Did you know that a mentally ill man from California to the Maryland neighborhood of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to kill him? By now, you probably do, or at least heard passing mention of it. It’s not as if he succeeded and a justice was assassinated.
Simi Valley resident Nicholas Roske, 26, called 911 to say he was suicidal and planned to kill Kavanaugh. He had a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray, duct tape. He made clear his purpose and his reasoning.
Roske told police he was upset by a leaked draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court is about to overrule Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. He also said he was upset over the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and believed Kavanaugh would vote to loosen gun control laws, the affidavit said.
As Nate Silver made clear, it wasn’t a story worthy of being above the fold. It wasn’t even worthy of page one. It was a story. Just not a big story.
I don't agree at all with blaming the leak for it, but yeah it's sort of crazy that it's not being treated as a bigger story (NYT homepage screenshot presented for posterity). There's often more bias in which stories are deemed to be salient than how they're written about. pic.twitter.com/aNJZAdmUG8
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 8, 2022
At VC, Josh Blackman explained, the problem wasn’t that the New York Times lacked space for put it up top, but that a choice was made about what was fit to print.
If you log onto NYTimes.com now, and check above the fold, you will see a lovely story about the Jurassic Park cast and Kelly Clarkson’s performance. If you scroll down, down, down, down, down, you will find a story about the attempted assassination of a Justice. By my count, the Kavanaugh assassination attempt is perhaps the sixteenth most important news item of the day! Oh, and according to the Washington Post, Kavanaugh and his family were home last night.
Perhaps some of you will see the choice of using page one for more important stories. Ukraine remains a big story, and the January 6 Committee will be putting on a play on TV tonight. Any story relating to Trump is huge at the Times. It’s made a fortune off him, luring readers with the sordid tales of his momentary malfeasance, and then beating it to death until the next outrage, minutes later.
Isn’t the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice for his anticipated ruling contrary to the way in which some want the court to rule a big deal? Isn’t it bigger than, say Kelly Clarkson or, as one finds in the upper right corner of the NYT website, the huge story of the scarcity of lifeguards?
I shared Nate Silver’s concern in a twit, and I learned something. No, it seems, it’s not a big deal to many of you. In fact, not only is it not a big deal, but Kavanaugh asked for it. Kavanaugh deserves it. Kavanaugh can just get some guards and live with the threat of being assassinated for what he’s done.
What he’s done? The “explanation” is that his siding with the anticipated majority in Dobbs makes him “responsible” for destroying the lives of millions of women. That he came to the Court demonized on the left as a “rapist” didn’t help, and made him particularly unworthy of the slightest concern, but now he’s part of the conservative majority bent on reversing the social progress made in the past 50 years. Maybe it’s not quite that he deserves to die for it, but a great many won’t shed a tear if it happened. Boo hoo, Bretty. Sucks to be you.
Criticizing judges for ruling contrary to the way you passionately desire them to rule is not merely an American tradition, but our right. Assassinating them for it is sick. Shrugging off the idea that a Supreme Court justice might be assassinated for ruling the “wrong way” may not be quite as sick as actually going to Maryland with a gun to do it, but it is still deeply, horribly sick. And burying the story on page 5, below the fold, isn’t much better.
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