Gather ’round for the latest twist in the ongoing saga involving Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann.
If you haven’t been keeping up, the New York Times has been relentless, like a dog with a bone, in their coverage of a dispute between Mrs. Alito and a neighbor. The flashpoint? An American flag flown upside down at the Alito residence, just eleven days after the Capitol riot.
Now, let’s set the stage. Over the past two weeks, the Times has churned out nine articles about flag-flying at the Alito homes. This includes everything from the upside-down flag in 2021 to a Revolutionary War-era “Appeal to Heaven” flag seen at their beach house in 2023.
The insinuation in these pieces is clear: the Times and their “experts” suggest Mrs. Alito’s flag-flying indicates sympathy for the Capitol rioters, questioning Justice Alito’s impartiality on related cases.
In the latest article, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jodi Kantor delves into a timeline of the 2021 flag incident. Justice Alito explained that the flag was briefly flown in response to insulting language on a neighbor’s yard signs. However, Kantor’s digging revealed that the particularly offensive incident described by Justice Alito didn’t occur until a month later.
The Times interviewed the neighbors involved in the feud, painting them as mild-mannered liberals exercising their First Amendment rights. They admitted to using vulgar language towards Mrs. Alito but claimed it was in reaction to her behavior. Their version of events depicts Mrs. Alito as the instigator, with the signs expressing their disdain for then-President Trump, which they kept up even after Mrs. Alito voiced her offense.
Commentator Amber Duke, however, provides a different perspective. According to her, the neighbors come across as antagonistic. They were a pro-BLM couple living with their parents, deliberately provoking Mrs. Alito with offensive signage and driving by the Alito house post-January 6 to “see what she was doing.”
As told on Redstate, Amber Duke reported:
So the couple the Alitos got into a spat with were a pro-BLM mid-30s unmarried white couple with a “pandemic puppy” living at their parents’ house. Let’s just acknowledge the amazing typecasting here.
The couple claims they “didn’t instigate” except they acknowledge they put up the f**k Trump sign and then committed to keeping it up after Mrs. Alito mentioned she found it offensive. They later added another sign saying, “you’re complicit,” which they claim was directed at Republicans. After January 6, they admit again to deliberately driving past Alito’s house to “see what she was doing.” Then they had the gall to claim to be the victims and called the police on the older homeowner they were deliberately f**king with. Okay.
The Times’ aim appears to be to question Justice Alito’s impartiality and to portray Mrs. Alito as unstable. Yet, as Duke and others have pointed out, the supposed inconsistencies in the Alitos’ account do not conclusively link the flag to Capitol riot sympathies. This narrative feels manufactured, an attempt to drum up outrage and pressure Justice Alito to step down.
The couple in the spat with Mrs. Alito came back over a year later to protest outside their home, and we’re supposed to believe this whole story is about anything other than the fact that the Alito’s had jerks for neighbors? pic.twitter.com/9D3pDUMhPV
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 29, 2024
As Brad Slager succinctly puts it, this is a classic “manufactured narrative” by media outlets sympathetic to the Democratic cause. Despite years of searching for insurrection indicators, this flag incident only recently caught the media’s attention. It’s a fabricated outrage, resulting in little more than public eye-rolling.
So there you have it, folks. Another chapter in a story that’s been spun and stretched to fit a particular narrative. Whether this will impact Justice Alito’s standing remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the press’s persistence on this matter is more likely to provoke sighs than support.
