I’m interested in the recent flap between Chief Justice John Roberts and the White House over comments that President Obama made at the State of the Union address. In the speech, you’ll recall, Obama criticized the Court’s decision in Citizens United to roll back campaign finance restrictions. Then, last week, a tape was released in which Roberts characterized Obama’s open criticism as indecorous. The New York Times has a roundup of the argument, along with the jabs of several writers who have weighed in — the word “crybaby” comes up frequently.

This blog is too polite for such saucy language. Instead, I’m interested in another word that the two disputants employ to externalize their mutual ire. Here’s Justice Roberts:

The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.

This is an atrocious sentence. The main verb doesn’t appear until 36 words in. What’s more, although Roberts is clearly irritated at the hooting and hollering, his phrasing suggests that he is upset over the image of hooting and hollering. This is hard to understand. How will that image cause damage, and to what? Is the Chief Justice a lay media theorist? What a thrilling possibility.

But the real curiosity of this sentence is the last word: “troubling.” This is the word that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs grasped on to when he issued his response,

What is troubling is that [Citizens United] opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans.

Who is in trouble? Where is the trouble? What does it mean to be “troubled” in this context?

Let’s start off with what it doesn’t mean. To be troubled with something is not to say that it is illegal, unconstitutional or without precedent. What we have is an argument about manners, not an argument about the balance of powers. I know that’s difficult to grasp, considering that Obama and Roberts are the head honchos of their respective branches of government, but the word “troubling” does not fit an activity in which they are acting in official capacities. So all of the “Constitutional Showdown” hullabaloo is noise; such characterizations are the expression of puerile journalistic delight, no more.

After all, “troubling” an adjective that is most noteworthy for its weakness — substitute “appalling” or “unbelievable” and you’ll notice how feeble it is to be only “troubled.” We are troubled by things that privately preoccupy, over things that keep us up at night with worry, yet over which we have comparatively little power. One is troubled over the health of an ill relative, over the sorry state of one’s profession, over developments in far-off lands whose significance is as yet unclear. The Oxford English Dictionary‘s entry for the word draws on religious commentaries: “the troubling cares of men;” “troubling thoughts;” “troubling bags and packages.” A troubling thing is a private encumbrance, a mortal worry to be lamented, bemoaned and shuffled off rather than confronted.

So to be “troubled” is to express irritation in a sheepish and paralytic way, to detest through emotional stalemate. Isn’t it appalling to find that our public expressions of indignation are in such a wan state? That’s what’s troubling about “troubling.” In shaming someone for showing too little politeness, “troubling” shows way too much.

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