Monday, February 24, 2014

White Man Angered When Black Man Refuses To Sing And Dance For Him

http://www.law.asu.edu/Portals/31/convo-toobin-250.jpg

 Jeffrey Toobin is one of those tenured media figures on the Left. You know, New Yorker,born into a very well to do family that already worked in the biz for the alphabet networks, Harvard and Harvard law where he met all the right people, Democrat uber alles, a gig with the New Republic, one of the team that tried and failed miserably to put Ollie North behind bars, CNN, then the New Yorker and frequent stints on the alphabet networks himself as a legal expert and talking head, lefty Obama supporting JournoList member in good standing.

But there's something rotten under the facade. While he's apparently tolerant of black folks who stay on the Leftist plantation and whom he can, deep down, patronize, give him an independent black man who thinks for himself and doesn't put up with that nonsense and Mr. Toobin gets downright hostile when that sort of black man doesn't 'know his place'.

Toobin has always hated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, because Toobin is that kind of white Leftist and Clarence Thomas is not his kind of black man.In the past, he's said Thomas' legal views are strange and extreme, called him "a nut" and said that the Justice was "furious all the time."

In other words, Toobin sees him as an ignorant, crazy, angry black man. Now where have we heard that sort of language before?

Recently though, Toobin took in one step further, in The New Yorker.Now, he's furious at Clarence Thomas because he won't entertain him!

Here's a few of the more revealing bits from Toobin's piece entitled "Clarence Thomas' Disgraceful Silence':

As of this Saturday, February 22nd, eight years will have passed since Clarence Thomas last asked a question during a Supreme Court oral argument. His behavior on the bench has gone from curious to bizarre to downright embarrassing, for himself and for the institution he represents.{...}

These days, Thomas only reclines; his leather chair is pitched so that he can stare at the ceiling, which he does at length. He strokes his chin. His eyelids look heavy. Every schoolteacher knows this look. It’s called “not paying attention.” {...}

Thomas is happy to lay waste to decades, even centuries, of constitutional law. Clearly, then, Thomas could have contributed to this spirited, important debate. Instead, on this day he was, as usual, checked out.

For better or worse, Thomas has made important contributions to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. He has imported once outré conservative ideas, about such issues as gun rights under the Second Amendment and deregulation of political campaigns, into the mainstream.

In question-and-answer sessions at law schools, Thomas has said that his colleagues talk too much, that he wants to let the lawyers say their piece, and that the briefs tell him all he needs to know. But this—as his colleagues’ ability to provoke revealing exchanges demonstrates—is nonsense. Thomas is simply not doing his job.

By refusing to acknowledge the advocates or his fellow-Justices, Thomas treats them all with disrespect. It would be one thing if Thomas’s petulance reflected badly only on himself, which it did for the first few years of his ludicrous behavior. But at this point, eight years on, Thomas is demeaning the Court. Imagine, for a moment, if all nine Justices behaved as Thomas does on the bench. The public would rightly, and immediately, lose all faith in the Supreme Court. Instead, the public has lost, and should lose, any confidence it might have in Clarence Thomas.


'Checked out'? 'Not paying attention'? Showing 'disrespect' for his betters? You can see how Toobin perceives this. And yes, this is very much about race. Earlier in the piece, Toobin related how Left -leaning Justice Stephan Breyer interrupted a lawyer presenting a case to mouth off that the language in the Constitution "means something different over time",  giving the definitions of “due process” and “interstate commerce” as examples of "language that had clearly changed".To which Justice Scalia responded with a razor sharp comeback, “The two examples that Justice Breyer gives are examples where we gave it a meaning that was different from what it said.” Even Toobin admits that one had the entire courtroom chuckling at Breyer's discomfiture, but Toobin doesn't call Breyer stupid, embarrassing or out of touch.

No, that's reserved for Clarence Thomas, because he doesn't entertain the likes of Toobin with questions and off the wall comments and because he doesn't think the way Toobin thinks he should, being a black man. Instead, Justice Thomas listens, consults his briefs, and writes opinions and dissents that make it clear that far from being 'checked out' or 'not paying attention' he was listening to every word.

Or, is Toobin implying that Justice Thomas is too stupid to be writing those opinions, an ignorant,angry black man like him?

The odd thing is, Supreme Court Justices asking questions from the bench are a fairly recent phenomenon, dating from the Rehnquist court in 1986.Before that, it rarely occurred. And if Jeffrey Toobin was half as brilliant as he thinks he is, he'd know that.

But somehow, because Justice Thomas won't sing and dance for him, Toobin mentally divines that the public has lost confidence in Clarence Thomas, (most American probably don't even know whom he is, like most Supreme Court Justices), that the other members of Court see Justice Thomas as being 'disrespectful' and that he 'isn't paying attention'. Did he ask them?

Toobin clearly says that Thomas is being disrespectful, petulant, lazy ('not doing his job') uppity, ( he has those outre' views and disagrees with his betters) and doesn't know how to act properly ('downright embarrassing'). Again, where else have we heard this kind of language applied to black men before?

Or just maybe, is Toobin just upset because Clarence Thomas, a black man, is a Supreme Court Justice and Toobin never will be? Because  a 'disrespectful', lazy, out of touch black man whom Toobin of course thinks is a lot stupider than himself and has all those wrong, improper views has risen above Jeffrey Toobin in life's firmament and accomplishments? How dare Clarence Thomas succeed like that!

It sure sounds like it, doesn't it? Hidden, re-channelled envy is,after all, a fairly common source of bigotry.

And off course, the media is silent about this, because Toobin is a loyal soldier for the Leftist cause and the Democrat party as well as a well connected legacy talking head. Can you imagine what they'd say is if Charles Krauthammer or Glenn Beck talked this way about Al Sharpton or  Justice Sonia Sotomayor?


1 comment:

Geoffrey Britain said...

"Or just maybe, is Toobin just upset because Clarence Thomas, a black man, is a Supreme Court Justice and Toobin never will be? Because a 'disrespectful', lazy, out of touch black man whom Toobin of course thinks is a lot stupider than himself and has all those wrong, improper views has risen above Jeffrey Toobin in life's firmament and accomplishments? How dare Clarence Thomas succeed like that!"

I agree as to your view of Thomas and mostly as to Toobin. However, it is not envy and jealousy that motivates Toobin's animus toward Thomas but his perception that Thomas is improperly ungrateful. Thomas' conservative (classical liberal) views are anathema to Toobin.