We’re Just Babies… We’re Just Babies, Man

I’ve made my share of shameful admissions on this webpage, though, I guess, maybe not that many. Anyway, one of them is that I used to be pro-life. As I write there, I was only ever pro-life in the way that, I think, most of America actually is “pro-life”: in favor of legal abortions but wanting them to be safe, available, and rare. But abortion is back in the news these days, and I’ve been thinking not so much about it (my opinions on it are pretty much now rock-solid: make it all legal and available and find a way to make it constitutional via equal protection, not via the flimsy-ass liberal capitalist idea of “privacy”), but rather about a few things in conjunction with it.

So Summer wrote a while back about things she wanted to come back into fashion. And a lot of them put me in sort of a early ’90s frame of mind. She and I have continued this over IM, and, well, next thing you know, I’m downloading Stone Cold Rhymin’. But that’s also the time when David Souter got nominated to the Supreme Court. It’s also probably the last time I followed a Supreme Court nomination closely (what? I was a horny teenager during the Clinton Era!). And, as a lesson perhaps for 2005, what early ’90s hip-hop and the Supreme Court teach us is, well, you can’t really trust the nomination process.

As I wrote in that post about being pro-life, Digable Planets’ very vocal pro-choice stance squicked me a little when I was younger. This is funny, since I always agreed with the politics, more or less. I just didn’t like the song. Something felt inappropriate about it, but, well, that’s the sort of feeling that I’m privileged to have as, you know, a white male who theoretically doesn’t personally care about whether abortion is legal or not. But there’s something rather amusing about one of the lines from “La Femme Fetal”:

Aborting missions should be your volition
But if Souter and Thomas have their way
You’ll be standing in line unable to get welfare
While they’ll be out hunting and fishing

Now, first, we know it’s Nino who goes hunting and fishing (with Cheney). Second, I’m not that convinced that any iteration of the Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe v. Wade (why would the GOP kill their golden goose?). But third: what’s with the Souter hate? Talk about jumping the gun. I mean, I understand. I hated David Souter when he was nominated, too. I figured there was no way George H. W. Bush could nominate someone decent to SCOTUS. Of course, at the time, I also thought we could never have a worse president than him. So the Digable Planets ended up being wrong. So did I. So did everyone who hated on Souter, to such a degree that, apparently, Souter is held as the big example of a stealth candidate in certain circles. Souter is the type of justice one should never nominate.

And now comes John “(O.) G.” Roberts, the Manchurian Nominee. Listening to his hearings, I’m almost—almost—getting a little optimistic about his stealthiness. Of course, he’s not going to be a flaming liberal, but maybe he won’t be quite the winger that the Dobsonite crowd salivate over. Here he is, talking about how there is a right to privacy. Now he’s seemingly in favor of Kelo (like me!). The list goes on.

I don’t buy it, though. The GOP learned their lesson at the same time that the Insects were made to look foolish. After all, though Reachin’ came out in 1993, Souter was already with the majority in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. And if there’s one thing the GOP has, it’s a long-ass fucking memory. Roberts will be the first ever double-stealth nominee. You’d figure he’s conservative, and then he sounds moderate. But really? Get ready for child labor, kids, since, despite his hate levied at Lochner, I can only imagine he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing with a layer of wolf on top. He’s like Miriam Shor trying on the blonde wig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch: so much flipping that you have to concentrate to keep it straight.

Of course, given that GWB is totally inept at actually succeeding at anything, it might be that he has failed at installing a reactionary on the SCOTUS, but I doubt it. Bush is the stealth awful president, so it follows that he’d nominate the stealth awful justice.