Justice Anthony Kennedy announced Wednesday that he will retire from the Supreme Court at the end of July, prompting a degree of calm reflection and thoughtful analysis from members of the news media.
Ha! Ha! Just kidding.
Kennedy’s shock announcement set off a round of wailing and gnashing of teeth in newsrooms, because that’s how we respond to everything these days.
[Related: Twitter erupts over Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement]
“Anthony Kennedy is retiring. Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months,” tweeted the New Yorker’s Jeffery Toobin, who is really swinging for the fences these days with hyperventilating partisan commentary.
The front page of the New York Daily News went with this headline: “WE ARE F*#%’D”
ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser said simply, “Fuck. You. Justice. Kennedy.”
Others predicted they’d soon lose their birth control.
New York Times social editor Talya Minsberg, for example, tweeted, “I know I’m not the only woman who has a phone full of ‘so should we get IUDs now?’ texts.”
“[G]et your IUDs now,” added Splinter News’ Libby Watson.
One specific strain of response in the media was decidedly bitter, including when The Week’s Supreme Court truther-in-residence Ryan Cooper complained, “Neil Gorsuch is not a real justice. preventing a vote on Garland was a far greater constitutional violation than FDR’s court-packing plan. all decisions relying on his vote should be ignored where possible.”
He added later is a note that dropped all pretense of subtlety, “congratulations to Supreme Court Justice David Duke.”
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd grumbled elsewhere, “Will be interesting to see how some GOP senators rationalize the idea that it’s suddenly now ok to debate an open SCOTUS seat in an election year. They may fully pull that hypocrisy muscle.”
OpenSecrets’ Robert Macguire groused , “Guess we’ll have to wait until after the 2020 elections to see who the next Supreme Court justice will be, right? That’s how we do it now?”
In fairness, it probably would be, if Democrats had a majority in the Senate.
There were some whispers earlier this week that Justice Clarence Thomas might retire, seeing as how he just hit age 70. Those rumors obviously didn’t pan out. On top of disappointing a few reporters, the Thomas story also had the effect of catching just about everyone off guard when Kennedy announced he’d be the one stepping down after this session.
The problem here is that the hair-on-fire response to the retirement news is the same one that the same people have had for every development in the Trump administration. People have become desensitized, which is usually (and in this case) a good thing.
