Martha-Ann’s flag, first hoisted at her home a few days after Jan. 6, initially sparked only the ire of a neighbor. Perhaps the neighbor has reason to dislike Martha-Ann, who is funny, feisty, unfiltered and the life of any party, according to mutual friends and my limited impression of her. She and I met at a meet-and-greet when the Alitos moved to Washington years ago. Almost immediately, Martha-Ann enthusiastically invited me to be her walking partner.
Long chatty walks with a Supreme Court justice’s wife? Mais oui! Your block or mine?
So, okay, maybe Martha-Ann is a tad impulsive. Alas, we never got together. I assume someone whispered in her ear that long, chatty walks with a Post columnist might not be such a good idea. Oh, but it would have been.
Meanwhile, this supercilious scandal isn’t about flags, but about — what else? — abortion. As one justice, who shall not be named, once put it to me: “Everything is about abortion.” This is especially true now. Justice Alito was the author of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that ended the constitutional right to abortion. He has been in the crosshairs of Democratic political operatives ever since.
That’s Footnote No. 1 in this tempest-y teapot. Footnote No. 2: Democrats dislike the 6-3 conservative-majority court — and the former president who appointed the three justices whose votes tipped the scales that reversed Roe v. Wade. Footnote No. 3: Having lost their bid to stack the court, Democrats are lobbying everything they can to diminish the court and the public’s trust.
Everything else is “heifer dust,” to borrow a term coined by the late Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese. Charley was too old school to call it what it was: BS.
My guess is Justice Alito doesn’t and didn’t know what his free-spirited wife was up to. His head tends to be in a cloud where words, not flags, occupy his mind. His critics seem to think they know best how he should conduct his marriage. By closely supervising his wife? Surely not.
Long before the Proud Boys appropriated the upside-down flag to represent their backward dreamscape, it was a signal of distress, which surely describes what follows. The neighbor-nemesis, who claims she never saw the flag, has been in a sustained squabble with Martha-Ann over a sign the former erected on her lawn that read, Alito told Fox News, “F— Trump.” Martha-Ann objected to the sign because it was near a school bus stop, he said.
Thus began an ongoing, shall we say, “conversation” between neighbors. During one scene, Martha-Ann allegedly appeared to spit on, or toward, the offending neighbor’s car. (Was it a dry ptwoey or a nasty hocker? Details matter.) Another neighbor, according to the justice, called Martha-Ann a particularly lurid name.
Fast forward to May 2024 and, suddenly, the flag incident is all the news. Questions of ethics have been raised about Alito’s neutrality and opinion-ators began congealing around a demand that Alito recuse himself from cases concerning the events of Jan. 6. Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph.
Oh, but there’s more. Yet, another of Martha-Ann’s flags, one that featured a pine tree and the words, “Appeal to Heaven,” flew over the New Jersey beach house she owns during the summer of 2023 — long after the 2021 Capitol riot. But because this flag also made an appearance at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The media horde and others made a giant leap: Martha-Ann must be expressing common cause with white nationalists who want a more-Christian government. (Cue heavy breathing.)
Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), speaking of which, wrote to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., asking him to intervene and force Alito to recuse from the two cases involving Jan. 6.
The senators also requested a meeting with Roberts to discuss court ethics.
Roberts responded by saying, in effect, “no.” Individual justices decide when to recuse themselves, he wrote. And, “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances. Moreover, the format proposed — a meeting with leaders of only one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the Court — simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable.” Perfection.
For his part, Alito adopted a defense that anyone in a multi-decade marriage might recognize. “My wife is a private citizen, and she possesses the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” Alito wrote in one of two letters sent to members of Congress. “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so.”
And: “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. She was solely responsible for having flagpoles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.”
That logic, though likely true, opened another can of worms in some quarters, of course. Oh, sure, blame the wife.
But I can tell you this: My workaholic husband is so busy in his own cloud that he couldn’t tell you where I am or what I’m doing on any given day. I could hang a flag from his car antenna, and he wouldn’t see it. I used to joke that it took him two years to notice that I had moved to Washington, D.C.
I love this about him because I love freedom. I wouldn’t be surprised if Martha-Ann and countless other lucky women feel the same.
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