[Mb-civic] Judge Roberts's family secret - Scot Lehigh - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Judge Roberts's family secret

By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist  |  August 24, 2005

IT COULD be the most revealing clue we've seen so far about Supreme 
Court nominee John Roberts -- one much more ominous than any possible 
past association with the Federalist Society.

In introducing Roberts last month, President Bush mentioned the judge's 
wife and children, yet when the cameras panned to the family, his spouse 
stood alone.

Several networks soon aired troubling footage revealing why. Young Jack, 
the couple's 4-year-old son, had proved such a pint-sized pinball, 
ricocheting about so persistently as the president spoke, that his 
mother finally felt compelled to remove the kids from public view.

Now, daughter Josie, 5, was perfectly behaved, and Mrs. Roberts 
eventually did corral Jack, so there are evidentiary crosscurrents at 
play here. Still, the incident constitutes at least prima facie evidence 
that the Robertses could be members of a philosophical sect whose fusion 
of liberal and laissez-faire tenets should strike fear into the hearts 
of all reasonable Americans.

They might just be Doting Indulgent Modern Parents (DIMPIES).

There, alas, they would hardly be out of the American mainstream. On 
behalf of a dwindling contingent of (barely) sane adults, this space has 
occasionally lamented that US children too often behave like legions of 
little Grendels intent on visiting chaos upon the meadhall that is America.

Of course, long research into the annals of atrociousness reveals that 
bratty children aren't just a contemporary American scourge. Let's turn 
to chapter three of Stendhal's autobiographical ''The Life of Henri 
Brulard," in which the author recalls his childhood in late 18th-century 
France.

''My earliest memory is that of biting in the cheek or on the forehead 
Mme. Pison-Dugalland, my cousin. . . . I see her still, a woman of 25, 
plump, and very much rouged. It was apparently this rouge at which I 
took offense. As she sat in the middle of the meadow . . . her cheek was 
exactly on a level with my face.

'' 'Kiss me, Henri,' she said to me. I did not want to; she was annoyed, 
and I bit her hard. I can see the whole scene, no doubt because I was at 
once reproached with it as if it had been a crime, and because my family 
never stopped talking to me about it."

So ''exuberant" children, as the ingenious DIMPIE euphemism has 
rebranded the little terrors, are not entirely new. Yet keen observers 
of modern parenting will recognize that had that unfortunate encounter 
occurred today, the family of petit Henri would handle it rather 
differently.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/24/judge_robertss_family_secret/
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