Benjamin Cardozo was a particularly prominent U.S. Supreme Court justice. Someone once wrote a paper misspelling his surname with an ‘a’ at the end instead of an ‘o’ (Cardoza). That paper made its way onto various Internet sites, including ones that resold it to students eager to pay a few bucks so they wouldn’t have to do any actual work. I’ve had some of those students over the years. They plagiarized a mistake without even realizing it.

Similarly, many of today’s journalists commit professional malpractice on a daily basis for numerous reasons, not least of which their laziness. They come across tidbits of information such as: Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists and criminals; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is against vaccines across the board; Joe Biden spent the 2020 campaign hiding in his basement; Johnny Unitas was Greek, etc., and take is as gospel.

One such recently recycled myth is that the Supreme Court rarely issues unanimous decisions. That’s simply not true. In fact, almost half of the Court’s cases result in 9-0 judgments. Consequently, when reporter after reporter parroted the words “in a rare moment of unanimity” regarding the Court’s recent 9-0 decision in Trump v. Anderson, I had to shake my head and chuckle.

Here’s how the myth goes: 1) The Supreme Court is politically charged; justices follow their ideology and then patch in legal jargon to justify it. 2) At the moment, conservative justices enjoy a 6-3 supermajority over their liberal counterparts. 3) Therefore, progressive causes are doomed.
Imagine those among the TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) crowd who get their news from X (formerly known as Twitter), who assumed the Court would rule 6-3 in Trump’s favor, along partisan lines. How stunned they must’ve been to discover that their social justice warrior heroes, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson decided the same way as conservative lions Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts, and three justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – who were appointed by Trump. Or to learn that other 6-3 or 5-4 decisions feature combinations of justices transcending ideological lines.

And if the Colorado Supreme Court’s judges had any conscience, they’d surely feel humiliated that their ruling to keep Trump off that state’s ballot was rejected by every single one of the High Court’s justices.
A Colorado trial court had determined that Trump engaged in an insurrection, lazily (there’s that word again) quoting from Trump’s January 6 speech that his supporters ought to “fight like hell.” Of course, that court didn’t mention that in that same speech, Trump said he too “fought like hell” for Senate confirmation of his three Supreme Court picks. Obviously, Trump hadn’t physically thrown punches at Chuck Schumer. Trump also referred to Rudy Giuliani as a prime example of someone who fights; naturally, Trump wasn’t characterizing the 70-something Giuliani as a pugilist. Oh, and then there’s the one line that renders the entire matter a cheap, ridiculous witch-hunt: Trump actually, expressly, explicitly told the crowd to go to the Capitol and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” But Colorado’s kangaroo trial court failed to mention that too.

Colorado’s Supreme Court didn’t overrule, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where all nine justices concluded that it’s up to Congress, not individual states, to decide who’s eligible to be on the ballot in federal elections. The decision’s unanimity underscores the absurdity of that notion and all but ensures that no one will dare raise it again. Most of the Court’s unanimous decisions aren’t juicy enough to capture public attention, but when justices rule 9-0 in a high-profile case, that issue is over and done with. For example, the Court ruled 9-0 in 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education) that it’s unconstitutional to segregate schools by race. No one’s tried it since.
Meanwhile, in other news, Nikki Haley dropped out, RFK Jr. is still being ignored, and so all eyes are on Biden and Trump for the November showdown.

But for how long? To the casual political observer, a Biden-Trump rematch is about as exciting as watching paint dry. It’s not unlike last year’s World Series, about which my friends who still follow baseball complained because it featured two mediocre teams that somehow got there. Not-so-coincidentally, it turned out to be the least-watched Series since they started tabulating viewership ratings in 1968.

Americans used to be far less political than they are now. As a political science major in college, I wished more Americans cared. Now, I regret what I wished for, because every Tom, Dick, and Harry who stares at his phone all day as the tweets come pouring in, or gets his news from his favorite dumbed-down comfort food feeding trough, all of a sudden fancies himself James Carville or Karl Rove.

Perhaps what we need is a good old-fashioned boring election.

Last year, Jewel Bronaugh stepped down as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. Americans weren’t exactly giddy with anticipation about who might replace her. It was Xochitl Torres Small. Who? Exactly. Maybe they’ll lose interest in Biden-Trump too.

In the summer of 1988 I bought a biography of Michael Dukakis, his name and photo taking up the entire front cover. I showed it to a friend, who asked “who’s that?” about the man who had already secured the Democratic presidential nomination. Slightly annoyed, I explained, and then half-sarcastically asked her: “do you know who the president is?” “Yeah, Reagan.” That one she got right.
She represented a large swath of Americans, who, when it came to politics, knew the president but not much more. Ahh, the good ol’ days.