Right-wing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito got busted flying an upside-down flag outside his house just after the Capitol riot, which means it was time for the Media Research Center to play defense for him once again with a lot of distraction and deflection. Curtis Houck, led the defend-and-distract brigade in a May 17 post:
ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA) and NBC’s Today eagerly touted in faux serious tones early Friday a new front in the left’s war to delegitimize, shame, and even attempt to remove conservative judges as The New York Times published a screeching story about an upside down flag flying at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021.
Liberal journalist Jodi Kantor typed this up on behalf of the liberal Borg and even appeared in the GMA segment, arguing Alito signed with the flag he’s a far-right conspiracy theorist.
“We turn now to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito under fire after The New York Times published a picture of an upside down flag flown outside his home in 2021 just days after the January 6 riot,” fill-in co-host Rebecca Jarvis began.
Longtime Supreme Court correspondent Terry Moran was in need of a fainting couch as he huffed Alito’s been “no stranger to controversy” with this new story “stunning and unprecedented”.
“Flying the flag upside down is meant to be a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger, according to the U.S. flag code. It’s also been used as a symbol of protest…and, after the 2020 election, some of Donald Trump supporters adopted the upside down flag to object to Biden’s victory,” he added.
Moran also pointed to Kantor having obtained e-mails from fellow leftist quacks — aka Alito’s neighbors — whining “the flag was flying for multiple days” and were concerned about this “political statement”.
Houck did not explain how a newspaper story could be “screeching” given that paper and text typically don’t make any sound at all, nor did he provide evidence for how he know every single one of Alito’s neighbors are “leftist quacks.”
Houck then assumed that the neighbors deserved to have that flag flown in their face: “What signs did Alito’s neighbors have? To what degree did they harass the Alitos? Heck, what’s the political stance of Alito’s neighborhood? And does Brett Kavanaugh and the man who wanted to assassinate him and his family Nicholas Roske jog your memories?” Houck offered no evidence that any Alito neighbor was planning to assassinate him.
Houck concluded by bestowing victimhood on Alito:
Like with Justice Clarence Thomas, the liberal media will stop at nothing to either force out or remove Alito, Thomas, and any other jurist who doesn’t kowtow to a certain ideology. As we’ve seen when leftist freaks have plopped themselves outside the homes of right-leaning justice, the liberal media have little regard for the children, spouses, and loved ones of the justices.
You mean like the regard the MRC has for Hunter Biden?
Nicholas Fondacaro turned his daily hate-watch of “The View” into an aggressive defense of Alito:
Joy Behar, the same co-host of ABC’s The View who thought the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was the military alliance that defeated Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, was back with more of her wisdom during Friday’s show. According to her, two elements of the U.S. Constitution – both present since the founding – were “un-American.”
“These lifetime assignments [to the U.S. Supreme Court] have got to stop and they need to fix the Electoral College also because that’s un-American,” she shrieked.
Behar was triggered by newly released, years-old photos of an inverted American flag allegedly outside the home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito several days AFTER the riot at the Capitol. The latest smear campaign against conservative justices suggested – without evidence – that it was to show solidarity with the rioters.
Ignoring or ignorant of the meaning of an inverted flag, Behar declared it was something wholly invented by “MAGA people”:
[…]Faux-conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin contributed to the misinformation by misquoting the U.S. Flag Code. According to her: “…the American flag should not be flown upside down except in moments of national – dire national distress.”
The code actually says: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” Historically, an inverted flag has been used my American ships to signal such distress.
Farah-Griffin added that what the Alito’s did was “un-American” and “disturbing” especially since it was allegedly done “days after a riot at the Capitol!” But her argument didn’t make much sense either since she, and many in the liberal media, had suggested that January 6 was a day of dire national distress; much like what she said was the only correct time to fly the flag inverted.
Fondacaro offered no evidence that Alito faced any “extreme danger to life or property” when the flag was being flown, which undermines his defense.
