In a new, secret recording, the Supreme Court justice’s wife bemoans having to “look across the lagoon at the Pride flag”
Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme CourtJustice Samuel Alito, is incensed about seeing rainbow Pride flags during Pride Month, according to a new recording obtained by Rolling Stone. If it were up to her, she would be flying a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag in response. Or she might design her own flag, one sporting the Italian word for “shame.”
In recent weeks, Martha-Ann Alito has been at the center of a national firestorm over two flags seen flying at their residences that have been associated withright-wing movements that question the legitimacy of the results of the 2020 election. Justice Alito has blamed his wife for flying those flags — and rebuffed calls from Democratic lawmakers to recuse himself from upcoming decisions in cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Like her husband, Mrs. Alito is unbowed by the criticism and controversy — as she makes clear in comments recorded by liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor. Windsor, posing as a Christian conservative, spoke at length with Mrs. Alito at a dinner reception hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society last week. Windsor attended the dinner as a dues-paying member and bought a ticket; a colleague joined her.
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When Windsor tells Mrs. Alito she is being persecuted and depicted as “a convenient stand-in for anybody who’s religious,” the justice’s wife gets quieter, and her tone turns more serious: “Look at me, look at me. I’m German. I’m from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you. And there will be a way — it doesn’t have to be now — but there will be a way they will know. Don’t worry about it. God — you read the Bible. Psalm 27 is my psalm. Mine. Psalm 27, the Lord is my God and my rock. Of whom shall I be afraid? Nobody.”
Talking to these people while pretending to be Christian conservatives or racists seems like the best way to catch them out. Smart of the documentary film maker.
While I do think this is probably the case, there is always the problem of politicians being two-faced and pandering. You might never know what they truly think or feel about something, since it changes depending on who is near them. They might not even have an opinion save for the one reflected to their audience at the time. It's a problem either way, and obviously in this case we have more to go on than just this one conversation. But it is something I try to keep in mind when I hear something a politician secretly said while in a terrible crowd.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.
This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.