Liberals Love Lawyers

Of the many ideologies that divide the left and the right, I’m convinced that attitudes about the legal profession is a biggie.

Conservatives generally tolerate lawyers as a necessary evil, but dearly love lawyer jokes. Skidmarks in front of the snake …. a good start ….. his lips are moving ….. we love them all!

I’ll never forget the night Lee and I were dining out and she was telling a string of hysterical lawyer jokes. Suddenly there appeared at our table a very earnest and straight faced man. “I’d like you to know,” he said, “that my wife and I are both lawyers and we are nothing at all like that!” Taken aback, I replied that the jokes were not about him or his wife; we didn’t even know that they were lawyers. He left unsatisfied. It's sad to have no sense of humor.

Liberals either can’t understand or simply dislike lawyer jokes, but they dearly love lawyers.

The ACLU lefties use lawyers to defend pedophiles and to force cities across the country to remove tiny crosses from public buildings. Environmentalists use lawyers to keep us from drilling for oil in remote Alaska, but then complain about the cost of gasoline. Teacher’s Union lawyers oppose poor parents who want to use vouchers to give their children a chance in a better school. Democratic city governments use lawyers to seize property from individuals and give it to corporations who will pay more taxes. Yes, lawyers have their uses.

Liberals particularly love the fact that lawyers can become judges who are then able to enact liberal social policy without having to deal with that tedious legislative process. After all, judges are so much smarter than the rest of us, why do we need to be involved?

However, there is a certain kind of lawyer, and a certain kind of judge, that liberals do not like at all. It appears that John G. Roberts is one of those (Hugh Hewitt is another). And what is his problem exactly? Well, it seems that Judge Roberts committed that most egregious of sins…. he told a lawyer joke.

It happened in 1985 when he and Linda Chavez were working in the Reagan White House. Chavez proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey, in a contest sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had changed their lives after age 30. Arey had been a schoolteacher who decided to change careers, went to law school and became a successful attorney.

Later as an assistant dean at the University of Richmond law school Arey had “encouraged many former homemakers to enter law school and become lawyers.”

Roberts said that he saw no legal objection to her taking part in the Clairol contest. Then he added a personal aside: “Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide.”

Roberts’ associates recount that he is known for his dry humor and a tendency to self deprecation. Here he was joking about the desirability of creating more lawyers, just like any good conservative would. It was a joke like the one: “What are 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”... “A good start.” Or he was making a value judgment between homemakers (Good) and lawyers (Bad).

But do the liberals get the joke? Are you kidding? They take this as proof positive that Roberts is a sexist Neanderthal.

Apparently his lawyer wife Jane likes him anyway.










Caveman John courtesy of Rush Limbaugh.