Clueless Justice Scalia on the 'Silver Lining' of Excluding Women From Jobs

In his essay for New York Magazine, Supreme Court’s head hater Antonin Scalia writes about growing up in New York City. Of course, he takes this benign topic, and uses it to make a dumb statement about the bright side of sexism.

It is amazing how many of the names of the kids in this class I remember. The teacher standing in the back-that was a lady named Consuela Goins, and she was a wonderful teacher. Every cloud has a silver lining, and one of the benefits of the exclusion of women from most professions was that we had wonderful teachers, especially the women who today would probably be CEOs.

Oh, dear. Why oh why couldn’t be just say he had a great teacher? Why did he have to try to make a point about the “silver lining” of discrimination against women in the workplace? Because, no, sir; the fact that women were blatantly excluded from many careers isn’t the reason you had a good teacher. You had a good teacher because a talented, bright woman wanted to be a teacher. Saying that the teachers of yesterday would be the CEOs today — especially since we’re still dealing with the realities and repercussions of workplace sexism — is insulting. It’s insulting to all the women who wanted to be teachers then, and to all the women who are happily great teachers today.

And if Scalia’s teacher did have aspirations other than teaching, perhaps it’s most insulting to her. Pretty sure nobody wants to hear “Sorry you couldn’t do what you wanted to do, but hey, look on the bright side! Your broken dreams were beneficial to me!”