|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
Last year, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, despite being in her early 50s and having an undistinguished career before her affirmative action appointment, published a memoir.
You might be forgiven for having missed it when “Lovely One” came out. As the media politely notes, it was “briefly” on the New York Times bestseller list and is now going for half price on Amazon. That is mostly to be expected of the ghostwritten memoir of an obscure judge.
Except that Jackson received a $893,750 advance for her memoir and is now reporting $2 million in profits last year. These would be record numbers for a Supreme Court Justice’s biography from a book that hardly anyone had noticed when it came out. And while books can become unexpected successes once released, there was little sign of that happening.
The actual sales figures have not been made public and perhaps ‘Lovely One’ sold millions of copies even while hardly anyone noticed before ending up in the remainder bin a year later. Certainly no one in the same media that pursued every living member of the Thomas family to find if anyone had ever done them a favor actually bothered obtaining the sales figure.
Even when the money was coming from an avaricious foreign publisher which has deluged Supreme Court justices with millions of dollars in generous publishing deals.
After Jackson’s memoir, Penguin Random House will be publishing Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book for which she received a $2 million advance. That’s money the publisher seems even less likely to recoup considering that Barrett is hated among leftists and has a mixed approval rating among conservatives. Past polls show that the majority of the country can’t even name a single Supreme Court justice, yet they are receiving celebrity level advances for books no one cares about.
Penguin’s payouts previously made headlines when five Supreme Court justices, including Jackson and Barrett, had to recuse themselves from a case involving allegations of plagiarism by racist Hamas supporter Ta-Nehisi Coates whose works, including a book describing 9/11 firefighters as “not human to me”, were widely backed and promoted by Penguin.
The ‘Penguin’ recusals successfully allowed Coates to triumph in that latest court case.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been previously criticized for not recusing herself in cases involving Penguin which had paid her over $3 million. And the current Supreme Court is so badly conflicted over its Penguin cash that it can no longer decide cases involving it.
And that’s a problem because Penguin is actually Bertelsmann: a German ex-Nazi publishing giant that has waged war on American parents, promoted racism and is trying to monopolistically gobble up all of American publishing. Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist”, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me”, and, during WWII, “The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth” all came out of Bertelsmann.
While the ex-Nazi foreign corporation operates under familiar names like Penguin, Random House, Doubleday, Ballantine, Knopf,Viking, Putnam, Bantam, Del Rey, Golden Books and many others, it’s actually a foreign company pushing deeply destructive products. Even as parents tried to stop their children from being exposed to sexually inappropriate content, former CEO Markus Dohle went to war against them with a $500,000 legal fund.
Any corporation moving millions of dollars to Supreme Court justices in a way that has already successfully advantaged it in the Ta-Nehisi Coates plagiarism case would be suspect, but a foreign company that has tried to completely monopolize American publishing by seizing control of Simon and Schuster, and has intervened in American politics, is even more deeply troubling.
Yet the Bertelsmann millions have gone mostly unexamined even as ProPublica, a leftist advocacy group, launched a smear campaign against Justice Thomas. The Thomas smears were repeated by every media outlet in the country which pursued the 76-year-old justice’s 96-year-old mother to find out where exactly she lives and who paid the tuition for his grandnephew, yet shrug when the Supreme Court can’t even form a quorum over millions from a multinational giant that has business before the court being directed to justices.
No one in the media seems to have even bothered examining the sales figures for ‘Lovely One’ to determine how many copies were sold and which venues actually sold them. Sotomayor had become notorious for high-pressure sales tactics aimed at compelling venues to buy her books.
Supreme Court justices used to write on mainly legal matters (with notable exceptions such as Taft and Douglas) and reserved their memoirs toward the end of their lives. Newly minted justices like Jackson signing memoir deals is an obvious cash-in and Justice Sotomayor, after publishing a memoir no one was asking for ‘My Beloved World’, began writing children’s books.
