America Has Justice

 With the announcement of Justice Souter’s retirement it becomes time to select his replacement.  Since most Americans don’t know how we elect a president I am going to chance that they are unaware of how someone finds himself or herself on the Supreme Court.  Since no one took my suggestion to resolve the Presidential election in viewer driven reality television show, I am going to resubmit it for the Supreme Court. 

The first thing that needs to happen is adjudicators need to be empanelled.  To make this not unlike our political system it will be to be bipartisan, ill informed, and lack tact.  The panel will have five members: myself and the Erin of Saint Louis will represent the progressives and the liberals, Emily, Nathan, and Melinda will represent the conservatives, and Chung and Joanna will represent foreigners who tell us how to run our country (Chung is Chinese by birth and they basically own America and Joanna can fake a British accent).  I would say caustic things along with Emily and Melinda, Nate and Erin would present constructive sounding remarks that are really not and the others would be like Paula Abdul and be supportive.  Sooze will serve as our Dick Clark wannabe doing backstage interviews and introductions.  I have seen American Idol once and could write the script. 

 The second step would be to select contestants, which I have already done and they’ll be introduced later.  The final step would be to air the show weekly and have the American people vote them off one by one until there would be a season finally and we’d have a new Supreme Court justice.  This would be a great thing for our country because it would make jurisprudence sexy and interesting – two things that cannot be said with seriousness right now. 

The third step would, of course, be the contests to see who was best.  When a candidate for the Supreme Court is before the Senate the Senators ask questions they already know the answer to.  This contest is a great deal different and since discussing abortion makes everyone testy we’ll not go there on this show.  Americans all have opinions but can they dance?  Can they sing or spit fire?  How would one candidate match up against another in gladiatorial combat – how far are they really willing to go in defense of the constitution?  What other special talents do they have?  I personally was incredibly annoyed that Senator Kennedy was boring us all by asking Sam Alito about being in a club in Princeton – that he is a member at Harvard – instead of asking about his baseball skills.  What a waste that was!  A good Supreme Court softball team is essential to our democracy.  Besides, how a person feels about cats is more important to me than how they feel about things like gun control or abortion.  You can tell more about a soul by their feelings on cats than by any other measure. 

 The contestants include: 

Alex V., who currently serves as the Attorney General of the People’s Democratic Soviet Socialist Republic of Spritopiastan and hopefully someday the consort to Chaos Bean is our first contestant.  The unique talent he would bring to the Supreme Court is actual experience practicing law – although I submit that by the time one reaches the Supreme Court you would pass the stage where you were practicing.  He can also photo-shop anything and that would make the Supreme Court a great deal more interesting than it already is.  Alex is also a cat person and would be our token man in the competition.  If he loses we can always tie him into another hit show. 

 Mademoiselle Giselle is our second contestant.  Mademoiselle previously served on the Obama Campaign and is owed a job by Barack Obama anyway.  She doesn’t have legal experience, strictly speaking, but she does work like a dog and have no discernable sense of humor, which are plusses when you’re going to hang out with Tony Scalia.  She did endure the better part of a political campaign – successfully – with me underfoot and together we are personally responsible for Obama winning Indiana and therefore the White House; you can argue that other people helped but we’re really not listening.  Her special talent that she’d bring to the Supreme Court would be her uncanny ability to herd cats and get them to bend to her will.  Anyone who can do that can win a reality TV show and move the Supreme Court in her direction. Mademoiselle is very clearly the original cat person. 

Kirsten, who I used to teach with, is another great choice for the Supreme Court.  Not only is she a talented teacher she is also a music teacher so she’ll be able to arrange everything to music, choreograph the other justices, and be able to find an Arizona state standard to apply in any situation.  She also puts on several concerts a year and a full-length musical in a Junior High, something not unlike herding cats.  She has more than her fair share of little black dresses and would save the government a great deal on getting her robes to wear to the Supreme Court.  The special skill she’d add to the court is her ability to suffer fools gladly – a skill any master teacher at a Junior High has – and can listen and then respond to stupid questions with ease.  Her ability to stay awake during faculty meetings makes her well suited for the court and sympathetic to issue of torture.  Kirsten is a cat person as well. 

