Alito Unmasked

He’s a flaming liberal.

By Katie Halper
Wednesday February 15, 2006

Many were surprised when, on his first day as a Supreme Court Justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr.broke ranks with his conservative colleagues and voted with the liberal majority to grant a death row inmate a stay of execution. I, however, had already pegged Alito as a flaming progressive.

Liberal Americans and Democrat politicians seemed disturbed by Alito’s nomination and dismayed by his confirmation.

But a closer examination of the facts reveals that Judge Alito is an open minded, sensitive, minority friendly liberal, and not the right-wing, anti-woman, anti-minority ideologue he’s portrayed as in the Jewish gay liberal media. In other words, Alito is more than just “Alito” liberal.

1. Alito is NOT a bigot. Senator Orin Hatch put party politics aside to ask the judge the hard question: "…on the record, are you against women and minorities attending colleges?" To which Alito responded, "Absolutely not…no." Only then was the senator satisfied. But Senator Lindsey Graham pressed on: "Are you…a closet bigot?" Only when Alito said, "I am not any kind of bigot. I’m not," was Graham assured. "No, sir, you’re not…." Thanks to courageous inquiry, the truth has been revealed.

2. Some of Alito’s Best Friends are Black. Here again, we have conservatives to thank for our information. Before he lost the papers, Graham had proof: "I have got reams of quotes from people who have worked with you, African American judges—I’ve lost my quotes…I don’t know where they’re at. But glowing quotes about who you are…." Even without the reams of quotes to back me up, I can think of one African American Judge who loves Alito. And since he’s African American, he has to be liberal. Duh.

3. Alito believes in equal opportunity discrimination. This conviction imbues not only his professional but his civic activities. He was a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), which opposed in an equal and egalitarian way the admission of both female and minority students. This impartial commitment to racism and sexism is not an isolated incident. As he humbly revealed in an application for a job in the Reagan administration: "I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

4. Alito is himself a member of an oppressed minority. As he never failed to remind us, Alito is an Italian American, and the son of a poor immigrant. Samuel Alito, Sr. came to this country as a 5 month old (although he claimed on a military application to have been born in New Jersey, perhaps hazy recollections run in the Alito family—see #5 below.) Like so many disenfranchised minorities, Samuel Alito Sr. was forced to live in abject comfort (his family home in 1930 was valued at $4500, a considerable sum during the Great Depression), and attend college. The only jobs open to him were high-level professional ones, and he toiled most of his working life as the director of New Jersey ’s Office of Legislative Services. Not only is Samuel Alito Jr. an ethnic minority, he is a minority at his job, where as a judge his dissents took positions more conservative than his fellow judges 91% of the time.

5. Maybe Alito is a pot-head. When Senator Leahy asked Alito why in "heaven’s name" he was proud enough of his participation in C.A.P. to include it on a job application, the always candid judge said: "Well, Senator, I have racked my memory about this issue, and I really have no specific recollection of that organization." Statistically speaking, the most likely explanation for this memory lapse is that Alito had smoked so much pot at Princeton that his memory was clouded.

It’s also possible, of course, that Alito was a pot head after Princeton or is a pothead today and cannot remember C.A.P. Whether he is a pothead or a recovering pothead, or neither, one thing is certain: anyone who smokes pot has a huge liberal streak.

6. Alito is open and liberal about sex. As recently as 2004, in Doe v. Groody, when his prudish and close-minded co-judges ruled that police had violated the Constitution by strip-searching a 10 year-old girl, Alito was the only one comfortable enough with nudity to dissent.

7. Then there’s the issue of the cock. Whether under fire by senators during his confirmation hearing, or listening to the President’s State of the Union address, Alito had his head cocked… Really, the way he cocks his head is constant and fearless. He started cocking his head as a young boy. You won’t believe me, but this is a photo of a young cocked-head Alito.

As you can see, Alito has maintained this cocked posture over the years.

Alito’s head cock from one side to the other symbolizes his nuanced understanding, his hefty intellect, his judicious weighing of both sides of the issues—the mark of a liberal mind.

If Alito’s liberal side is half as big as his cock, liberals have nothing to worry about.

Katie Halper is a comedian and documentary filmmaker. She’s one of the founders of Laughing Liberally and she just performed with Laughing Liberally at Town Hall in New York City. She’s one of the artistic directors of The Tank, a performing and visual arts space in Tribecca. She made a film called La Memoria es Vaga about Spanish historical memory that will screen on Spanish TV in the fall.

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