fundamental values,” as the WSJ puts it. In fact, it’s so common that the Left has expressed it.
Consider that in 2018, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey approvingly retweeted an article that spoke of “America’s New Civil War,” asserted that “there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture,” and called for “a complete marginalization of the Republican Party and its voters.”
“At some point, one side or the other must win — and win big,” the piece’s authors, two leftists, stated. “The side resisting change, usually the one most rooted in the past systems and incumbent interests, must be thoroughly defeated.”
Oddly, the mainstream media took no issue with this.
Windsor’s efforts were even more of a bust when she approached Chief Justice John Roberts. After asking him if there was “a role for the Court in, like, guiding us toward a more moral path,” he said “No.”
“I think the role for the court is deciding the cases,” Roberts explained. “If I start — would you want me to be in charge of guiding us toward a more moral path? That’s for the people we elect.”
When Windsor then insisted we live in “a Christian nation,” Roberts demurred. “I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not,” he replied. Wow, what a Christian nationalist.
When conservatives conduct secret video/audio sting operations (e.g., Project Veritas), we see things such as Democratic operatives recounting how they commit vote fraud, abortionists talking about selling babies’ body parts for profit, or a whistleblower revealing that the government is covering up the dangerous side effects of an untested drug it’s compelling people to take. The mainstream media respond with crickets, too.
To them, the great scoop is that, shocker of shockers, SCOTUS justices aren’t NPCs, or mere cardboard cutouts, but real people with real beliefs; what’s more, their spouses are real people with real beliefs. And you probably thought they all were empty vessels who didn’t even have a position on what a woman is.
In the final analysis, if the Alito “recording was meant to be a hit piece it failed miserably,” notes an MSN commenter. “Alito comes across as relatable to the vast majority of Americans.” And the media? Not so much.
