by Matt Barr

Roberts made lawyer joke in 1985; blow to confirmation chances

I give up.

[In 1985, Linda] Chavez had 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 and went to law school.

In a July 31, 1985, memo, Roberts noted that, as an assistant dean at the University of Richmond law school before she joined the Reagan administration, Arey had "encouraged many former homemakers to enter law school and become lawyers." Roberts said in his memo 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."

Would it be safe to say this remark "startled women across the ideological spectrum"? Because the article does.

Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the conservative Eagle Forum who entered law school when she was 51, said, "It kind of sounds like a smart alecky comment." She noted that Roberts was "a young bachelor and hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point."

Schlafly said, "I knew Lyn Arey. She is a fine woman." But she added, "I don't think that disqualifies him. I think he got married to a feminist; he's learned a lot."

Kim Gandy, president of the liberal National Organization for Women, which already has opposed Roberts, reacted more harshly. "Oh. Wow. Good heavens," she said. "I find it quite shocking that a young lawyer, as he was at the time, had such Neanderthal ideas about women's place."

And yet hardly anyone, I bet, finds it quite shocking that Kim Gandy doesn't realize it's a lawyer joke, not a homemaker joke.

It's one thing when our commitment to victimology fades our love of liberty and personal responsibility and dulls the dynamism of our society. It's quite another when hypersensitive people get on page A-1 of the Washington Post by virtue of not getting a joke. Now, I fear for the republic.

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