Don’t Blame Ted Cruz — He’s Suffering From MDS
The devolution of our political culture continues
The Senate hearings this week on the nomination of Katanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court were dreadful.
It had nothing to do with Judge Jackson, who conducted herself with intelligence, grace and equanimity, although at times, while listening to a long, rambling soliloquy from one of her interrogators, she had an expression that seemed to say “What planet am I on?” You tried to hide it Judge, but we could see it in your eyes behind those studious-but-stylish glasses. And we can’t say we blame you.
It had nothing to do with the content per se, which delved into case law, settled law, minimum sentencing guidelines and other legal arcania. All of that made it quite boring, as any hearing on a Supreme Court nominee should be. If you ever need help getting to sleep just pick up a copy of “The Almanac of the Federal Judiciary” — that’ll do the trick. John Grisham or Scott Turow may make the law exciting, but they have to make stuff up to do it. In everyday life, the law is as stimulating as an IKEA instruction manual or an insurance policy. Have you ever actually read one of those “terms and conditions” documents you have to accept and click on a website? Of course you haven’t — they’re impossible to read.
No, what made the hearings so dreadful were the contrived and condescending performances by a couple of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. They were cringeworthy. It was as if they showed up for a rave, jacked up on Molly with glow-stick necklaces, then found out the DJ had canceled, but went ahead and partied anyway. Sen. Ben Sasse rightly called it out as “jackassery.”
“Part of the jackassery we often see around (Congress) is people mugging for short-term camera opportunities,” he noted. “Cameras change human behavior.” If there was ever any doubt of that, just watch TikTok for five minutes.
This isn’t new in politics, of course. If you want definitive proof of gravity, just observe how politicians are drawn to the camera. There’s a joke as old as the hills about Chuck Schumer, but it could be true of most politicians. “Q: What’s the shortest distance between two points? A: The distance between (name any politician) and a television camera.”
But this natural affinity between politicians and cameras (you have to create a profile to be electable, after all) has metastasized into something far more insidious, to the point where we can actually give it a name — MDS, or Media Derangement Syndrome. MDS was catalyzed by our omnimedia culture, one in which the media complex is constantly scouring the environment for clickable moments. Politicians are only too happy to oblige. Media platforms get eyeballs and politicians get visibility; thus was born the modern Media Political Complex.
It may have been that at one moment in history U.S. senators gauged their effectiveness by how well they framed an issue or how adroitly they asked a tough question while still honoring some level of political decorum. Now, effectiveness is judged by whether you went viral or if you’re trending on Twitter. Just ask Ted Cruz, who engaged in two minutes of manufactured outrage at committee Chairman Dick Durbin then, as soon as he was done talking, name-checked himself on Twitter. Cruz, in fact, has morphed into a performance queen of sorts. How else do we explain this exchange between Cruz and Judge Jackson if not as a set-up for a video to go viral in the right-wing media universe?
The Senate, of course, considers itself a “deliberative” institution. The House is more like a mosh pit where members often shoot before they aim, but it’s in the Senate where weighty issues are given the time and thought they deserve. Or so we’re told. Marsha Blackburn may have thought she was engaging in Socratic dialogue here, taking the time to discuss the nuances of gender identity, but it came off more like a 10th-grade playground taunt.
The sad thing is that it hardly mattered who Blackburn was interrogating except for the fact that they were put forward under a Democratic administration. Prima facie (to appropriate a legal term), Judge Jackson is eminently qualified to matriculate to the Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Breyer, universally admired and for whom she clerked, has called her “brilliant,” noting her unique blend of “thoughtfulness” and “common sense.” She was confirmed to an appellate judgeship less than a year ago with the support of three Republican senators and she is a relative by marriage to former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (not to say that’s a material qualification, but interesting nonetheless). She graduated from Harvard in 1992 and from Harvard Law in 1996 (both cum laude). In between, she worked as a reporter and researcher at Time magazine, earning extra credit in this recovering journalist’s heart.
Here’s another thing about her. After Harvard, she attained three federal clerkships, worked at four elite law firms, and served two stints with the U.S. Sentencing Commission. But in the middle of that episode of her career, she did something unusual. She became a public defender for three years. The last Supreme Court justice to have experience representing criminal defendants was Thurgood Marshall, who retired in 1991. As a public defender, she said, she came to see how little defendants understood about the judicial system and what was happening to them, so she made it her mission to ensure they did.
“I think that’s really important for our entire justice system because it’s only if people understand what they’ve done, why it’s wrong, and what will happen to them if they do it again that they can really start to rehabilitate,” she said. In a society built on the rule of law, that’s important. Just for context, Sen. Blackburn earned a degree in home economics from Mississippi State University, eventually going into the event promotion business. No disrespect meant to either the institution or the profession.
All of this, of course, is beside the point. There were some people on the Senate Judiciary Committee for whom Judge Jackson’s CV was immaterial. They were suffering from MDS and for them, Judge Jackson was only a widget (in computer lingo, an application, or a component of an interface, that enables a user to perform a function or access a service) in their incessant striving for headlines and clicks. In their stagecraft, such as it was, they turned their backs on the gravity and nobility of assessing the worthiness of a Supreme Court nominee, both on the merits and the context. I started out this post by describing their behavior as dreadful. But it was more. It was shameful.
Russ, what was your analysis of the hearings of Amy C Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh in comparison? I think Ketanji Brown Jackson got off lightly in the questioning (not a good memory for sure). Generally, I was underwhelmed by her responses and presentation. Basically, unimpressed.