Sotomayor 100, Republican Clowns 0

Anthrax scare in embassy turns
out to be woman’s ashes, with
request they be strewn in Rome.

Well, it’s finally over and it appears there is no doubt Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed. I think it is perfectly safe to say Sotomayor 100, Republican clowns 0. After asking her the same trivial question over and over for four consecutive days (and apparently expecting to get a different answer each time), they finally gave up, and several of them indicated she had a fine record and they might be inclined to vote for her. What a charade and a four day waste of time (of course there is no other pressing business for the Senate to worry about these days). Most everyone seems to be pretty satisfied with the outcome, except Pat Buchanan.

I have never liked Buchanan, mostly because he is a conservative Republican, but once in a great while he says something that sort of makes sense. His tirade against Sotomayor is not one that makes sense. Buchanan is so blinded by his absolute objection to affirmative action I fear his head may become unscrewed. He insists that she is an affirmative action appointment and is not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. This, in spite of the fact that she is known to be far more experienced and qualified than any nominee for the past 70 years. According to Buchanan she was admitted to the University as an affirmative action choice (which is true), and he implies she made her outstanding grades only because, he says, “half the students nowadays graduate summa cum laude.” Her record of collegiate success and her years of experience on the bench seem to mean nothing to Buchanan because he keeps insisting, “she is an affirmative action choice, a Puerto Rican.” He also argues that she is not a brilliant legal mind, having not written any outstanding books or articles, and Supreme Court Justices should all be extraordinarily brilliant (like Clarence Thomas, I guess). While I don’t know offhand whether Roberts or Alito have written brilliant legal books, I rather suspect not. When challenged by Rachel Maddow as to why only 2 Justices out of 110 have been non-white, he ranted and raved about how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by white men, the war of Independence was fought by white men, and it was white men who stormed the beaches at Normandy. To him this seems to mean white men rule forever, never mind that conditions are hardly the same as they were back then (actually, I think there may have been Blacks fighting back then, but probably only in small numbers). Buchanan is apparently unaware of the profound changes in American life that have occurred during his lifetime. Maddow said he was “dated,” and she is dead right.

Affirmative action is a complex and difficult issue. It is sometimes true that a somewhat more qualified white person is passed over in favor of a minority. After so many centuries of discrimination against minorities this strikes me as unfortunate but not exactly criminal. It also raises questions in my mind about how or why the reasons for admittance even matter (as least theoretically). In Buchanan’s racist mind it apparently doesn’t matter how well you do once you are admitted, if you were an affirmative action choice you are doomed no matter how well you perform (I wonder if he would use this same criterion for Obama). When Maddow pointed out how well Sotomayor had done, Buchanan just dismissed her success as a gift from the lowered University standards these days (a questionable assertion in the first place). I wonder if he thinks the same thing about Obama’s success. More importantly, what does he think about so-called “legacy admissions?” George W. Bush certainly did not get admitted to Yale on the basis of his academic record or performance. He was admitted because he was a Bush and his father was important. And apparently he was not awarded high grades just as a matter of policy as he was, by his own admission, a “C” student. Thus we have a situation of obvious discrimination (some other better student, surely white, was not admitted because of Bush), and the individual so admitted was a relative failure (but his name was Bush and he went on to become President of the U.S., certainly a bit of irony there). I would argue that why you were admitted is basically irrelevant if you subsequently succeed (success is apparently not possible for affirmative action appointees, no matter what they do as far as Buchanan is concerned). His idea seems to be: affirmative action candidate = minority person = diminished capacity = failure = blatant racism (he does not stress this latter). There is no doubt that the Sotomayor confirmation hearings were shot through with racism, however disguised, but Buchanan does not even bother to disguise his racism. Perhaps we should give him credit for exposing himself as a bigot. The Great Chain of Being, with white Western-Europeans at the apex, does not disappear overnight, and perhaps never in the eyes of some true believers like Buchanan. The confirmation of Sotomayor, like the election of Barack Obama, are new important steps toward a new and more realistic paradigm.

LKBIQ:
The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry.
Bill Clinton

TILT:
Carp were domesticated and used for food in Europe and Asia thousands of years ago.