Word: scotus
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...scandal-haunted black conservative! The mysterious, John Cage-like nebbish who infuriates his Republican sponsors by going liberal on them! The plucky woman jurist coming back from cancer! Make 'em all 40 years younger and tighten up those robes and you've got ratings gold. POTUS, make room for SCOTUS...
...however, leave the cable news networks that carried the hearing stretching to make the tapes visually dramatic: CNN busied up its screen with a collage including the presidential seal, a picture of tape machine reels, head shots of attorneys and Justices, closed captioning and a live shot of the SCOTUS building; MSNBC added goofy computer-generated animation that zoomed through a digital court building as they tape played, reminding us why the Sony PlayStation has no videogame set in a federal courthouse...
...failings, our Supreme Court is a body based less on partisan agendas than on the principle of being skeptical, contrary cusses, knocking around those who would dare petition them like ping-pong balls. Some cameras-in-the-courts detractors say that's why it's useless to broadcast SCOTUS hearings live: Under this questioning, even for lawyers it's often impossible to tell whose side the adversarial judges are really on until they rule...
...rather than "changing the rules after the game.") No one rhymed, blustered or whipped out gloves. Perhaps because the "jury" the lawyers were addressing here would be likely to tear them a few new orifices if they went all Dylan McDermott in this courtroom. (And note that the unprecedented SCOTUS tapes turned out to be so titillating, so entertaining, that the major networks didn't bother bumping their soap operas for them. Court TV stuck with the Rae Carruth murder trial...
...Maybe the greatest benefit of airing the SCOTUS show is an illusory one: It'll simply make us feel more enfranchised, informed and empowered than we are. But that doesn't mean it's not important, above all at a time when half the country is on the verge of feeling electorally swindled. There's a strong argument for broadcasting Supreme Court proceedings because we can, as an unambiguous, if symbolic, statement of who works for whom here. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, we paid for those robes...