Recently, on a radio program, I was asked a question about a Dutch couple who returned home one night to discover two children whom they did not recognize sitting alone in a car outside the house. Concerned, the couple asked the children where their parents were.
“Oh,” one of the children replied. ”They're inside, robbing your house.”
(One day soon, I plan on finishing my lengthy monograph on the deleterious effect of stupid criminals on the development of a civil society. I plan on explaining how America once produced nothing but brilliant miscreants, sociopaths of great genius and surpassing innovation. Then came the 1960s, and softhearted judges, and the triumph of postmodernism, and bleeding-heart criminal reformers, and Dan Rather. There was nothing worse for intelligent criminality than naive permissiveness. Four more adjectives, I figure, and I can get a six-figure grant from the Heritage people.)
Pondering this story -- and also pondering whether being a burglar's child means that you get a “time-out” when you give up Mom and Dad; given the circumstances, how much does honesty really count here? -- I found myself deeply hopeful that these two children do not somehow grow up to be nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States. They plainly are not built for the job.
Imagine that one of them is sitting there, all grown up, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is a bright, sunny afternoon. The Republicans are all shiny and glowing. And someone has watered most of the Democrats, so they look remarkably lifelike this day. Anyway, one of them asks the nominee what he's going to do if confirmed.
“Well,” the former child answers, “I'm going to get in there and steal your Constitution.”
Chaos. Madness. Outrage among the Republicans. Confusion among the Democrats, particularly poor Joe Biden, who has to break up a nasty brawl involving all three of his personalities. An unsightly empty pod is found beneath Pat Leahy's chair. No, this cannot do.
Better that we have an umpire.
That's what John Roberts, who went from who-dat? nominee for associate justice to the last chief justice I'll ever know in the time it took William Rehnquist's toes to curl, said he wants to be: utterly impartial, like an umpire. Now, for some reason unknown to those of us in the unlettered precincts south of Oconomowoc, this was enough for an otherwise sensible sort like Russ Feingold, who pronounced himself willing to vote for a man so manifestly ignorant of baseball that he might as well be a Dutch housebreaker.
Has Roberts ever seen a baseball game? Has he ever seen what happens in, say, Tampa Bay, when the plate umpire gets creative with the high-strike call, prompting Lou Piniella to stage a one-man re-enactment of the Battle of Cold Harbor? Yes, I know Roberts was speaking of the ideal, that baseball umpires are supposed to aspire to that kind of impartiality. But honestly, folks, they're all supposed to aspire to be thin, too.
Nevertheless, we are going to have him in the middle chair for only 30 years or so, and I think we should make the most of it. Let us give him what he wants. Let's let him be an umpire. This will, of course, necessitate some changes in traditional Supreme Court protocol -- many of which will be thought undignified, but all of which will contribute mightily to my grand design of eventually getting rich as the sole owner of SCOTUS pay-per-view rights.
First of all, we will loosen up the limits on acceptable dialogue. It is widely known around baseball that there are certain things you can call an umpire with impunity. These include “****,” “****, ****,” “****head,” “****heel,” and “****less.” You may say, “****” as an imperative, and even as an adjectival gerund, which, you may have noted, is enjoying a certain vogue along the Gulf Coast these days.
Anyway, you can say all of these things without being thrown out of the game. But you cannot say “************,” or, worse, “**********.” These are known around baseball as the “magic words.” Call the umpire that and expulsion is automatic. This rule should obtain in the court of Chief Justice Roberts as well. Therefore, it would be permissible to address a member of the Court as “Mr. Justice ****heel” from the counsel's table. However, any reference to what a “************ Madame Justice Whoever” is ends your participation in an instant.
Lawyers should be aware that all caps should be worn backward so that there will no poking the justices in the forehead with the brim. Physical contact with any of the justices is firmly discouraged, if only to keep Clarence Thomas in line.
There is -- as far as I know -- not enough dirt on the floor of the Court's chambers for counsel to kick onto the justices' lower extremities. (The robes probably defeat the tactic a priori -- which you can also still say, even as “a ****ing priori.”) However, counsel would be allowed to cover the shoes of a justice with equivalent detritus, including briefs, volumes of the federal code, and the odd clerk or two.
Once ejected from the contest, counsel will be allowed a brief public tantrum in which counsel may rampage around, screaming and chucking chairs, perhaps tossing a baleful look in the general direction of the press section while explaining, loudly, that my old pal Joanie Biskupic should, “Write that, maggots!” before disappearing down the hallway to drink 52 Miller High Lifes while turning over the steam tables in the court cafeteria.
God knows it would liven things up.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer at The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.
