Bar Association

The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court may have been quite shocking, but it sure as hell wasn’t a surprise. Concerned citizens saw it coming even before some hopefully never-identified hero leaked the draft opinion back in May.

One could probably argue it became inevitable from the moment President Obama dismissed the necessity of leveraging a Democratic supermajority in 2009 to codify Roe and its broader guarantees in the legislature, instead choosing to dedicate his political capital to a Heritage Foundation-designed health insurance bill which invited skepticism from many when it was merely a theory, and seemingly no one likes now that it’s in practice.

The author of the court’s opinion, Sam Alito, not only has exhibited a pattern of misogynistic rulings and behavior throughout his career, but cited in the opinion itself a 17th-century British jurist who believed in “witches” and established the odious legal doctrine that it’s impossible for a husband to rape his wife. Alito further questions the historical precedence of abortion rights by citing a 13th-century treatise on English common law which advises on such things as appropriate torture techniques, the lack of personhood belonging to slaves or literal bastards (as opposed to figurative bastards, like Alito himself), and of course, the inherent inferiority of women.

Alito doesn’t even have the good sense or the appropriate shame to at least try and hide this stuff. He just says it out in the open! Was he too damn lazy to research any of the pre-Enlightenment scholars whose arguments formed the spine of his so-called reasoning or did he just not see anything wrong with these particular details?

Laziness or evil: which is it, Sam?

Speaking of laziness and evil, we have two of the concurring “Justices,” Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh; one known almost as much for sleeping through oral arguments as he is for sexual harassment, and the other a drunken liar credibly accused of either indecent exposure, sexual assault or rape by no fewer than three women, with more than half a dozen others corroborating some of their accounts.

Thomas and Kavanaugh are possibly the shittiest judges on a bench occupied by so many despicable pieces of crap in recent memory that it ought to be formally classified as a latrine. Perhaps that’s what Sonia Sotomayor meant when she spoke of the court’s “stench” late last year?

Others have written about the parallels between Thomas and Kavanaugh before, mostly with regard to the latter’s confirmation hearings playing out much like the former’s. Both were accused of sexually unwelcome, threatening, abusive or violent behavior by women whose testimonies were seemingly not taken remotely seriously by much or all of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and were handled with ridiculous ineptitude even by those who weren’t immediately dismissive of them.

Both nominees insisted the accusations were false but, curiously, have never pursued their accusers for defamation or tried to get them nailed for perjury. You’d think a competent judge who cares about truth and justice, not to mention preserving the reputation and sanctity of the highest court in the land from any potential threats to its legitimacy, would want to absolutely set the record straight on those matters once and for all, but then again, “competent judge” wouldn’t include the likes of Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh, anyway.

Both were allegedly constantly plastered in their respective youths. While anyone could tell from either Kavanaugh’s inebriated confirmation testimony or the flushed, frat boy-like grin on his beer-bloated face in each of his official Supreme Court photos that little has changed for him, in that regard, Thomas is said to have given up alcohol entirely at some point… and then managed the rare feat of becoming an even WORSE person by doing so.

Only one of them is allegedly a pervert with a bestiality fetish who’s repeatedly argued against the right to privacy—hidden-cam operators with an interest in blackmailing powerful public figures, do with that information what you will!

The most serious thing Thomas is said to have done was grope someone without consent—y’know, just some light sexual assault. Kavanaugh, on the other hand, has multiple accusations of both sexual assault and rape which have yet to be settled, and remain quite a bit more believable and likely than his piss-poor, perjury–riddled denials, especially given that some of his own evidence supported Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford’s descriptions of her assault while directly contradicting his claims that he was never there in the first place.

In any case, this cartoon is a good example of something to which I alluded when discussing a previous cartoon I drew about Kavanaugh back in 2018: how I like using specific events that literally happened or specific objects that were involved in such an event as both references to the events themselves and symbols for the broader topic, whenever possible. It’s more clever, and makes it harder for anyone to dismiss the cartoon’s message as unfairly exaggerated.

There are three such symbols at play, here: Clarence Thomas garnishing a beverage with a pube, which was a prominent part of Anita Hill’s testimony, and possibly the most memorable of his bizarre alleged perversions; alcohol, which is a reference to Brett Kavanaugh being so much of a stinking drunk that even his surname sounds like someone slurring their words; and the crux of the gag, which is Kavanaugh about to roofie Lady Justice. This last one was initially intended only as a universally-recognizable symbol for sexual assault in general, rather than a reference to any specific act of drugging someone for sex, but while researching stuff for this article, GUESS WHAT I LEARNED… ?