Heeeeere’s John, who is saying something about cuss words and a hammer.
Heeeeere’s Antonin, in a faked photograph that makes it appear he wears nothing beneath his judicial robe but black socks and garters.
Heeeeere’s John Paul, who is being badgered into declaring whether the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore was just a “great” decision or its greatest decision.
All of a sudden, the Supreme Court is fodder for late-night comedians, and the result is not something for which the image-conscious justices are likely to set their DVRs.
If they know how.
The foibles of President Obama, Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress are manna for late-night shows, of course. But the justices — whose time in the public spotlight is far more limited and who forbid television cameras from recording their business — have proved to be a more sporadic and elusive target.
As Jon Stewart put it recently on “The Daily Show”:
“There’s a third and equal branch of government, the judicial branch, which by now must be feeling somewhat ignored,” he said.
Stewart vowed to change all that “with our brand-new segment: A Love Supreme.”
Stewart’s compatriot on Comedy Central, Stephen Colbert, has really taken the lead on bringing the court to the viewers. He’s done as much as any newspaper editorialist to mock the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , which eased campaign finance rules. He started his own fundraising “super PAC” and invited retired Justice John Paul Stevens on his show to discuss Stevens’s dissent in the case.
Even the court’s non-comedic critics are finding a home on late-night. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered more of a punch than a punch line when he recently told David Letterman that the court’s decisions on campaign finance “showed a degree of ignorance and naivete that I found astonishing.”
The current interest in the court is not surprising. It will decide a series of cases this year — including the constitutionality of the health-care overhaul — as important as any the justices have faced in years.
The Supreme Court occupies an unusual place in the federal firmament. When justices venture into the public sphere, they do so “gingerly,” said Richard Davis, a professor at Brigham Young University who wrote “Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media.”
“They spend a lot of effort to focus attention on the product” of their work rather than their individual roles in the process, Davis said. “We’ve given the court a certain aura, and that gets diminished when the justices are talked about on Colbert.”
Not that they have much choice in the matter. Colbert, the “comedian/presidential candidate/super PAC founder,” as he was called recently by Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick, has made the court’s campaign finance decisions an important component of his shtick.
“Nothing has ever prepared the justices for the public opinion wrecking ball that is Stephen Colbert,” Lithwick wrote.
Stewart, meanwhile, has used audiotapes of the court’s oral arguments to buttress his comedy. From a case on the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to monitor the airwaves for indecency, he pulled a quote by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. about children hearing cuss words after a household accident with a hammer.
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