A "Modest" Proposal

As I said a while ago while discussing Peggy Noonan, I love when a writer makes a point without even knowing they're making it.

This time it's New York Times Supreme Court writer Linda Greenhouse, whose book Becoming Justice Blackmun I quite enjoyed.

In today's Times she writes an article on the dearth of female clerks for Supreme Court Justices. This is a valid topic, and only to be expected given the increasing conservative rigor of the court.

But then she writes something that makes an impression that I'm not sure Ms. Greenhouse intended.

In the seventh paragraph of her article, Ms. Greenhouse writes:

"While their pay is a modest $63,335 for their year of service, a Supreme Court clerkship is money in the bank: the clerks are considered such a catch that law firms are currently paying each one they hire a signing bonus of $200,000."

Do you see what I see?

Now, she might have phrased that sentence differently. She could have written, "While their pay is $63,335 for their year of service, considered modest by recent law-school graduate standards..."

But she didn't. She wrote it in such a way that she made it clear that she personally believes that to earn $63,335 a year is nothing.

I would humbly submit, Ms. Greenhouse, that for many Americans who are struggling to support their families, $63,335 is hardly a "modest" amount, and the fact that you consider it to be so says quite a lot about your unconscious attitudes and those of the newspaper you work for.

Personally, I think Ms. Greenhouse needs a crash course in reality. Maybe the Times could take her off the Supreme Court beat for a short while and assign her a hard-hitting investigative piece where she'd have to go undercover and work in a McDonald's for a month or two. Or as a chambermaid in a hotel. Or as a cocktail waitress. It doesn't matter what job, really -- just so long as it pays minimum wage. It might do her some good.

In fact, maybe the whole staff of the Times should have to do that -- one week a year they would have to work for minimum wage at a demeaning job with no benefits of any kind, where they would be treated like absolute shit.

Then maybe they wouldn't consider $63,335 a year to be a "modest" amount of money.

Tom Moran