Alito Wrap-Up: Dems Get Schooled In Girl Power

Marthaalitoleaves-2

“He’s a Springsteen fan, history buff and marksman. He can whip up a salmon pate…. His marriage proposal began as an offer to take dancing lessons.” — Martha Alito

It’s a sad day in Donkeyland when the Dems get upstaged not by an extreme and uncooperative SCOTUS nominee, but by his otherwise insignificant other.

As it turned out, the highlight of the week month was an “attack by proxy” attributed to the Democrats but staged by a Republican — and a member of the Senate “Gang of 14” no less. … And did you know that Lindsey Graham — in what was apparently a clear ethical conflict-of-interest — was part of the team that prepped Scalito for the hearings (Alito and His Coaches: For Supreme Court Nominee, Hearings are an Inside Game – link)? I hadn’t.

Mrs. Alito’s crying episode not only brought sympathetic attention to a supposedly embattled spouse, it rolled into the Senate as stealthily as a “trojan horse,” allowing the Repubs to steal the women’s banner right out from under the N.O.W.- backed boys in blue. Martha’s show of emotion (real or feigned) achieved two symbolic ends. First, it helped frame Alito as part of a couple, softening the sense that steel wool Sammy doesn’t just play a robot during Senate hearings, but is one on the job. Second, it bathed Alito’s hearing in female energy, washing away any recognition that Alito is generally unconscious to the fact that man comes in more than one gender.

So, here we are, five years into the Bush Show, and it’s still the White House giving Dems the dancing lessons in PR. Hat tip to my readers for explaining Rove’s lack of preparation for Bush’s worse-than-awkward New Orleans drop in last week.

With all the points piled up from the “Martha moment,” what else mattered?

(images: CNN video. Screen shots. January 11, 2006. Alito Confirmation Hearings. Washington. Via thepoliticalteen.net)

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Your Turn: Stage Left

Going Back Into Analysis

jonst

Look, part of this stuff you can blame on the Dems. And I have. See other comments of mine on this subject. But a big part of it is the MSM. And the MSM is, not completely, but for the most part, both bought and sold; and hopelessly addicted to this soap opera crap. So here was a change to not only please the owners of the MSM, but give the masses something as well. I mean do you really think they, the masses, or most people, for that matter, are going to stay with a discussion of the ‘unitary executive theory’? Give them (us?) weeping women everytime. That they understand. I heard one commentator lament the fact “they were endlessly droning on about legal theory”. Imagine that. At a hearing for a nomination to the USSC. Now that’s a surprise. The enemy is our own short attention span.
black dog barking

The root of the media problem is that network TV coverage tries to cram the committee hearing into the wrong package, to make an entertainment widget out of an information doo-dad. No wonder the commentator is frustrated, the subject matter is of real-time interest to a relative handful and the really interested viewers have no interest in whatever the commentator brings to the broadcast. It’s a lot like watching TV coverage of a baseball game. So called color commentary rarely rises even to distraction. A baseball fan can watch a well produced TV broadcast of a game with the sound off.
(By this analogy, Mrs Alito is a streaker disrupting the ball game. Good chance for a few seconds in the nightly TV sports roundup, not likely to make the paper’s coverage of the game.)
Was l’affaire de la femme Alito staged? Two people acting in concert could pull it off. Mrs Roberts showed us that spouses can be dramatically supportive in these hearings. Justice Thomas showed us the right distraction, the absurd “high tech lynching” , can put a wavering bid back on the track.
readytoblowagasket

Alito himself certainly doesn’t inspire sympathy, and I don’t think it will matter what his wife did or how many people got up there and said what a nice, nice guy he is. It’s like trying to feel sympathy for a rock. In his own way he’s distinctly unlikable, like Bork was, only Alito is less overtly combative and hostile. It is to the Republicans’ credit for making so much out of so little — and in keeping with their trademark juvenile style — but I don’t think Mrs. Alito’s crying jag will ultimately qualify as a Trojan horse. Bush, on the other hand, clearly is a Trojan horse.
Cactus

Where oh where are the comments about packing the court?
Where oh where are the comments about Martha’s hair-do?
Where oh where is there an opposition party?
Bathed in female energy? By walking OUT? Puh-leeze!
Only the bouffant hair-do crowd has sympathy with her. The reaction of women I know is: Phhhtt! However, it did get her an interview in the radical left-wing San Diego paper. Just what Rove et al. wanted.
Didn’t Nixon’s Watergate scandal also have a Martha?
jt from BC

black dog barking, loved the analogy I visualise a streaking: bod-soul-tears-torture and many other nonsensical things running across the playing field glad I wasn’t there it would have been impossible to curb hysteria laughter even if it meant possible “extraordinary rendition” to Syria were a few of my fellow Canadians received extended holidays courtesy of my American cousins. Arar’s hearings I watched for over a hundred hours without a peep of commentary. CSpan should carry these things not soap opera networks.
marysz

With the Roberts’ nomination, didn’t we have to put up with the sight of him and his wife being huggy-kissy? And now the weepy Mrs. Alito. The Alitos aren’t as physically attractive as the Roberts, so the sight of them smooching wouldn’t be as photogenic or appetizing to the public. The brief mini-drama of Mrs. Alito crying is just enough. Women are being interjected into these staged public appearances by an administration that has nothing but contempt for women’s rights. The performative Mrs. Roberts and Alito did a good enough job of distracting the public from the real issue–the repellent right-wing ideology that their husbands are eager to foist on the rest of the country.
steve laudig

i’d cry too if I saw how bad that dress fabric showed up on television with that blouse.
http://areyoudressed.blogspot.com momly

I would love to know what triggered the tears. That’s the story, not the tears themselves.
jcs

I would have liked images and some analysis of Mrs. Alito’s earlier images with a knowing smirk and Cheshire cat (after eating the canary) smile on the earlier day of the hearings when Biden and other Dems pushed or tried to push stonewall Alito on Roe and presidential power, as though these were predictable questions that he was prepared for and “amusing” for that reason. Reminded me of the expresssions of Bush in many situations with looks he is now coached to repress. I found that they were two sides of the Janus face in watching her expressiveness as counterpoint to his “facemask.”
jcs

I would have liked images and some analysis of Mrs. Alito’s earlier images with a knowing smirk and Cheshire cat (after eating the canary) smile on the earlier day of the hearings when Biden and other Dems pushed or tried to push stonewall Alito on Roe and presidential power, as though these were predictable questions that he was prepared for and “amusing” for that reason. Reminded me of the expresssions of Bush in many situations with looks he is now coached to repress. I found that they were two sides of the Janus face in watching her expressiveness as counterpoint to his “facemask.”