"Liberal judicial activist."
"Legislating from the bench."
"Far left."
"Hispanic chick lady..." Uh, wha????
There are your run-of-the-mill talking points that you know you're going to hear from the right no matter who the nominee is--yesterday The Hill even got the full list of them when that well-oiled political machine that is Michael Steele's RNC accidentally sent their talking points not just to their jabberers, but to the media they jabber on.
And then there's the talking points reserved for the non-white, non-male among us. While not everybody could be as blatant as Glenn Beck, or, gawd help us, Tom Tancredo, there was a lot of code talking at work yesterday from the less blatantly insane wing of the right in response to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. From Mike Huckabee's all-Latinas-are-named-Maria gaffe to Mike Allen's she's "a Latina single mother" (since corrected), the seeds that Jeffrey Rosen sowed a few weeks ago have spread far and wide.
Just a reminder of what we got from Rosen, courtesy Meteor Blades
This was eviscerated by Glenn Greenwald, John Cole and others for the pile of anonymously sourced, factually challenged dung that it was.
And sexist, to boot. In his subsequent on-line defense, Rosen said his purpose had only been to challenge Sotomayor's judicial temperament. That effort seemed to be focused a good deal on demeanor, her penchant for asking tough, critical questions of both sides in an aggressive manner. Isn't this what we want? Isn't this the kind of attribute we would take as a positive if applied to a male judge possibly headed to the highest court in the land? Some guys just don't like it much when a woman questions them skeptically. For crying out loud, suck it up. If you can't stand the heat from a judge doing her job, you insufferable wimps, find another profession.
Since that original post, and largely because of the online evisceration the self-described "moderate" Rosen received from so many online, he's had to backtrack significantly and yesterday practically fell over himself trying to retract:
Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. This willfully misreads both my piece and the follow-up response.
The picture Rosen painted in that original article was that she is “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench"--or in even less subtle terms, a dumb bitch. That's the theme picked up by the right yesterday, with the twist on the dumb part that she's an "affirmative action" pick. Conservative commenters picked up the idea, and ran with it. For example, Curt Levey, executive director of the right-wing Committee for Justice, comparing Sotomayor to Harriet Miers. But he was just echoing National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru. Yup, again with the Harriet Miers, "intellectual lightweight" story, completely contradiction the real story of this remarkable woman.
Sotomayor graduated as valedictorian of her class at Blessed Sacrament and at Cardinal Spellman High School in New York. She first heard about the Ivy League from her high school debate coach, Ken Moy, who attended Princeton University, and she soon followed in his footsteps after winning a scholarship.
At Princeton, she continued to excel, graduating summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order....
Over a distinguished career that spans three decades, Judge Sotomayor has worked at almost every level of our judicial system – yielding a depth of experience and a breadth of perspectives that will be invaluable – and is currently not represented -- on our highest court. New York City District Attorney Morgenthau recently praised Sotomayor as an "able champion of the law" who would be "highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character could be assets." [Wall Street Journal, 5/9/09]
But, of course, there's that quote, that "wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life." Yes, there's that quote, and there's deep context to that quote, as Prof. Michael Froomkin details, with an extensive quote from that speech. Here's a bit of it:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
As Prof. Froomkin says, works for me. Sonia Sotomayor is anything but an intellectual lightweight. To suggest anything otherwise is, as Scott Lemieux says, "about as close to explicit racism as you can get without crossing the line." As for her "bullying" personality? Just ask yourself if that was ever part of the public discussion around Scalia's nomination.
Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson discussed all this last night.
There was this exchange that struck me particularly.
MADDOW: She's the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court. It's a huge deal for the country, a huge deal for Latinas and Latinos. It's a huge deal of Puerto Rico. And, yet, we are sort of looking for the racial overtones in the criticism thus far. Do you think it's fair to look into the sort of anonymous sniping about her intellect and her temperament through a racial lens or would that criticism mean the same thing regardless of her race?
ROBINSON: I think that criticism is just bizarre, given her record. It is odd to hear commentary to the effect that her opinions are undistinguished or we're not quite sure she's up to the job or you know, in the few cases, flat out saying that this is an affirmative action hire. I mean, these are among the most sterling credentials for any nominee to the Supreme Court that I can recall and the most kind of establishment credentials. It kind of doesn't get any better than this.... It is a weird sort of route of attack given who she is and what she's done. So can you look at that through a racial prism? You know, I think if it continues I think you probably have to.
I think it's probably a pretty safe bet it's going to continue, at least as the subtext to all the other discussion about Judge Sotomayor's qualifications. Maddow's question struck me as a bit naive--it's highly unlikely that there would be anonymous sniping about her intellect and her temperament if not for her race, and I'd add her gender. That's the reality of where we are in America today. It's important while listening to the debate over the coming weeks to recognize that subtext for what it is.