NY Times’ latest (failed) hit on Clarence Thomas: new attack on democracy
In what was plainly intended as an exposé on its front page, Sunday’s New York Times presented a near-4,000-word piece on Justice Clarence Thomas’ relationship with the Horatio Alger Association, a charity that . . . offers big scholarships each year to worthy low-income kids.
What a monster!
Seriously, how is Thomas “meeting with and mentoring the recipients of millions of dollars a year in Horatio Alger college scholarships, many of whom come from backgrounds that mirror his own” anything but admirable?
Apparently, because it means hobnobbing with the super-rich. Writers Abbie VanSickle and Steve Eder regularly intone darkly about how Thomas secretly longs to be rich, and mingles with wealthy Alger donors, getting free trips, football tickets, etc.
Yet they also admit “he is hardly alone among his colleagues in accepting benefits from rich friends and sympathetic organizations.”
Times editors did their best to package this as outrageous: “Thomas Joined Elite Club, And Court’s Door Opened,” ran the print headline, and “Connections to Rich Members, Who Enjoy Access to a Closely Guarded Space.”
Except that “door opened” and “access” refer simply to how Thomas gets the charity the use of Supreme Court facilities for its annual award ceremony. The writers suggest there’s something dubious in that, but don’t even cite any “ethics expert” to actually question it.
The online headlines also go on about “access,” but not a word in the piece suggests any of this influenced Thomas’ decisions or led to anything inappropriate.
The piece smells of having been commissioned so the Times could join the left-wing assault on the high court’s legitimacy, following up on the ProPublica hit jobs paid for by lefty dark money.
None of it has amounted to a hill of beans, though the sheer number of empty “exposés” is grist for liberal opinionators and politicians to thunder about a supposed ethics crisis among the Supremes.
Big picture: The Supreme Court is working far better than any other branch of the federal government, and with much less partisan dysfunction.
Half its cases this year were decided 9-0. At least one liberal justice was in the majority for nine out of 10 rulings. Members of the “conservative” wing regularly joined the liberal bloc to rule for the Biden administration.
But progressives are furious that the high court’s not imposing their agenda, and sometimes blocks it.
So they’ve set out to destroy it, or maybe just intimidate it into obedience.
The folks who keep insisting they’re the “defenders of democracy” are the biggest threat to it.
