Wednesday, January 11, 2006

wink, wink, part II

Okay, now I'm disturbed by two things. One, I detail below.

Two, is Alito's lack of recollection about his involvement in a group at Princeton called "Concerned Alumni of Princeton". Not so much his involvement in the group, which anybody could write off as a youthful indescretion, admit their error, then apologise for (whether they were sorry or not). No, I'm disturbed by his claim that he doesnt remember it.
Sure it was over two decades ago. But guess what, while I cant remember what I ate for lunch twenty years ago, I can remember where I ate a lot of my meals. To forget details of meetings is understandable, to forget that you went to meetings seems...

false.

My grandfather, when he was over 80 years old, told me that as a teenager, he had briefly belonged to the KKK (until he discovered that it was a hate club, not a boy's club). Funny that after over sixty years he could remember (he also remembered a poem he had learned in high school by Edna St. Vincent Millay). One might think, "well, he remembered it because he found it offensive". To which I would have to answer, did Alito not find the CAP offensive? He certainly had no trouble with the group in 1985, when he cited his membership while applying for a position in the Reagan Administration.
Was it just a bit of resume padding?
Maybe he had a buddy in CAP, and he signed some papers and paid an entry fee, but never went to a meeting, or rally, or bakesale, or keg party or whatever those guys did besides try to maintain a rich, white male status quo. Sure, that's it. And then he thought of it while bulking up a job application ("Oh yeah, hey, Biff was in CAP, and he's Reagan's undersecretary's undersecretary, and even though I never went to a meeting, or contributed any cookies for a sale, I did kinda sign up, and there was that all-night stripper party after finals that time that I went to, so I'll put that down, too). Let's face it, it was the Eighties, Greed Was Good, and if you were a Reaganite it was OK to be an asshole, as long as it was to people who were less well off than yourself, and besides he really, really needed that job 'cause otherwise how was he ever going to be a Supreme Court Justice if he didnt start networking right now.

Maybe.

But, really, I'm not buying it. And considering the Mindset of Conservative Powers in Washington, I suspect they know exactly what the score is on this question, and they like it.

1 comment:

rev. billy bob gisher ©2008 said...

i am disturbed that he will be voted in or out, only because of polls. nobody has any balls anymore. they all lost them around the time mary jo kopechne drowned.