Look, we all know that Ian Millhiser from Vox is about as far removed from being an objective journalist as Michael Moore is from the gluten-free soy products in a Whole Foods Market. But since they constantly try to pretend they are an unbiased source of even-handed explainers we will enjoy noting their rather blatant bias…and when they are shaking their pom-poms for social causes.
Today a landmark workplace discrimination case came down where SCOTUS determined that LGBT+ individuals can be covered in workplace discrimination cases.
BREAKING: In a landmark victory for LGBTQ workers, the Supreme Court rules that federal law prohibits employment discrimination against LGBTQ people. pic.twitter.com/T7jKCbe9Y5
— Vox (@voxdotcom) June 15, 2020
Surely a number of people would have feelings about this, but Millhiser appeared to be especially…reactive, we’ll say.
We must say, the ALL CAPS was an especially subtle touch, Mr. Journalist.
We have to ask about this whole ”good guys/bad guys” aspect of his regarding the court. It does not sound like the words used by a professional journalist who is covering SCOTUS, but let’s face it — we all know of the rooting interests found in the press corps these days. It just requires us to point them out.
At least in his column that he wrote over a Vox Ian was more subdued. (We read it so you can be spared the suffering.) In it, Millhiser managed to be completely aware of the facts and yet at the same time unaware of the self-awareness he has exhibited about certain aspects of the case.
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Gorsuch is a vocal proponent of “textualism,” the belief that the meaning of a law turns on its words alone, not on the intentions of the law’s drafters. And Bostock forced Gorsuch to decide between his own conservative politics and following the broad language of a landmark civil rights law. Gorsuch didn’t simply honor his textualist approach in Bostock; he wrote the majority opinion.
Huh, it’s almost as if he ruled in a fashion that people said he would during the confirmation process. The most amusing part here is that Millhiser has had such a long animosity for the Justice that his being blind to the possibility of a ruling based on the law was a foreign concept.
Trump won’t cancel the Constitution, Neil Gorsuch will.
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) March 11, 2020
Gorsuch is very eager to overrule precedents that he views as erroneous on textualist or originalist grounds in many other contexts. If he is such a principled textualist and originalist, why didn’t he vote to overrule Circuit City?
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) April 1, 2020
Just to underscore Ian’s failed prediction here, note the quote from him above where he is essentially praising Gorsuch over his Textualist views to arrive at today’s decision.
But this is the realm of The Millhiser. Gorsuch is always and irredeemably regarded as the bad guy, but suddenly today he is praiseworthy for taking the side of the Good Guys. This is the kind of knot in which you can find yourself entwined when you manage to drift from objective journalism.
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