Daily Inspiration Quote by Harold H. Greene

Etiquette, here, is just power wearing a polite mask. Greene is describing an old Supreme Court custom that sounds gracious on paper - the justices decline to question the attorney general to spare him embarrassment - but the subtext is institutional hierarchy: the Court signals respect for the executive branch by refusing to make its top lawyer sweat in public. It is comity as theater, and the payoff is mutual. The attorney general gets a kind of ceremonial immunity; the Court gets to look above the rough-and-tumble of adversarial sparring.

Then comes Bobby Kennedy, and the line snaps into focus. By announcing he "didn't mind" questions, Kennedy punctures the performance and forces everyone to admit what the ritual had been doing. His permission is both disarming and strategic. It frames scrutiny as something he can welcome rather than endure, turning an interrogation into a demonstration of confidence. The justices, freed from the obligation to protect him, pivot immediately: "and they did". The clipped ending is Greene's quiet punchline, suggesting pent-up curiosity, maybe even irritation, finally given a sanctioned outlet.

Greene's intent reads less like gossip than an x-ray of how norms govern high institutions: not through written rules but through shared anxieties about face, status, and separation-of-powers optics. The anecdote captures a moment when a charismatic operator recasts deference as optional, and the Court, almost eagerly, takes him up on it.