Martha-Ann Alito’s husband — the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — can attest to the fact that she really likes flags. “My wife is fond of flying flags,” he wrote last month in a strange letter blaming her for a controversy over his household’s choice of flags associated with the Capitol Riot. However, Martha-Ann does not like flags if they are gay.
On Monday, documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor posted a recording she took at a black-tie event last week at the Supreme Court in which she complained about a neighbor’s Pride flag. “You know what I want?” Martha-Ann says on the recording. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.” Instead of the religious banner, she proposed another idea — a sort of anti-Pride flag with a white background and yellow and orange flames that reads “shame” in Italian.
Unaware that she was being recorded, Martha-Ann Alito said more. Windsor, pretending to be an ally, offered words of support to Alito, who said that if reporters come “back to me, I’ll get them. I’m gonna get liberated, and I’m going to be okay.” Windsor then said that the “whole Appeal to Heaven flag thing was bullshit” — referring to the flag with far-right associations the Alitos flew over their home. “Look at me; look at me,” Martha-Ann Alito said. “I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m going to give it back to you.”
Alito already made it quite clear in a letter last month that he is not thrilled by his wife’s flag-flying behavior and the inconvenience it has created in his life. (He has also made it pretty clear that he will not defend his wife when a neighbor calls her “a cunt.”) In the recording, Alito’s makes his opinion clear again. “Oh, please don’t put up a flag,” he says in response to his wife’s plan to counterprogram the Pride flag. Later, Martha-Ann stands her ground. “He never controls me,” she says.
