Transcript
Those voices are discussing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the triple-named figure poised to do less for women’s rights than Andrew “Dice” Clay.
Confirmed by the Senate on Monday, Barrett’s rush to judgment has once again tarnished the high court’s longstanding reputation among Supremes, bumping it down in the rankings far behind the streetwear company and barely ahead of the Taco Bell nachos.
Ms. Barrett has spent the majority of her career at Notre Dame University, just like that loveable defensive end walk-on Rudy — but unlike an aging college football player whose neurological state is the result of repeated head trauma, the associate Supreme Court justice’s jurisprudence is informed by the blunt force impact of religious extremism.
Closely linked to a Catholic organization known as “People of Praise,” which sounds less like a religious group and more what like the voters who choose the winners of the Academy Awards call themselves, the organization opposes abortion, gay rights, and marriage equality, on the grounds that doing anything that makes one’s life easier clearly contradicts the Bible.
Believing that men are the leaders of their families in the model of Jon Gosselin, regional female leaders of the group even refer to themselves as handmaids, painfully spacing out in front of the camera like Elizabeth Moss while their husbands speak in tongues.
Pope Francis himself has criticized groups such as these for “usurping individual freedoms” and delegating “important decisions about their lives to others,” presumably placing his faith in presumably neutral governing bodies — like the Supreme Court.
Following the same theme that nothing’s better than a strict regulation, Amy is a constitutional originalist, believing this nation’s collection of supreme laws is not a living document like a Google sheet whose font size keeps being changed by an anonymous squid, zebra, and rat, but rather that it’s a Word document with track changes turned off because it’s frozen in amber like that mosquito in Jurassic Park.
The law of the land is an action figure that you’re not allowed to take out of the box, because playing around with the toy might destroy its value even though Baby Yoda’s cultural cache never had that much standing ground in the first place.
Now, I’m not interested in trashing Barrett because she has garden-variety right-leaning views; as far as I’m concerned, appointing another conservative judge is just another tortilla strip in the taco salad bowl known as the Trump administration.
But like I said in the episode about Justice Ginsburg last month, as you remember, as I’m sure you do, thanks for listening, it’s not right to treat this new lifetime member of the court as if she’s rightfully earned her place — Princess Jasmine’s understudy is taking over the Broadway role because Aladdin pushed the old actress off the flying carpet.
The balance of the court is now firmly conservative, 6-3, and not what people wish it was, 69, because Republicans cheated by denying Barack Obama the opportunity to seat Merrick Garland, who was either a highly-regarded and qualified judge admired by both parties or an annexed Western European territory from the fifth century.
The entire process to nominate, confirm, and swear in the new justice barely took 30 days — it takes more time to screen, hire, and train someone to man the burrito station because Chipotle at least cares about the appearance of the integrity of its sofritas.
It was the first time that a justice was confirmed without the support of a single member of the minority party since 1868, the year that Ulysses S Grant became president, Campbell’s Soup was founded, and Robert Zemeckis released his last watchable film.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be the ultimate check on the political process, but it’s hard to see how Lady Justice can keep her scales balanced while Mitch McConnell pulls her onto the concrete like she’s a statue of Christopher Columbus.
If elected, Joe Biden has said he will form a bi-partisan commission to recommend changes to the makeup of the Supreme Court, like a new shade of rouge for Justice Bryer.
But whether it’s achieved through adding seats to the bench, ending lifelong tenure, or picking names out of a drum every night like a Powerball drawing, intentionally breaking the rules in order to fulfill the religious right’s longterm goal of depriving women their right to choose — will ultimately leave the rest of the country with no choice
