3/28/2016

On the Continuing Need to (Rhetorically, Of Course) Punch an Old Man in the Nuts (Orrin Hatch Edition)

The first line is enough to make you want to put your fist through time and shake Sen. Orrin Hatch when he was a baby. Writing in the New York Times (motto: "Yes, assholes like Hatch can abuse us constantly, but we're willing to host their hypocrisy"), Hatch says, in all seriousness, "Justice Antonin Scalia was among the greatest jurists in our nation’s history." That's an opinion, sure, why the fuck not, but then he follows it with one of the most easily disproved statements any politician uttered since Orrin Hatch said that banning flag burning is "the most important thing the Senate could be doing at this time" in 2006 (when, you know, a fuckin' war was going on).

Now, Hatch spittles, "Justice Scalia’s approach was grounded in the words of legal texts, and not in a judge’s personal preferences or the vagaries of popular political beliefs." Wait, wait, wait, Orry, we know that you're fingering your prostate with Scalia's cold, stiff digits, but are you talking about the same motherfucker who allowed his Catholicism to influence his judgment whenever it suited him and to cast it aside when he felt like killing some convict, guilty or not? Yeah, fuck that guy.

Once again, a conservative has embraced the bullshit stand that any judge who doesn't rule like right-wingers want them to must be a "judicial activist." So, obviously, only liberals can be such, not Scalia, who gleefully eviscerated his enemies whether he was in the majority or in dissent.

But the main point of Hatch's mush bowl of an editorial is that Senate Republicans are doing what America wants by standing firm against that alpha-Negro, President Obama, by denying consideration of his Supreme Court nominee to replace Scalia. He goes through the usual lying and bullshit. Yes, Orrin, you Mormon cockknob, the Senate has confirmed in an election year; remember, you magic underwear skid mark, Robert Bork was voted down by members of both parties; and, fuck you, you ass-faced clown, the "borking" of Clarence Thomas had to do with sexual harassment (and he was voted in, so what's your fucking point?).

He ends with a statement so lacking in self-awareness that he should have imploded from the intensity of it. Hatch says, "Considering a nominee in the midst of a toxic presidential election would be irresponsible." And who made it so toxic? Who has made the entirety of the political landscape toxic? The Democrats, who kept trying to work with Republicans? Or the Republicans who told the Democrats to go fuck themselves?

Remember when we used to pretend that Hatch was an honorable man? That he was buds with Teddy Kennedy so he could be reasoned with like a particularly attentive pit bull? Now he's gone rabid. Hatch was always frothing at the mouth. But he used to at least fake sanity.