Biased Washington Post Headline

The headline of the Washington Post‘s alarming series about shocking revelations in Judge Roberts’s Reagan-era memos (“alarming” in the sense that the WaPo writers are alarmed, “revelations” that are “shocking’ to those same writers), which appears on the front page, announces boldly, “Roberts Resisted Women’s Rights.”

But look at the first sentence of the article:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women’s rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called “the purported gender gap” and, at one point, questioning “whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.”

The WaPo, like so many liberal commentators, confuses opposition to the dramatic expansion of some rights with opposition to the rights themselves. And his “questioning” whether “encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good” reveals much more about the tin ear, or lack of a sense of humor at the Washington Post and liberal interest groups they quote, than it does about Roberts’s views on the role of women in society. At least the article quotes the White House on this comment:

“It’s pretty clear from the more than 60,000 pages of documents that have been released that John Roberts has a great sense of humor,” said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush. “In this memo, he offers a lawyer joke.”

The WaPo writes also did not seem to crack a smile at what strikes me as another example of Roberts’s humor:

In a memo to [White House counsel Fred] Fielding dated May 7, 1985, Roberts addressed the ethics of allowing a Falls Church Girl Scout to meet the president in the midst of the annual cookie drive. “Elizabeth . . . has sold some 10,000 boxes and would like to sell one to the President. The little huckster thinks the President would like the Samoas,” he wrote, before concluding that he had no objection to deviating in this case from the White House’s practice of avoiding “an implied endorsement” by the president.

Humor aside, what is the substance of the charge that Roberts “resisted women’s rights”? Here is the most substantial evidence offered in the article:

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were “highly objectionable”; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue — of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of “comparable worth” — was “staggeringly pernicious” and “anti-capitalist.”

Opposition to the proposed ERA was widespread enough that it didn’t pass, and not all its opponents “resisted women’s rights.” Some thought it superfluous, believing that women’s rights were already sufficiently protected. Why did Roberts think Reagan should oppose it? The article doesn’t say.

And what were those “legal tools” to curb discrimination that Roberts found “highly objectionable”? Again, the article doesn’t say. Presumably, it doesn’t matter. Apparently anyone who opposes anything at all that purports to combat discrimination against women “resists women’s rights.”

And finally, believe it or not, Roberts’s opposition to “comparable worth” is adduced as evidence that he “resists women’s rights.” What bunk! Mickey Kaus, a prominent sensible liberal, calls comparable worth “one of the really bad ideas from the comic book era of interest group liberalism.”

He’s of course right about comparable worth, but I think he was wrong in claiming that this article “play[ed] down its salience.”

Say What? (3)

  1. Michelle Dulak Thomson August 20, 2005 at 10:15 pm | | Reply

    Roberts:

    “Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide.”

    Suppose that is turned around:

    “Some might question whether encouraging lawyers to become homemakers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide.”

    Are both versions readable as attacks on women? Maybe, if you assume most homemakers are women, and read the first as “women being on the whole stupid [or over-emotional, or whatever generalization you like], they’d make lousy lawyers,” while glossing the second as “lawyers are valuable, whereas homemakers are doing trivial work, so we’d best keep all the lawyers we have now at their proper jobs.”

    Of course Roberts said neither; he said roughly that the last thing the world needs is a bunch more lawyers. But what do you suppose would have been the spin had Roberts written the second version? Compare with the current spin about what he in fact did write.

    I don’t think many in NOW et al. have used the word “homemaker” in a decade or two, and the old argument that raising children and maintaining a household is as exacting a job as most has more or less disappeared, except when applied to welfare mothers, because suggesting that running a household and raising children is a full-time job raises inevitably the suspicion that when two parents work outside the home, some of that full-time job isn’t getting done. Which in turn suggests that maybe someone else ought to be doing it. Which in most cases there isn’t.

    I’m the child of two full-time-working parents, sans nanny or other help, and I’ve no complaints about spending a lot of time by myself. But then I always did like a lot of time by myself.

  2. Richard Nieporent August 21, 2005 at 8:55 am | | Reply

    John, you have highlighted some of the distortions of Judge Robert

  3. John Rosenberg August 21, 2005 at 9:06 am | | Reply

    Richard – You’re right.

    Michelle – Isn’t the solution obvious? It’s called comparable worth. Since being a full time “homemaker” is as hard and at least as valuable as being a lawyer, “homemakers” should be paid the same as lawyers. (Or, in the alternative, as the lawyers like to say, lawyers should be paid the same as homemakers.)

Say What?