It's a strange marriage.
I am talking, of course, about Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife, flag-flyer Martha Ann. And my text is a reference to Justice Alito's own comments, most recently in a letter on Tuesday to Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, in which he refused to recuse himself from hearing Trump-related election cases.
There are reasons to doubt Justice Alito's candor and judgment here, but I will return to that later. For now, let's assume that the facts are as the Justice stated them. Justice Martha Ann Alito was embroiled in a bitter dispute with a neighbor, a dispute related to an election that Justice Alito does not mention. She resorted to the symbolism of an upside-down American flag in an extreme form to communicate her distress.
The judge's husband said, “I didn't even realize the flag was upside down until it was pointed out to me. As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but she refused for several days.”
Like I said, it's weird. Marriage is about respectful acceptance of competing needs. A Washington marriage — a marriage between one or more people in positions of authority or prominence, in the public eye — is about respectful acceptance of competing needs.
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My husband is politically active, but out of respect for my role as a journalist, we don't hang election posters in our yard. During his years in government, I tried not to write about the issues he was involved in; you could say I stepped aside, so as not to cause trouble for either him or me. Appearances matter, and when your spouse is in public, you may choose not to do things that wouldn't normally be an issue.
Not so with the Alitos. “My wife and I co-own our Virginia home,” Alito wrote to the two senators. “Accordingly, my wife has a legal right to use the property as she wishes, and there was no additional step I could have taken to have the flag removed sooner.” As for the second flag, an “Appeal to Heaven” banner that flew at their New Jersey vacation home, he wrote that the property “was purchased with money my wife inherited from her parents and is owned in her name.”
Are you serious? Is he really arguing that this is about shared ownership or about who owns which property by full ownership?
Alito wallowed in an unconvincing mix of pseudo-feminism, free speech, and Alito-esque victimhood. “My wife is a private citizen and has the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” he wrote. Yes, she does have rights. And like any spouse of a public figure, she has an independent responsibility to behave appropriately vis-Ã -vis her spouse and their organization.
Alito went on to say, “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so.” As I wrote about Clarence and Virginia Thomas, they each have separate careers, but when one interferes with the other, something has to be sacrificed. This is not anti-feminist, it's pro-ethics.
And about victimhood: “She has sacrificed much to accommodate my service on the Supreme Court, including the humiliation of having to endure multiple, loud, obscene and personally abusive protests in front of her home that continue to this day and now threaten to escalate.” I'm no fan of protests at judges' homes.
But am I supposed to sympathize with her for the “sacrifices” she made “to serve me”? Please, no thanks. Being a Supreme Court justice is an honor and comes with many privileges, as does being the spouse of a Supreme Court justice. And more fundamentally, those sacrifices are no excuse for inherently inappropriate behavior.
And speaking of inappropriate behavior, one of the striking things about Alito's letter is how it reveals his lack of candor. In his first few accounts of the incident, the flag was up for a “brief period” (in a statement provided to The New York Times) and a “brief period” (in a statement to Fox News host Shannon Bream). As the Post reports, and as Alito now acknowledges, the flag was up for “a few days.” In what world is that a “brief period”?
Alito wants us to believe his claims — his wife is the flag fanatic, not him; he wanted the flag taken down; he had “no involvement whatsoever” in the decision to fly the “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their vacation home — but his actions don't inspire confidence.
More importantly, the letter emphasizes that Alito immediately recognized that the upside-down flag was a problem: “The moment I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down.” Why did he think the flag was a problem? If, as Martha Ann Alito has argued, the flag was simply a symbol of international distress and not an endorsement of “Stop the Steal,” then why was he so concerned?
And, more importantly, if he was alarmed then, why should the public have no reason to be alarmed now?