Would Penguin really be publishing Sotomayor’s feeble efforts at writing children’s books, ‘Just Help!: How to Build a Better World’, ‘Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You’ and (coming soon) ‘Just Shine!: How to Be a Better You’ if she weren’t a Supreme Court justice?
And Justice Jackson making millions for a ghostwritten memoir after spending less time on the bench than most dustcloths is an equally obvious exercise in cashing in, not literary inspiration.
Judges putting their names on things to make money is not illegal, and maybe after this, Justice Jackson will have her own line of dish towels, sneakers or crypto coins, but Bertelsmann has not only monopolized the American publishing market, but has monopolized the market for justices. And considering its radical politics and vast ambitions, that is a major problem.
What happens when Bertelsmann triggers a court case with major legal implications and once again a quorum of justices can’t be found to sit on it?
Then the woke mega-publisher will have officially bought America’s legal system.
Book advances are a clever way of bribing politicians and such.
Bernie the Commie comes to mind.
Yes, it seems to be a legal loophole around bribery laws. There should be a law against it, but how exactly would it work? And what are the chances that such a law could ever get passed? Not likely.
The way to fix it is “no advances permitted” with royalties based on valid wholesale sales alone.
The NYT “bestseller list” is gamed by bulk retail purchases that are later remaindered. It wouldn’t be hard to fix, but the fixers are the justices who have no incentive to reduce their bribery system.
BTW, I have 58 years in all aspects of the book industry; I know how the system works.
How Does It work I’m married to a PHD person who ha extensive knowledge of Foreign Policy and its problems . mistakes etc and i don’t know how to go about getting her writings reviewed for a book.
Yes, it is a BIG concern for the country when the SC justices are more interested in enriching themselves then doing their elected jobs!!
Thank you, Daniel Greenfield!!!
The tradition of recusal is more a courtesy than settled law. If a case involves an octopus with its tentacles around eight justices, those justices are not required to go limp; they can use harpoons and aim as the octopus’s brain, even while bathing in the moneyed tentacles.
If the octopus withdraws the money, THAT can be used as a public embarrassment against the behemoth; the SCOTUS justices then become drug addicts who testify against their pusher.
Thank you Mr Greenfield for this eye opening article. But I fear that this country is now so used to this kind of crap
and how it’s treated by the media and THE LAW- that most people can’t be bothered!!! I’m so tired of hearing –
NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW AND WE HAVE A TWO TIERED LAW SYSTEM I COULD PUKE!!!
Whereas the common variety of streetwalkers take off their robes for chump change, Ketanji Brown Jackson put on her judicial robe for millions. That’s some trick for a woman who claims not know the definition of a woman. Query: Does Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson know the definition of a “whore?”
Incredibly rude and exist comment. Shocking. The lack of civility in post-modern America.
The truth hurts does it Ursula?
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sold her soul for big money and robes of avarice.
She should be removed from the SC, though of course, that is highly unlikely.
Doesn’t her harlot link with Penguin/NAZI publishing concern you?
Or perhaps ‘Ursula’ is just your pen name……Ketanji? Hmmmm
Katanji Brown Jackson…typical nig…
Let the liberal tears flow
reality is a bitch
I put Brown in the league with Crocket, AOC ,and the Squad. They all are over their heads in their roles. God help this country if we get more like them in public office.
There is not shortage of sold-out politicians, judges and bureaucrats. It seems like no one has ever taken an ethics class. Unfortunately, this is the Achilles Heel of government. It is supposed to be kept in check by the press, but we know that has been no longer true for quite some time.
that’s because they are lawyers, typical behavior for them, ethics don’t exist.
The tone of this essay speaks volumes. It is not journalism. Now both right and left write scathing editorials rather than careful, thoughtful, investigative pieces. What is so “investigative” here? The book advances for SCOTUS judges are well-known and of long vintage. The more interesting issue is why? What does that buy the publisher(s) in real terms? Who benefits? Certainly there are not even half a dozen cases involving publishing houses each Term. And as the essay deigns to point out, the Justices properly recuse themselves from those.
