‘I’m gonna get them’: Martha-Ann Alito can’t wait to spend her golden years getting even | Opinion

Let no one say that the two most conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, married meek women. Or partners with inscrutable political views.

This week, we learned from a conversation secretly recorded by a lefty activist — a perfect stranger who sidled up to Martha-Ann Alito at a black-tie dinner, dropping compliments and f-bombs — that she hopes to spend her golden years indulging certain well-tended vendettas.

First, against the media. And not only for recent reporting that the Alitos have flown two overtly pro-Trump flags outside their homes, both of them connected to Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement and to Jan. 6 insurrectionists. This just as the court was considering a case involving the 2020 election and is considering Trump’s claims of immunity from criminal prosecution for his attempts to overturn the results of that vote.

Mrs. Alito’s animus towards the press apparently goes back to when Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan cut her clothes apart in print after the Alitos arrived in D.C. in 2006. Of course, reading that one of your ensembles reminded a writer of a baby blanket, and that another outfit seemed to have been patterned after a La-Z-Boy recliner, does not sound fun at all. But neither does eagerly waiting for the day when you can, as she put it, “get them. I’m gonna be liberated, and I’m gonna get them. … Come on, come on, I’ll get you, come on.”

She also looks forward to sticking it to her neighbors across the lagoon from their beach house in New Jersey, who are not to be confused with the other neighbors she doesn’t like, on their street in Northern Virginia.

Lauren Windsor, the woman goading the justice’s wife with feigned sympathy and outrage at that recent dinner, works in the same vineyard as Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, the right-wing activist who before he was fired from his own operation for spending “an excessive amount of donor funds” on personal luxuries specialized in hidden camera sting operations.

Windsor also taped her conversation with Justice Alito, who agreed with her that there was no compromising with liberals because “one side or the other is going to win.” So cases before the Supreme Court of the United States aren’t decided neutrally, based not on our current political passions but on the U.S. Constitution? Not to hear the Alitos tell it.

Unburdening herself to someone she’d just met, Mrs. Alito said that as soon as “we’re free of this nonsense” — presumably referring to her husband’s service on the highest court in the country — she’ll be flying lots of flags. And all of them, she hopes, will send messages that will upset her neighbors across the water just as much as their pride flag bothers her.

Mere snippets of this five-minute conversation with Windsor about her bitter dream of a retirement spent getting even do not fully capture Mrs. Alito’s rage and aggrievement, but here are a few samples anyway: “Feminazis believe that he should control me. So they’ll go to hell; he never controls me. … Don’t get angry, get even. … Look at me. Look at me. I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you. And there will be a way — it doesn’t have to be now — but there will be a way they will know. Don’t worry about it.”

When Windsor says that to make our country more godly and moral, conservatives “just have to f---ing win,” Mrs. Alito responds, “You know what I want? I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag, because I have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. And he’s like, ‘Oh, please don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I’m deferring to you, but when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up and I’m gonna send them a message every day. Maybe every week I’ll be changing the flags.’ ”

“They’ll be all kinds. I made a flag in my head. This is how I satisfy myself. I made a flag. It’s white and it has yellow and orange flames around it. And in the middle of it is the word ‘vergogna.’ Vergogna in Italian means shame. Vergogna. V-E-R-G-O-G-N-A. Vergogna. Shame, shame, shame on you.”

Here’s where I do agree with Mrs. Alito: “Vergogna” is a great word, much more satisfying to unfurl and let fly — yes, like a flag — than its English equivalent.

But coming back to this agita from the 80th D-Day anniversary in Normandy, where the flags I saw were American, French, British and Canadian, all flying together, in displays meant to unify and pay homage, is a deflating reminder of where we are right here and now. Which is a place so angry that even the wife of a member of our highest court is looking for payback and longing to fly flags meant to shame.

Martha-Ann Alito could herself have a big future on the conservative circuit, along with a whole line of red hot “vergogna” merch. In fact, having already been “liberated” by sharing her views with Lauren Windsor, she needn’t even wait for her husband’s retirement.