Yesterday, I read an Associated Press article by Sharon Theimer that was ostensibly about the two sides of Sonia Sotomayor's life, both as a "Latina from a blue-collar family and a wealthy member of America's power elite." What did I get?
On ethnicity, Sotomayor herself has recognized - and contributed to - the dichotomy. She proudly highlights her Puerto Rican roots but hasn't always liked it when others have. She once took issue with a prospective employer who singled her out as a Latina with questions she viewed as offensive yet has shown a keen ethnic consciousness herself.
Theimer then spends three paragraphs on past statements from Sotomayor, where she expresses her pride in being a Latina and Puerto Rican, before getting around to telling what the remarks were that Sotomayor "viewed as offensive":
... during a recruiting dinner in law school at Yale, Sotomayor objected when a law firm partner asked whether she would have been admitted to the school if she weren't Puerto Rican, and whether law firms did a disservice by hiring minority students the firms know are unqualified and will ultimately be fired.
Well, talk about being overly-sensitive! How on earth could a woman who graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, and who was about to graduate from Yale Law School with the title of Editor of the Yale Law Journal on her resume, take offense at being asked if she was an unqualified, brown-skinned charity case?
Theimer takes another paragraph to describe the ensuing complaint filed about the incident with words like, "confronted," and "rejected ... that he meant no harm," and "turned down his invitation" for another job interview, and did you know, the firm could have lost its right to recruit on campus! As I read, it occurred to me that Theimer used 54 words when it's clear that the one she was looking for was, "BITCH!"
Theimer tells us that Sotomayor didn't live her entire childhood in South Bronx housing project -- they moved to one in the Northeast Bronx when she was 15 or 16 -- but forget all that because now she's rich! She makes more than $200,000. And she owns a condo in part of New York City where there are "million-dollar-plus homes" somewhere within 50+ blocks. Oh, and her brother might hate the poor and the elderly.
Theimer wraps it up with a snapshot of Sotomayor's rise to the top, including a job in a law firm where:
Her clients included Fendi, maker of luxury purses that she was unlikely to have seen as a child in the Bronx.
... (presumably right up until the point where she went movin' on up to the Northeast side), her service on a state board where she missed some meetings, and "possibly" had a conflict of interest, but there was a resolution praising her when she left, so that's that.
Theimer finishes with a line that seems to indicate she forgot what she had written earlier in the article when she used the actual Sotomayor quote rather than relying on Newt Gingrich for paraphrasing:
... few are willing to be as blunt as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said of her comment that a Latina woman would rule more wisely than a white man: "New racism is no better than old racism."
But hey, "I would hope that" is practically identical to "would." Hardly changes the meaning at all, does it?