The Silly SCOTUS MaskGate Hoax
Just the latest example of a Washington media hoax. Will they ever learn?
One media personality is still on her beat since I first arrived in Washington, DC, in late 1978. She is National Public Radio’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg, who just celebrated her 78th birthday. The Washington, DC, and New York media axis has celebrated her intrepid coverage of politics and the secretive Supreme Court for more than 50 years. A “founding mother” of NPR, she’s called.
If you’ve listened to taxpayer-funded NPR at anytime over the past 40 or so years, you’ve heard her. Her first big story after arriving in Washington was a profile on the then-76-year-old Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. It reportedly enraged him. It used to be that taking on powerful insider Washington establishment figures was The Ticket to media stardom. Those were the days.
She was once fired for plagiarism (she has that in common with the President of the United States). She attended but apparently never graduated from Boston University. BU graduate and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), famed Economics major, at least matriculated. Despite being a legal affairs correspondent, Totenberg has no formal legal training (she studied Journalism at BU, which appears on par with their Economics program, based on AOC’s vaunted policy work and Totenberg’s style of news reporting).
One biography refers to her as an actress. She did appear as herself in a fun 1993 movie, Dave, starring Kevin Kline, along with other well-known Washington media celebrities. She also made appearances in two other movies, including The Distinguished Gentleman, starring Eddie Murphy, and Original Intent: The Battle for America, a leftist documentary attacking the judicial philosophy of the Bush 41 Administration and specifically Justice Clarence Thomas. Heady stuff for a journalist-cum-celebrity.
She has long moved comfortably amidst Washington’s Democratic political and media elite. She married a Democratic US Senator, the late Floyd Haskell (D-CO), not long before he was soundly defeated for reelection in 1978 by the late Bill Armstrong (R-CO).
Her legal reporting is also legendary. From a biography published at the Jewish Women’s Archive. Perhaps you’ll spot a trend:
Nina Totenberg, one of the best-known journalists at National Public Radio (NPR), is well-known for reporting behind-the-scenes stories of political and legal developments and presenting them in a comprehensible format to the general public. Her reports played a role in placing the subject of sexual harassment on the national agenda during the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U. S. Supreme Court. Moving in circles of Washington’s political elite, Totenberg stood out as a close friend of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who officiated at Totenberg’s second marriage. Totenberg maintains that personal relationships do not influence her reporting.
Feel free to laugh after that last sentence.
She also broke the story about one of President Reagan’s Supreme Court nominees, Federal Appeals Court Judge Douglas Ginsberg’s (no apparent relation to Ruth) marijuana smoking (how quaint!), while teaching law at Harvard in the 1960s, forcing him to withdraw. Ginsberg was replaced by now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was succeeded in 2017 by Neil Gorsuch.
This neatly segues to the week’s latest breaking story from Totenberg, based on the new media “ethic” of an anonymous source. It frankly smacks of gossip, but it’s the kind that official Washington loves.
It was pretty jarring earlier this month when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the first time since the omicron surge over the holidays. All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What's more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers.
Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for serious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed in-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge, and according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up.
They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices' weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.
Gorsuch, from the beginning of his tenure, has proved a prickly justice, not exactly beloved even by his conservative soulmates on the court.
No editorializing in this story, nope, just straight news. Are there no editors at NPR? Oh, wait, yes there are. Because they apparently don’t run in Nina’s lofty social circles, she is free to ignore them. And she does.
Although some of her wording was strange, the break itself isn’t the real story. It’s her doubling down in the face of two denials by the court, including one by the Chief Justice. She’s basically calling them liars. Worse was the Washington Democratic media’s echo chamber piling on, well documented by independent journalist Drew Holden on Twitter. Here’s how he started.
Then Justices Gorsuch and Sotomayor issued a joint statement denying the critical part of the story. Chief Justice John Roberts also followed up to deny that he ever asked justices to wear masks on the bench.
From The Daily Beast: “In a statement, Gorsuch and Sotomayor said: ‘Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.’ In his statement, Roberts said, ‘I did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other Justice to wear a mask on the bench.’”
Both Totenberg and NPR stand behind the story, despite official denials. Who are you going to believe?
If you’re the mainstream media and their usual suspects in the Washington echo chamber, it’s Totenberg. A few samples, again courtesy of Drew Holden and the Washington Examiner, starting with often-wrong-but-never-in-doubt and always civil Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, and then the DC media elite’s favorite go-to “conservative,” Bill Kristol.
Neither has apologized for nor retracted their comments, to the best of my knowledge. Why should they, since Totenberg hasn’t, either? As Holden notes, “From Russiagate to Covington Catholic and beyond, we see so many of these stories: they *feel* right to reporters/outlets, and so they get repeated, but then they prove to be false.” It simply confirmed their own biases about conservatives and public officials they don’t like, facts be damned. And as often happen, a dubious “breaking story” gets repeated unquestionably by other media.
Here are a few more fellow-traveling pearl clutchers, just for good measure, including a founder of the Lincoln Project and of course Commander Sulu. Models of civility.
Never overestimate the media’s ability to perpetrate hoaxes, especially hate crimes. Examples: Steele dossier and Trump-Russia collusion hoax; the Jussie Smollett race-baiting “MAGA country” hoax; the Bubba Wallace NASCAR garage noose hoax; the Covington Catholic Boys hoax (from which Nick Sandmann has collected at least one large settlement); several false reports about Kyle Rittenhouse. And now this.
Just because you want to believe something doesn’t make it accurate. And a journalist’s prime directive is, or should be, a relentless pursuit of the truth, not a relentless promotion of a narrative. Perhaps when you’re part of a vaunted elite social class in Washington, maintaining your status and keeping those speech and dinner invitations coming appears more important than your duty.
Totenberg, her allies, and their useful idiots may think they’re undermining a conservative majority on the Supreme Court or perhaps pressuring them to rule in a preferred way in several upcoming cases. That won’t work. I guess it will make them look good at (or, at least get invited to) their next dinner party in tony Kalorama. I hope they remember their masks. Too bad Pearl Mesta isn’t around to host it. Wait, don’t the Obamas still live in northwest Washington? And Washington Post publisher Jeff Bezos?
The Washington Examiner editorializes it well:
Why did so many people fall for this fake news? The answer is obvious: They already disliked Gorsuch because of his views, so they gladly jumped on a story that, in their minds, confirmed they were right to dislike him.
Every single person who elevated NPR’s false reporting and used it to insult Gorsuch should admit the error and apologize. But they won’t — because as they proved this week, they’re not honest, nor are they interested in the truth. They’re partisans, and they deserve to be dismissed as such.
The American people see through it, and it’s the media that’s undermining itself, and rather effectively. The latest polling proves it. Maybe someone will encourage Totenberg, at age 78, to make the leap to retirement. The water’s fine, Nina.
Maybe Senators, fresh off preserving their filibuster, can take a new look at whether NPR or its affiliates are worthy of a single taxpayer dollar when their appropriation bill comes up later this year. I know how I’d vote.
Excellent commentary. Sotomayor is spiraling out of control with her freak out over Dobbs and Womens Whole Health in Texas. The mainstream media is simply being sympathetic by trying to justify her legal and emotional meltdowns.