Short Take: Joke Cracked, Head Exploded

If Ian Millhiser didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. He’s the obviously smart guy who nonetheless has no problem twisting facts, arguing fallacies, rationalizing reality to reach the goal. He is the ultimate “end justifies the means” kind of guy. For me, he’s a bellwether of just how irrational one has to get to reach progressive Nirvana.

In his speech to the Federalist Society, a group so despised by progressives for its brutal politics and slavish adherence to reason, the last and, according to progressives, least legitimate Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, cracked a joke.

The premise of Gorsuch’s joke is that he was unfairly attacked during his confirmation hearing because he reached a result that was required by the law. A judge may be presented with a law, Gorsuch began his joke, and “immediately know three things.”

One, the law is telling me to do something really, really stupid. Two, the law is constitutional and I have no choice but to do that really stupid thing the law demands. And three, when it’s done, everyone who is not a lawyer is going to think I just hate truckers.

The audience of deplorables “laughed and clapped uproariously,” which proves just how literally awful they are. Even Millhiser got the point of the joke, so what made his head explode?

But here’s the thing. Either Gorsuch is wrong, and his vote in TransAm Trucking v. Administrative Review Board was a cruel swipe at a man who, after nearly freezing death, was illegally humiliated by his employer. Or Gorsuch is correct, and what happened to Alphonse Maddin is the horrible consequence of a terribly worded law. Maddin’s case is neither an easy win for Maddin nor the slam dunk for Maddin’s employer that Gorsuch thinks it is, but whoever is right about the law, this case is a human tragedy.

Or, if you are Neil Gorsuch, it was an annoyance that briefly stood between you and a powerful job in Washington. And now it is something to joke about.

Some call such jokes “gallows humor,” as what happened to Maddin was by no means funny. And had I been on the bench, I would have ruled against Maddin’s employer, contrary to then-judge Gorsuch. But Millhiser, despite putatively grasping the point of the joke, then contorts it into an indictment of Gorsuch, proof that he is a venal person. Because only a horrible person could make a joke about a tragedy.

Except this wasn’t a joke about a tragedy, but a joke about how differences in legal reasoning are twisted into the unduly passionate, yet overly simplistic, hatred of the poor guy involved.

In the world of Millhiser, Maddin should have won not because of the law, not because of statutory interpretation, but because what happened to him was tragic. The progressive rule is that the saddest person should win, and no law, no statutory interpretation, should ever stand in the way of “justice.”

The irony here is that Gorsuch was dissenting in the case, two other judges ruling in Maddin’s favor. His dissent could be chalked up to his lack of sympathy for Maddin, if one chooses to impute malice rather than be generous enough to accept a difference of legal opinion.

But Millhiser takes it that one last step, which was exactly why Justice Gorsuch’s joke was funny: Rule against the saddest litigant and no matter what the reason, no matter how sound, no matter how principled, no matter what the means, the end for progressives is that you just hate truckers.

20 thoughts on “Short Take: Joke Cracked, Head Exploded

  1. Richard Kopf

    SHG,

    Because it had all the elements of a better than average stand-up bit, I think even Al Franken would have laughed at Gorsuch’s joke.

    Oh, wait . . . I forgot. Never mind.

    All the best.

    RGK

      1. Richard Kopf

        SHG,

        Well, then, it appears I have disgraced myself yet again. I am joining the castrati as penance. That way, at least I will henceforth always hit the high note. I will have no alternative.

        All the best.

        RGK

        1. SHG Post author

          Hardly, Judge. It’s just that I’m particularly woke, and have a greater sensitivity to such delicate matters.

  2. Ross

    Brought to you by the same folks that argue that SCOTUS is biased because decisions favor large corporations more often than the other side, and that the results should be 50/50. No reasoning ability at all in those minds. Could it possibly be that parties with lots of money are better at picking cases to take to SCOTUS?

    1. SHG Post author

      Like so many things in life, each instance is it’s own coin toss. Maybe it’s bias. Maybe it’s just the way things go. Adding up sides doesn’t inform us as to any case, any decision, any predilection. That doesn’t make a justice good, but the stats alone doesn’t make him bad either.

  3. B. McLeod

    What “human tragedy?” Alphonse Maddin didn’t die. He didn’t suffer serious or permanent injury. He lost a job, because he deserted his truck, because he was unprepared to deal with existing road and weather conditions and completely probable contingencies. He was a moron, and a fair-weather disgrace to real truckers. His employer likely realized at once that this was not a man they ever should have hired, and promptly rectified the situation. What kind of a nation of pussies have we become, that anybody sides with a worthless poltroon like Maddin in his attempt to blame a law for his own stupidity? The employer totally should have been able to fire his ignorant ass for this, to open a position for somebody better prepared and more capable of actually doing the job at hand.

    1. SHG Post author

      Here’s a thought: eliminate Maddin as an issue, because for the purposes of this post, he’s not. So whether this is a tragedy or not is irrelevant. And then somebody wants to argue he’s moron anyway, though the only purpose served is to go down the orthogonal path of who’s the real saddest party. Would it make a good TV movie or what?

      1. B. McLeod

        But Millhiser, and humor. Two things that evidently don’t go together. Millhiser’s declaration that the case “is a human tragedy” is more of a joke than the joke Millhiser finds objectionable.

        1. SHG Post author

          That’s Millhiser’s feelz, hyperbolic as they may be. Don’t deny that humorless fellow his vicariously lived experience.

      1. B. McLeod

        What I don’t like is the continuing pussification of our society. Fifty years ago, a trucker engaging in this behavior would have been a misfit, and what would have raised eyebrows then would have been any trucking company NOT firing him. In those days, any misfit flop who screwed up like this would not have dreamed of wasting a federal judge’s time with his personal failings, let alone wasting the time of an entire panel of appellate judges.

        Also in those days, truckers were great. If you had a problem on the nation’s highways, you had a ten times better chance of help from a trucker than from law enforcement or anybody else. As a trade or profession, trucking has fallen into the toilet, and it certainly doesn’t need anymore crybabies who can’t figure out the basic mission of getting a load entrusted to them from point A to point B, safely and on time.

          1. Patrick Maupin

            Yeah, but think how much worse it could have been if he had intuited a connection between truckers and the ABA.

            1. Jim Tyre

              Too easy. The lawyers org has had a number of domain names over the years, including the unwieldy abanet.org, but never aba.org. That’s because the American Bartenders Association beat the lawyers to that one. Truckers and lawyers share a love of good bartenders, so there you go.

              At some point, the American Birders Association acquired aba.org. B certainly would agree that the lawyers association is for the birds. But I digress.

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