It’s not an editorial. It’s good reporting which makes it good journalism.
Absolutely. Important to have a record of how the grift and influence happens.
Yes, justices recuse themselves – and if enough recuse, there is no quorum and the case is settled by default. Half a dozen is too many. One is too many to be decided by a compromised court. And as a publisher, I have to say this is definitely investigative, Your questions are pretty easily answered by a little bit of research. Certainly the answers were no mystery to me. Book advances to public figures with power have been problematic for a very long time, and there is no apparent solution.
I guess when you can’t define what a woman is, and you have had an undistinguished career before her affirmative action appointment why would anyone be surprised that the only place she got her equally undistinguished biography published is with the ex-nazi publishing house Bertelsmann.
But why not. The National Socialists were the ultimate Leftists. The Left has been trying furiously for 80 years to denounce the Nazi label. Hasn’t worked though, has it.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” –Adolf Hitler
Speech to the National German Socialist Workers’ Party of May 1, 1927. Quoted by John Toland in his book ‘Adolf Hitler’, 1976, p. 306
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/no_the_fascists_and_the_nazis_were_not_rightwingers.html
The fact that a renowned and beloved publishing house, from England, Penguin has been snatched up by these Nazis is sickening to me. All my childhood books were published in paperback by Penguin and it was a sign of good writing for young people as well as a publisher of classical literature..I feel like the Nazis actually won the war as more and more of Great Britain and Ireland are contaminated with the ethos of the Fourth Reich/ EU/ socialism/ totalitarianism.
How can Judges allowed to do that kind of thing? Almost any type of offer with $$ attached has to be seen as a potential bribe of a Supreme Court Judge. There has to be a law somewhere prohibiting anything to do with the self promotion of a Judge for anything, even if it is an instructional on how to tie flies for trout fishing. There should be nothing allowed to a judge other than their big salary. And they should have term limits as well.
Rev. Roy……………..<
The weakness for self-promotion comes from having no conscience. These sell-out justices certainly have none.
How do you fight a web of true believers? it’s like reading a comic with a hydra like organization.
HYDRA vs SHIELD, because that is a reality. It is always Evil vs the Good that rises up to keep the world in a balance. Balance is needed, like the episode of Star Trek where the Orb comes on board and gets people to fight, but brings back the dead. We fight until we figure out that the enemy is the one who wants us to kill each other.
Daniel – thank you for this story. I had no idea! Are you, as an investigative journalist, following the money trail that you mentioned should be investigated?
A wee bit of lawfare seems in order.
Let’s hope, for the reading public’s sake, that the Justices like Sotomayor & Brown have better ghost writers than the SCOTUS clerks editing their published legal opinions.
If ever you’ve wondered how the likes of Ketanji Brown Jackson ever became a civil “leader” in America – at any level of government – look no further than Article 6’s Christian test ban whereby mandatory biblical qualifications (including Exodus 21’s male requisite) were also eliminated.
Once adopted, it became inevitable that America would be ruled by nothing but nincompoops, incompetents, scoundrels, immoral reprobates, and outright criminals. That should sound all too familiar!
Take nincompoops, for example. Exodus 18:21’s qualifications begin with the fear of Yahweh. Kings David and Solomon point out the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Thus, without the fear of Yahweh, you end up with, at best, nincompoops as your alleged leaders.
The best you can ever get from the Constitutional Republic’s unbiblical election system is the lessers of two evils. Sometimes, the worst of the worst. And always, the evil of two lessers.
For more regarding Article 6’s Christian test ban, see Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of free online book “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt9.html.
Find out how much you *really* know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the right-hand sidebar and receive a complimentary copy of a book that *examines* the Constitution by the Bible.