This story is bananas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/alito-flag-martha-ann-washington-post/
It’s hard to know where to start with this, but starting with how this story demonstrates the failure of local news seems like a good place to jump in.
OK, fine, don’t click the link. This is about Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house that had an upside-down U.S. flag hanging outside his house after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Yes, bananas, but this happened in 2021 and The Washington Post knew about it in 2021. They didn’t report on it in 2021 because, the story says, the *now-retired* reporter and presumably his editor felt that this was a story primarily involving only Justice Alito’s wife.
They are reporting on it now because the New York Times found out about it recently and published their own story. I have to give the Post some props here for even owning this because wow, is this embarrassing. A Post reporter went and checked this out in two thousand and twenty one! And either came away thinking it was a nothing burger or was convinced of it by someone else.
It must be hard for the Post to be playing catch-up on this one, especially after passing on a big story in their own backyard. And the Times is running with this too. Jodi Kantor has been reporting the hell out of it and asking hard questions about accountability – and about the limits of incredulity. (His wife hung the flag, an international sign of distress, because of a neighbor dispute of a personal nature? And he had nothing to say about it. Really. He didn’t think that was a little much for a fight over lawn signs? No??) She also learned that they have another controversial flag flying at their other home. She’s not getting any real answers from the Supreme Court, which is self-regulated – and who apparently has been aware of this incident for about three years now.
But imagine for a moment a world in which Post reporter Robert Barnes had reported on this in real time, right between the insurrection attempt on the Capitol and Biden’s inauguration. (By the The idea that a justice was aligning himself with such imagery at a time when we were learning that Trump was actively trying to get his vice president, his supporters, politicians in other states, to overturn an election? Was he trying to pull levers in the Supreme Court as well? This is a legit question to ask.
This story is stunning, truly. It has national reverberations and it’s hard to read this information without wondering why Alito hasn’t been recused from cases involving Jan. 6. But in this context, the Post was a local paper and failed to cover its community. This reporter’s beat just happened to encompass the Supreme Court. This seems like a good illustration of what happens when you are a wee bit too comfy with your sources. I mean, to get talked out of not doing this story. Wow.
We’ll never know what would have happened if this was reported when it happened. But we know what’s happening now. Alito has refused to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases and it’s hard to believe that he would have been able to play that card in 2021. But now? We’ve got folks who participated in the insurrection running for office, and many Republicans now are comfortable saying either that the 2020 election was fixed or that they won’t accept the election results unless Trump wins. So, this story is happening now – at a time when efforts to normalize Jan. 6 are going well!
TWA Blog and Podcast
Everyone who knows me knows that my other obsession is tennis. I did my draw prediction on my tennis blog before the start of the French Open – although I freely admit I went a little crazy on it after learning that Rafael Nadal was getting handed a pretty tough draw. Hate reading? Listen to my podcast about the French Open storylines instead! I’ll be updating the blog this weekend with a look back at the first week of the main draw and probably some other rando musings.