I dislike hyper realistic paintings. They seem to be in vogue among wealthy wingnuts. Why not just take a high-quality photograph to capture these Bosom Buddies?

There are two guys I don’t care about in this painting by Sharif Tarabay, but Leonard Leo, Clarence Thomas, and Harlan Crow are in it. They’re lounging outside Crow’s country house in Upstate New York. Corrupt Clarence is the guy befouling the mountain air with a cigar. I wonder if they played Supreme Court Monopoly later.

Harlan Crow deigned to give an interview to his hometown paper, the Dallas Morning News, about the Thomas controversy. It reminds me of this classic line by another Texan:

Poor Harlan. He needs better PR people. Eating crow doesn’t come naturally to the super-rich.

The interview is behind  a paywall, so I’ll quote TPM’s Morning Memo on the most clueless bits:

Instead of mounting an effective defense, Crow revealed the essential hollowness of his “friendship” with Thomas, which began a few years after Thomas was confirmed to the high court:

But would Crow be friends with Thomas if he weren’t a Supreme Court justice?

 

“It’s an interesting, good question. I don’t know how to answer that. Maybe not. Maybe yes. I don’t know.”

And this:

Did he ever consider his friendship as a ticket to quid pro quo?

 

“Every single relationship — a baby’s relationship to his mom — has some kind of reciprocity,“ he said. …

 

“I try to be friendly, polite and kind to you, and you do that back to me. If that’s reciprocity, then yes, there’s reciprocity. But if it’s anything beyond that, there’s no reciprocity.”

You say reciprocity, I say transactional. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Crow’s account differs from that of the artist formerly known as Silent Clarence. Justice Thomas paints a picture of close friendship and buddy hood almost as close as these guys:

That’s the late Peter Scolari and Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies. The played two roomies who lost their crib and the only place they could afford in New York City was a cheap hotel that only took women. That’s where the Crow-Thomas/Hanks-Scolari analogy breaks down. Crow could buy an apartment building then let Thomas’ kin live rent free. One could even call it wingnut rent control.

Scolari went on to play an insufferable yuppie on Newhart and his bosom buddy went on to bigger and more serious things. Hanks is now a Q-Creep hate object. It’s unknown what Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas think of QAnon. I suspect Ginni T digs them.

The only thing I dislike more than hyper realistic paintings are synthetic friendships. Let them eat Crow.

The last word goes to Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur who played Maude; the sort of liberal Crow and Thomas despise. The feeling is mutual.