Time Magazine on the Supreme Court

I saw the cover of Time Magazine when we were in the grocery store yesterday, and of course a song started running through my head.

Hey, Time... Time Mag, Mag
You've got me on the rag, rag
Take your insults about the queen
And shove them up your royal Chinese machine

I've never quite understood that song, except that I knew Joan Baez was mad at Time. Was she saying she was the queen of music (of folk music, of protest music)? Probably. Typical Sixties ego.

And did she think Time was a stooge of the Chinese? Strange, when all those folk-protest singers were commies at heart. Were the Chinese too communist for Joan Baez? How could that be?

But this time, I noticed the "royal." It makes more sense that she blamed Time for being a stooge for the non-communist Chinese. Still, since the Sixties, Time has moved to the left in their editorial slant--probably not far enough to suit Joan Baez even today, though.

It's that leftward slant that caught my eye and started Baez's romp through my head. Chief Justice John Roberts was on the cover (no way this would be a puff piece), and the headline said, "Does the Supreme Court Still Matter?" The sub-head on the cover said something about the Justices playing silly games and having a buddy system, so I'm taking that as a "No" answer from Time. No, the Supreme Court doesn't matter anymore, because they're just a bunch of silly people playing games, and we don't need to worry about anything important coming from them.

Funny, I don't remember anything like that on the cover of Time before Roberts and Alito showed up and started inching the Supreme Court away from a solid left majority. When the Supreme Court was heavily weighted to the left, the news media (and maybe even Joan Baez) thought it was an Important Institution. They treated decisions like Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas as solid gold examples of greatness, not as improper decisions that invented Constitutional "protections."

So now that there's more chance for conservative, constructionist decisions to come out of the Court, Time is trying to prep the people to ignore, overlook, possibly even fight any of those decisions that don't go to the left. Like a bag-lady's slip, Time's bias is showing, and it ain't pretty.