Why Judge Judy Is A Reactionary Enemy of the Poor Who Must Be Destroyed

Current Affairs

Judge Judy Sheindlin has long been one of the highest-paid TV stars, earning a staggering $47 million per year for her show, Judge Judy. She is universally known and loved nationwide for her acerbic, "take no BS" style of dispute resolution. "Who doesn't love Judge Judy?" asked Barack Obama.

Current Affairs editor-at-large Yasmin Nair does not love Judge Judy. In a new article for In These Times magazine, Nair reviews Sheindlin's new show for Amazon Studios, Judy Justice, and argues that Judge Judy's judgments are full of implicit disdain for the poor, contempt for dysfunctional and broken people, and "bootstraps" ideology.

While many of the cases Judy judges are amusing and trivial disputes over the custody of adorable little dogs, others illustrate the tragedy of American financial struggles at the bottom of the class ladder. And the spectacle of an extremely wealthy person snapping commands at those with very little can come to feel grotesque. Nair writes:

"Nearly all of the people who end up on the show are poor or close to indigency. [...] In exchange for their appearance, participants agree to be humiliated and berated for the supposed choices that landed them there. They are screamed at by a woman who only works five days a month and who, after the shooting is don, hops on her private jet to fly to her 23-acre home in Naples, Fla., to enjoy a daily lunch with her husband at the Ritz-Carlton."

In this episode, Yasmin and Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson dive into the problems with Judge Judy. We discuss:

- Typical Judge Judy cases and the strange way that the show pretends it's trying to sincerely resolve legal problems

- The dubious ethics of the show's recruitment process and of pretending to be a judge

- The ideology underlying Sheindlin's strict belief in Manners, Decorum, and Respect for Authority

- Sheindlin's racism, including her despicable treatment of long-serving bailiff Petri Hawkins-Byrd

- Her support for Michael Bloomberg and attack on Bernie Sanders, because of course Judge Judy loves Bloomberg and hates Sanders. (Judy: "[America] is the most perfect country in the world and those people that are trying to change it and revolutionize it, don’t have a chance, because I’ll fight them to the death.”)

- Why, for all Judge Judy's repellent flaws, the actual American court system is even worse and more cruel

Subscribe to In These Times today. Yasmin's article can also be read online at the In These Times website.

Edited by Tim Gray.