 The author of The Philosophy Factory is another fine choice for the Supreme Court.  The Simpson’s once had a line stating, “unemployment isn’t effecting just philosophy majors but useful people as well,” and when a job opens on the market we have to see if we can squeeze a philosophy major in there.    Being a Supreme Court justice allegedly involves a great deal of reading and writing – something not unlike the work of philosophy – but it also involves sitting through hours of oral arguments that can sometimes be boring.  The Philosophy Factory has also judged more than her fair share of debate rounds at countless tournaments so she has experience not only pondering but also passing judgment.  Her special skill that she would bring to the Supreme Court would most definitely be her knowledge of the care and feeding of debaters.  Lawyers are just like debaters except that lawyers somehow found people to pay them for what they do.  On the issue of cats, it is important to note that her cats insist on being her avatars protect her identity. 

 Like Alex V, the Nedenia brings a law degree to the table but not only that, as an African American woman her qualifications will be ignored by her “two for one identity politics special,” and will have people burning up the phones to vote for her.  When they find out that she’s an accomplished singer, actor, and attorney they may forgive her past as a community organizer and world traveler and overlook the fact that she’s not ruled over a state with a population the size of Louisville, Kentucky.  The Nedenia speaks in a clear, unadulterated English uttered by those souls blessed to be from the Sunflower State but not only is her speaking ability persuasive and clear, she speaks several languages including French and Republican – bringing a distinctive bipartisan appeal to the court.  Her special ability that she would bring to the court and make it better would be her fashion sense, heralded as our generation’s Michelle Obama, she would give court watchers a safe place to rest their eyes.  She has no cats as per her landlord. 

Our sixth contestant is Melody.  Melody is one of the few Master Jedi known to live in the wild in North America.  Her Jedi abilities are unmatched and she is recognized as the greatest Jedi in the Rocky Mountain District.  Several companies and governmental agencies have hired Melody for her valuable insights not to mention telekinesis and being able to choke someone out from across the room.  Can you imagine how cleaned up oral arguments would be at the Supreme Court if they had contend with Justice Melody, Master Jedi?  I contend that she would usher in a new era of civility and succinctness to the court unseen in recent years.  She could also help bring consensus to the court with her ability to manipulate the weak-minded.   Also, in a time when international law is becoming more and more a factor in our lives, why not jump the gun and get an expert on interstellar law?  We may not even need to have the show.  Melody has a cat, clearly making her eligible for the show. 

 There are few people tuned in to what is really important to Americans as the author of Suburban Island.  Suburban Island brings something unique to the table in that she has our pulse.  Did we really pay attention to the Presidential Election?  Not really.  Did we pay attention to American Idol?  Did I really need to ask that?  It’s why we know who Fantasia is and still think that Barack Obama is an inexperienced Muslim and the goiter on John McCain’s neck is Lord Voldemort.  She knows that we really do not understand our Government or current events; we don’t care and are perfectly happy that way.  Her prowess as a web-based journalist would bring to the court the ability to condense everything into a brief, poignant story (with pictures) that we can all learn something from and appreciate.  If the current justices could do that then perhaps we would pay more attention but it really isn’t our fault that they are boring.  Suburban Island would bring the ability to understand the world and translate it into terms we can appreciate to the court so it is easily over-looked that she doesn’t like cats. 

 Our final contestant would be Jill.  Jill is a well-educated and experienced teacher who is enjoying the chance to be at home with her children while they’re little and cute; besides people don’t want to hang around other people’s kids until they’re potty trained.  Ruth Ginsburg and Sandra O’Connor are swell people but I’m pretty sure they have no idea what it is really like to be sequestered at home with small children or to fight the lines at the grocer.  If they do it’s been a long, long time since they’ve actually done it.  Also, Jill is a genius.  She teaches her kids at home, makes their clothes, finds amazing ways to save money and still have nice things, loves Jesus, doesn’t shop at Wal Mart, grows all their food, built their house from scratch, and unlike other women submitted for jobs like the vice-presidency, she can speak in public without people cringing.  Her practical, no-nonsense approach to life and her wisdom as a mother and a teacher would be like a cool breeze in Phoenix at the Supreme Court; that and her uncanny ability to make people feel guilty would make her an honorary Jewish Mother and a fast friend of Ruth Ginsburg.  She could also do the Supreme Court job and still run her household and teach her kids.  The only reason she would lose is that we don’t like people who make us look bad and Jill makes us all look like a pack of sloth monsters from planet McDonald’s.  Jill has no cats, she has small boys at home and cats don’t deserve that. 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Inside the Philosophy Factory]

You're too funny...

[Suburban Island]

I am feeling very honored right now!