Posted on 01/26/2006 10:22:20 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
On 12 January, 2006, the New York Times ran an article entitled “Thrust into the Limelight, and for Some A Symbol of Washington’s Bite.” It was a mini-biography of Mrs. Martha-Ann Alito, and it purported to explain the reasons for Mrs. Alito’s tears during her husband Samuel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It blamed them on a follow-up question by Senator Lindsay Graham, rather than on the verbal savaging of Judge Alito by the Democrats on the Committee, led by Senator Ted Kennedy.
The Times should have gotten the story right, because one of the three reporters on the story was in their New Jersey Bureau, and based in Caldwell. But they didn’t. Here are the operative paragraphs from that article on the cause of her tears:
She has sat behind him [her husband] all week, a pleasant-looking woman in sensible clothes, peering through rimless glasses as Democrats grilled Judge Alito about his investments and his affiliation with a conservative Princeton alumni group and Republicans tried to provide him some relief.
On Wednesday, one of those Republicans, Mr. Graham, tried to mock the Democrats with a question about the alumni group, which opposed affirmative action.
"Are you really a closet bigot?" Mr. Graham asked, at which point Mrs. Alito drew her hands to her face and left the hearing room weeping.
Source: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20C14FD3C5B0C708DDDA80894DE404482
As the article explained, Mrs. Alito is “fiercely protective” of her husband. And she was upset by the attacks on him as if he were dishonest, or a bigot, or a poor judge. But there was an additional reason, much older and much darker than what happened at that hearing. It concerns the fact that Senator Kennedy led the attack against Judge Alito.
Mrs, Alito was born Martha-Ann Bomgardner in Ft. Knox, Kentucky. The family moved with her father’s profession as an air traffic controller to New Jersey, where she attended Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Kentucky, she returned to New Jersey and became a librarian in the US Attorney’s office, where she met her husband.
Through her husband’s family, she learned of their personal friendship with another young woman who was also an only child. This other woman and her family were staunch Catholics. On occasion, they attended the same church in Roseland, New Jersey, as the Alitos, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, one of only two churches in that town of 5,298. The Alitos live in Caldwell, population 7,584, where this other woman graduated from Caldwell College, probably as a commuter student from her home, rather than a resident student.
From the personal memories of this woman that Mrs. Alito got from her husband’s family, and from her own understanding of what it means to be an only child, Mrs. Alito knew of the worst thing that any human being could do to another. She also heard of its impact on the family.
That other woman’s name was Mary Jo Kopeckne. She was killed by Senator Ted Kennedy, in an auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, on 18 July, 1969. That was the other reason for Mrs. Alito’s tears.
[Author’s notes: The author did not bother any of the three families referred to here in writing this. All the information was gathered from reputable Internet sources. If the Times puts a competent reporter on the story, it can find the same information. It should also then apologize for its original article, in which the three reporters presented their personal assumptions as facts on the cause of Mrs. Alito’s upset at the hearing.]
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
Good question.
That is an absolutely ridiculous comment.
And you were so impressed you reposted it. Reread post #173. That is your name on the post. You are guilty of spreading "filth".
(Among other things......)
You're doing the same thing he did.
Your side of this argument--not you but my looking at CBB's logic--has won me over. But that doesn't mean I'm not holding "our" side to the same standard.
You're making an assumption, and saying "Well it's logical to assume..."
Kinda like a Dan Rather "the facts are true, though the documents are not" excuse.
You don't know. Neither, alas, does CongressmanBillyBob.
Yep...I'm doing "research."
ping
No. THIS is an absolutely ridiculous comment "I am just going to forward it to any news organization who wants to publish his horrible piece, exposing Mrs. Alito to dreadful questioning." and is just further evidence that Paulet makes a habit of distributing pornography to people who don't necessarily want to see it.
Don't reply to me about your marriage...I never asked you about it!
Come on, man, now you're parsing words. It amounts to the same thing.
Reading a biography of someone leads you to think she has "normal sensibilities" which means you KNOW what she was crying about?
Come on, man. Pull the article and rework it as an opinion piece. Show the integrity you are capable of, and the integrity we demand of the MSM.
I mean, if the New York Times ever wrote "President Bush was angry about a question about Iraq, obviously because he was once an oil man and was thinking about how much money he lost," we'd be all over them. You're doing the same thing.
But you folks do what you want, I'm done with this thread. The hysterics on one side and the stubbornness on the other are getting me depressed.
And to think I was just getting ready to post my breaking news, "Mrs. Alito's tears result of entering menopause during hearings".
Got scooped again.
It's pointless to argue that issue. But I will remind you that every single article about the incident claimed that Mrs. Alito left because of the Democrats' attacks on her husband. None of them mentioned Mary Jo Kopechne. And, at any rate, my problem wasn't with the assumptions in his article. He also assumed that Mrs. Alito had heard of Mary Jo through her husband which I saw no proof for. But that wasn't what I was arguing about. Mrs. Alito crying over Mary Jo was a complete LEAP, not just an assumption. It goes beyond assuming and lands in the realm of absurdity.
See #173. You will see the kind of man you're dealing with.
Exactly--you're both doing "research". AKA assuming things neither of you know anything about and passing it off as fact.
Maybe you both should try doing some plain old research.
Good night, both of you.
>>>Come on, man. Pull the article and rework it as an opinion piece. Show the integrity you are capable of, and the integrity we demand of the MSM.<<<
It already is an opinion piece.
True, but it needs to be rewritten to conform to that, and not as fact.
You're being silly. Whatever paulat says is no justification for your accusations of distributing pornography. THAT is ridiculous.
I've asked you to do research to debunk this article and you refused. I guess you'd rather research the postings of someone you accuse of being "filth personified" so you can find "objectionable material" to distribute over the Internet and to potential news outlets.
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