America’s Designated Dresser-down
By James Lileks

This is the tenth year on the air for a pillar of American jurisprudence: Judge Judy. Derided by some as the legal equivalent of a radio shock-jock, Judge Judy Sheindlin is something else entirely: America’s designated dresser-down, the keenest parser of baloney on television, the secular moralist whose belief in the law is matched only by her desire to let the callow cow-eyed products of the Grievance-American community know where they stand on the intellectual food chain. (Hint: plankton.)

 

Sure, she shouts. Yes, she hectors. If her tongue drew blood they’d have to install gutters and drains on the set. But watch her disassemble some aimless moron nine years behind in child support who’s suing the mother of his kids for custody of the remote control, and tell yourself that’s not Justice. It comes in no purer form.

 

The syndicated legal show on TV began with “People’s Court,” presided over by Judge Wapner. It was the antithesis to courtroom dramas—no background stories, no charismatic attorneys who could perrymason a confession out of someone in the third row. The stars were the humble, everyday litigants and their slice-of-life lawsuits. In retrospect, Wapner’s tenure was mild. He threw spitballs. Judge Judy fires armor-piercing missiles.

 

Her show often depends on the very people she holds in contempt: citizens so comfortably corrupted by narcissism and entitlement that they believe the legal system exists to reimburse them for a meal shared in 2003 with a short-term boyfriend. You meet people who have watched the show without absorbing a jot of her moral construct, who actually believe Judge Judy will smile on their case. Halfway through the interrogation you see the horror dawn in their eyes: St. Peter might have sent them to hell, but at least that wouldn’t be shown for years in reruns.

 

So why do they come before her? Well, the fine print in the credits says that “Monetary awards are paid from a fund maintained by the producer.” Just because the participants don’t have to cough up their fines, that doesn’t stop them from slamming down papers and huffing out of the courtroom. Many come believing that a tort is defined as “something your girlfriends all agree is wrong,” and leave outraged that the judge did not agree.

 

No discussion of this show would be complete without a nod to the bailiff, Petri Hawkins Byrd. He’s the giant who summons the litigants to their doom, walks documents to the judge, and occasionally makes miscreants shut up and stew just by standing close and emanating rays of unspoken authority. The contrast between the burly, imperturbable bailiff and the bantam-weight flensing machine known as Judy would make for high comedy, if they tried.

 

But they take their roles more seriously. Byrd spends his time looking at a clipboard, silently mulling the banality of desire, issuing old-school observations when called upon. Between the two of them, they are the legal system: she proposes, and Byrd disposes.

 

Outlines of Judge Judy Sheindlin’s judicial philosophy are found in her book, an account of her time in the family courts with the unfortunate title of Don’t Pee On My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining. Here is her take on welfare:

 

We are spending a fortune and the result is failure. The recipients of these monies are in the same or worse shape than before.... More and meaner delinquents. More unwanted children. More abused children. More dysfunctional adults.... By shifting the emphasis from individual responsibility to government responsibility, we have infantilized an entire population.

 

Kurt Vonnegut once suggested that Judge Judy would make an excellent Supreme Court nominee. He is, uncharacteristically, correct in this case. I can imagine her on eminent domain: “You want to take this man’s house to build something else just so you can get more taxes? What are you, crazy? Shh! I’m SPEAK-ING!” But perhaps this judge belongs where she is—on TV in a courtroom too good to be true, parsing the difference between what’s legal and what’s right, and combining the two whenever she can.

 

“GROW UP, MADAM. YOUR CASE IS DISMISSED.” Don’t you wish you could say that at times? Aren’t you glad someone does?

 

 

James Lileks is TAE's TV columnist.