Mark Finkelstein whined that in discussing the flag incident, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough made the “entirely evidence-free” accusation that Alito was the one who leaked the draft of the court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade — despite later quoting Scarborough saying it was “my opinion only” that Alito was ” the guy most likely to have had something to do with the leaking of the Dobbs decision.” That falls short of the “accusation” Finkelstein claimed he made. Still, he felt the need to play the elitism card by claiming “entirely evidence-free) that Scarborough’s “accusation” came from his “summering buddies on liberal-elitist Nantucket.” Finkelstein also played some labored whataboutism to distract from the flag stuff:
Let’s play a thought game. Alito has said that he had no involvement in flying the flag, and that it was his wife who did so in response to objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs that a neighbor had put up.
Now imagine that the wife of a conservative Justice is a liberal. In response to a pro-life sign put up by a conservative neighbor, she puts an “Our Bodies Our Choice–Hands Off Roe!” sign in their front yard — only to have her husband order her to take it down.
Which would be the more likely reaction from liberals? Would they applaud the Justice for standing up for judicial independence? Or would they condemn the Justice for patriarchal infringement on his wife’s freedom of expression and accuse the Justice of attempting to turn his wife into a Handmaid, and his home into a mini-Gilead [labels with which MSNBCers have slurred Justice Amy Coney Barrett]?
And what would Finkelstein’s reaction be? Would it be the same as the handwave he’s currently giving to the Alitos?
Tim Graham also play the Kavanaugh whataboutism card in a May 18 post:
On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, the Week in Review segment dove into the New York Times“scoop” that the flag flew upside down for a few days in January 2021 outside the home of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. This was Big News? Two years ago, when a man showed up outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house intending to assassinate him, the NewsHour didn’t find that worthy on Friday June 10, 2022.
Of course, the Big News then was slobbering over the Pelosi-picked January 6 Committee, just as this Alito story is a January 6 echo.
[…]Capehart and PBS and all their leftist media colleagues are actively trying to erode trust in the Supreme Court, because they’re not in charge of it right now.
Is that like how Graham, the MRC and their fellow right-wingers are trying to erode trust in the criminal justice system because Donald Trump was held accountable for his crimes? And how they are trying to erode trust in the election system because Trump lost in 2020?
Alex Christy spent a May 18 post that the story continued to get coverage:
After not-so cleverly trying and failing to get Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from important Supreme Court cases related to January 6, the left and the media have moved on to try to not-so cleverly get Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself based on a photo of an upside-down flag outside his home that was said to show support for the rioters. On Saturday’s Good Morning America, ABC White House correspondent MaryAlice Parks omitted key details from Alito’s side of the story as she also hyped that even the appearance of bias can undermine the Court’s credibility.
It was ABC’s second day in a row of echoing the smear and co-host Whit Johnson showed the picture and introduced Parks by noting, “This morning Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is under fire. The New York Times obtaining this photo of an American flag flying upside down reportedly at Alito’s home in the days just after the January 6th riot. ABC’s White House correspondent, MaryAlice Parks, joins us now from Washington with more. MaryAlice, good morning.”
For Parks, “The central question here is whether Justice Alito or someone from his family was trying to show solidarity with those who wanted to subvert the 2020 Election results or even with those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Now, according to the New York Times, the American flag flew upside down for days at the Alito House right before President Biden’s inauguration. Flags, of course, are never supposed to be flown upside down unless to signal great distress, but former President Trump’s supporters had adopted it as a symbol, some even carrying it as they stormed the Capitol.”
If it is really “the central question,” then some discussion on Alito’s record on the 2020 Election would be appropriate, but Parks wasn’t interested in that. Instead, she recalled, “Justice Alito did not reply to our request but blamed his wife in a comment to the Times and has downplayed the incident. Still, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, is calling for Alito to recuse himself from all January 6th-related cases. The Court is expected to rule on two cases related to the attack on the Capitol in the next few weeks, including one about whether Trump has immunity for his actions.”
Parks completely misrepresented and omitted key details of Alito’s side of the story. He was not blaming his wife, he was simply explaining she was on the receiving end of abuse from nasty neighbors who blamed her for January 6 and used vile language, including the C-word.
Christy seems to have missed the relevant point that it’s a bad look for the wife of a Supreme Court justice to make explicit political statements, however much she may have been provoked, and that it looks particularly bad for her husband since it raises legitimate questions about the impartiality of the justice he offers.