RUSH: So we had the news earlier in the week in the Washington Post that the Democrats basically said, “There’s nothing we can do about this Roberts guy. He’s got 70 votes. He’s not worth spending the political capital,” and that story was, I am convinced, designed to rabble-rouse the extreme left-wing groups like Ralph Neas at People for the American Way to get in gear and try to change the minds of some of these Democrats who have said that they are tending to vote for Roberts. So all hell broke loose the next day, and demanding that certain Democrats, not just rubber-stamp this nomination. “We got to fight for this! This guy is horrible, he’s rotten!” and ever since, newspapers — Boston Globe, Washington Post, New York Times — have been filled with stories replete with warning flags, red flags about the danger posed by this Neanderthal, this racist, this bigot, this anti-Semite, John Roberts,” and today, the Washington Post has a piece headlined, “Roberts Resisted Women’s Rights – 1982 – 86 Memos Detail Skepticism.”
It is hilarious. We know that the left has no sense of humor. We know that they are incapable of laughing, and you have to just have to be suspicious of people who cannot laugh. There is so much to be amused by, so much to find pleasure in, but not them. These people are wound so tight they are constantly on edge, and remember they’re guided by a template. They’re guided by an agenda. They’re guided by their own prejudicial bias.
“John Roberts is a conservative. Therefore, he has to be a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. We just have to go find the proof because we know he is, because he’s a conservative and he’s been nominated by Bush and he worked for Reagan. He’s got to be the lowest of the low. All we got to do is go find it,” and so with that mind-set, they’re poring over documents, documents that Roberts wrote while working for the Reagan administration and in the solicitor-general’s office, and they think they’re finding evidence that, indeed, he is a racist, a sexist, a bigot, and a homophobe. The big red flag in this Washington Post story is this paragraph: “His remark on whether homemakers should become lawyers came in 1985 in reply to a suggestion from Linda Chavez, then the White House’s director of public liaison.
Chavez had proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey, in a contest sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had changed their lives after age 30. Arey had been a schoolteacher who decided to change careers and went to law school. In a July 31, 1985, memo, Roberts noted that as an assistant dean at the University of Richmond law school before she joined the Reagan administration, Arey had ‘encouraged many former homemakers to enter law school and become lawyers.’ Roberts said in his memo that he saw no legal objection to her taking part in the Clairol contest. Then he added a personal aside: ‘Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide.'”
This reference has them convinced that Roberts is a Neanderthal, right out of the Jimmy Caster bunch, and he wants to grab all the Butts sisters and drag them back in the cave and he wants to keep them barefoot and pregnant. He wants them homemaking. He wants them baking cookies, cakes, and he wants them making his coffee. He wants them to get his slippers when he comes from a hard day at the law office. He doesn’t want them to become lawyers. This guy’s a sexist. They don’t have the slightest idea that he’s cracking a joke here: “Oh, good, this is the last thing we need is more lawyers.” This is nothing more than a guy making a joke that we all make. Oh, yeah, that’s great. The next thing we need is more lawyers. Oh, yeah. That will fix the country, great. They don’t get it and the reason they don’t get it, they don’t see the humor, is because they are convinced that this guy’s a sexist. They are convinced he is a Neanderthal.
They are convinced that he probably thinks that women ought not even be able to show their face in public. That’s how conservative he is, and remember where he grew up. Oh, yes. We learned yesterday he grew up in an all-white neighborhood with no blacks and no Jews. (whispering) Jews! And the day before that, we learned that his father had it very good in life and John Roberts did not know what tough times were at all. John Roberts was rich. (whispering) Rich! And so now here comes this. “He’s so out of touch, he hasn’t figured out that women don’t want to be homemakers. He wants to keep them in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant and so forth and under his thumb.” It’s laughable. It is comical. The number of women that put this piece together is a testament itself. Let’s see. We got Amy Goldstein, R. Jeffrey Smith and Jo Becker. Two of those three are women. Ceci Connolly worked on this story and Amy somebody — a bunch of women basically wrote this story, folks, a bunch of feminist women, a bunch of activist women.
An activist feminist is already a member of the group that’s constantly angry about something, on edge or mad or waiting to be, looking for some reason to be mad, and they have stumbled right into it here. “Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that’s for the judges to decide.” He’s making a joke about lawyers. He’s making a joke about, “Oh, my God, do we need more lawyers in this country?” It’s something that everybody jokes about, but these people don’t get it. So now they’ve got this story out there and they’ve written it as a hit piece and as a warning flag to all the activists on the left. “Look what we’re finding about this guy. Look what we’re digging up about this guy.” Well, as I said yesterday, Ted Kennedy grew up in an all-white neighborhood, John Kerry grew up in an all-white neighborhood. Hillary Clinton grew up in an all-white neighborhood.
Ted Kennedy still lives in an all-white neighborhood. John Kerry still lives in a bunch of all-white neighborhoods. Hillary Clinton makes sure that she is in a bunch of all-white neighborhoods where she lives. At the same time, Clarence Thomas grew up in an all-black neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia and, you know, I don’t look at that as having been much help to him when he was being confirmed for the US Supreme Court. The same liberals upset that Roberts grew up in Long Beach, California did not say to Clarence Thomas, “You know, you’re eminently qualified. You grew up in a poor black neighborhood.” It didn’t matter a hill of beans, did it?