Today's Philadelphia Inquirer features a front-page story headlined "Seizure casts chief in new light" by the New York Times' Linda Greenhouse. What I cannot figure out is why the story appears nowhere on the Inky's web site. Perhaps there are copyright reasons?

Anyway, I found the same text at the New York Times, with a different headline -- "Uncertainty Now in a Golden Youth's Trajectory." The idea is that because he had a seizure, not only has Chief Justice Roberts "lost" his "privacy" (a thing I didn't know he had), but that there might be a chance that he'll become, you know, more human.

No matter what his doctors eventually tell John G. Roberts Jr., or the world, about the diagnosis and outlook for his seizure disorder, it is clear that something changed irrevocably following the 52-year-old chief justice's momentary loss of consciousness on a vacation island dock on Monday afternoon.

He lost his privacy, and with it the aura of invincibility that came with his youthful good looks and spectacular career path.

But Greenhouse doesn't stop there. She invokes medico-historical expertise in the hope that Roberts' fearful "condition" will somehow prove to be an epiphany -- from which he will awaken, suddenly in touch with ordinary mortals. Apparently, an important characteristic of ordinary, lesser beings is that unlike Roberts, we don't file our appeals on time.

In October, when he returns to his seat at the center of the Supreme Court bench, will colleagues and courtroom spectators see the same golden youth whose trajectory was unmarked by setback or sorrow? Or will they see someone suddenly vulnerable, with a medical condition that, while treatable and shared by millions, can still inspire fear?

Or to dig deeper, might this encounter with illness even change the way John Roberts sees himself, his job or the world?

Prof. William H. Chafe, a historian at Duke University, published a book last year, "Private Lives, Public Consequences: Personality and Politics in Modern America," in which he presented portraits of prominent 20th-century Americans, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

Professor Chafe argued that trauma or tragedy strengthened them and gave them the qualities of leadership they displayed later in life. Could adversity temper a jurisprudence that critics of the chief justice have discerned as bloodless and unduly distant from the messy reality of the lives of ordinary people who fail to file their appeals on time?

Might there be a hidden subtext? Something the "ordinary people" aren't aware of? I'm just wondering, because Linda Greenhouse is not an ordinary reporter. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who has been covering the Supreme Court since 1978.

She's known for her leftist political views, and is considered so powerful that "rightists" like Laurence Silberman have complained about the "Greenhouse effect":

Some critics on the political right, notably retired Appeals Court Judge Laurence H. Silberman have complained of what they call the "Greenhouse Effect." They believe that some federal judges have changed their opinions to win favorable coverage, either in the New York Times or in the legal press in general, which they view as being part of the "Liberal Establishment." This criticism seems directed less at Greenhouse personally than at a general assumption of a liberal media bias. (See [4] for more).

In 1989, she was rebuked by Times editors for participating in an abortion-rights rally in Washington. Though the New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent attests that he has never received a single complaint of bias in Greenhouse's coverage,[2] some other media observers have been critical of the perception of bias that her personal actions create.

Harvard speech

She has also faced criticism for expressing publicly (at Harvard University in June, 2006) her personal views supporting abortion rights and criticism of US policies and actions at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Haditha.[2]

Greenhouse said that she started crying a few years back at a Simon & Garfunkel concert because her (Sixties) generation hadn't done a better job of running the country than previous generations:

And of course my little crying jag occurred before we knew the worst of it, before it was clear the extent to which our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last years have been dispiriting is an understatement.

And indeed she is. If you go to the NOW website, right at the top there's a link to their analysis of the Supreme Court case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.. The leading headline is "Adding Insult to Injury: Let Goodyear Know What You Think," and to say that NOW is pissed would be an understatement:

Adding Insult to Injury

Let Goodyear know what you think!

After 19 years with Goodyear, Lilly Ledbetter discovered she was being paid less than the male managers, so she sued. The jury agreed, and awarded her $3 million in back pay and punitive damages -- which the judge cut to less than $300,000 because in 1991 Congress set a maximum amount that a company can be ordered to pay for willful sex discrimination.

Then in May the Roberts Supreme Court took away even that pittance of compensation -- not because Ledbetter hadn't proved her case, but because they said she had missed the 180 day filing limit. In other words, she lost on a technicality. So Goodyear got off scot-free after nearly twenty years of treating Lilly Ledbetter like a second-class employee.

Now Goodyear has the audacity to go after Lilly Ledbetter to pay their court costs. Shame on them!

My point being that it's quite obvious that when Linda Greenhouse used the phrase "ordinary people who fail to file their appeals on time," she's making a clear reference to Lilly Ledbetter case.

If it's so clear, then why write a blog post? Why go to all this trouble to prove my point?

Because I don't think it was made at all clear to readers, that's why. If the readers are "ordinary people," then why not tell them about the pressing case said to involve the cutting off of their rights? I suspect that the reference to "ordinary people who fail to file their appeals on time" is meant as inside code language -- aimed not at ordinary people at all, but at the elite few who know about Ledbetter and its repercussions.

How many readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer read the phrase and caught the subtext? Isn't there a principle somewhere that journalists ought to let their readers in on what it is they're referencing? The whole thing strikes me as condescending -- especially considering that "ordinary people" are under discussion.

Of course, if "ordinary people" is being used as code language for NOW activists, that might explain why Ms. Greenhouse is uncomfortable explaining the Ledbetter reference.

But what a pity it was to have missed such a great opportunity. Seriously, if ever there was a time and place to educate the ordinary masses about why their daily concerns should include remembering important appellate filing deadlines, this was it!

UPDATE: Those who imagine that epilepsy might induce a leftist epiphany of the sort prayed for by Linda Greenhouse might want to read this post by Ace. (Via Jim Lindgren.)

UPDATE: Ann Althouse likens Greenhouse's epilepsy epiphany to "a script for a movie starring Tom Hanks or Steve Martin."

Hmmm....

I guess such stuff does happen in the movies.