two other people capture what I’m thinking perfectly

Posted on by Luis Villa

Read two posts this morning that I wanted to note because they capture what I’m thinking pretty perfectly.

Julian Sanchez on the reaction from some quarters to Sonia Sotomayor. Sanchez is a lot like me- sort of libertarian-leaning, not terribly comfortable with lefty identity politics, and not very close to his Hispanic heritage. And still, apparently, pretty damned angry over the reception Sonia Sotomayor has gotten. The whole thing is really worth reading, but the money graph is:

Look, it’s not racist to oppose a Latina judicial nominee, or to oppose affirmative action, or to point out genuine evidence of ethnic bias on the part of minorities. What we’re seeing here, though, is people clinging to the belief that Sotomayor has to be some mediocrity who struck the ethnic jackpot, that whatever benefit she got from affirmative action must be vastly more significant than her own qualities, that she’s got to be a harpy boiling with hatred for whitey, however overwhelming the evidence against all these propositions is. This is really profoundly ugly.

Perfectly encapsulates one of the prime reasons why I can’t touch the modern Republican party with a ten foot pole, even if I’m in several ways far to the ‘right’ of the center of the Democratic party.

(Tangentially, I’ve been meaning to write a post on ‘activist’ judging, and why the core accusation rings true for most people but those pushing it as a political accusation are mostly just fearmongering and quite often blatantly lying about the legal realities they are purportedly discussing. Sadly, I will not have time to do that any time soon; if you’re curious, in the meantime, I highly recommend reading the section on judges in Audacity of Hope– a fair, nuanced, intelligent discussion of the issue that doesn’t get too into the weeds of judicial interpretation but does explain the problems with the situation in pretty plain English.)

The other thing is a piece by John Scalzi on ‘being a closet introvert.’ Apparently he tells people all the time that he’s an introvert, and they don’t believe him. I’ve had the exact same experience, for reasons he lays out well. I’ll keep this bookmarked to send to people next time I have the experience. ;)

Published by Luis Villa

14 thoughts on “two other people capture what I’m thinking perfectly”

  1. It would be instructive to your readers to lay out 5 or 10 points where you are for one of the two major American political (corporate) parties and against another. If you did so I think you’ll find that the Democrats and Republican parties are very close on major economic issues of the day.

    1. JB: while the parties are certainly closer than I’d like on a broad spectrum of issues, there are substantive and meaningful differences between the two parties on a wide variety of important policy issues, even where they are closer together than I’d like. I won’t spend my time elucidating those differences; they are fairly self-evident and well-documented elsewhere.

  3. After reading your post I decided to go to some news site to find more information. This is sort of a disclaimer since I only read one or two articles and it is possible that I’m wrong, anyway this is what I think.

    I don’t think personal attacks on candidates for the supreme court of justice are rare at all.

    I expect a male candidate making statements any near the ones she made would be very close of not being eligible at all.

    Supreme Court appointments are for life.

    She is probably going to be elected so I don’t think being respectful is more important than saying everything there is to say.

  4. Martin, you read one or two articles and you’re wrong. All the fuss being made is about one statement (the “wise Latina” one) which was taken out of context.

    The fact of the matter is that she’s a rather technocratic, by-the-rules judge, not particularly liberal, with a very extensive record in which she almost always agrees with the Republican-appointed judges she serves with. The Republicans turned on the attack machine before they knew anything about her.

  6. Then please compare/contrast this with the filibuster of Miguel Estrada.

    1. Find me a single instance where someone said ‘Estrada, like all members of his race, is an idiot who only got where he got because of affirmative action on the part of the universities and law schools he attended’. Or where someone said ‘Estrada, like all speakers of Spanish, is an illegal immigrant’. Or where someone said ‘I can’t be bothered to pronounce Estrada’s name correctly; he should really become more like a real American and pronounce his name like Anglos do.’

      These are very, very mild paraphrases of things that have already been said about Sotomayor by leading Republicans, and which have not been condemned by other leading Republicans. Good luck finding anything like that in the Estrada case- the closest you’ll find is the allegation that Estrada was favored by the Republican party because of his race, which is a different beast (and something one could have a legitimate discussion about.)

  7. I don’t think you’ll find any trouble finding ugly comments if you look for them. But I also don’t doubt that there will be no filibuster of Sotomayor. We also might disagree as to who qualifies as a “leading Republican”.

    If you want to find vitriol from left leaning “leaders” you can find it, you just may disagree with who is considered a “leader”.

    Anyone who makes a comment as inane and disgusting as “Sotomayor is an illegal immigrant” is leading nothing. I have no doubt that if given time, one could go back into archive.org and other archive to find comments reaching the same level of stupidity given the constant comparisons of anything related to Bush to hitler, nazis, racists, etc, etc. I can recall a certain celebrity singer amount other individuals refer to African Americans within the White House as “house negros”.

    The proof will be in the pudding. Will the confirmation vote be blocked for years on end as Obama and other Democrats did with Estrada, or the confirmation process be put to a vote?

  8. I don’t think you’ll find any trouble finding ugly comments if you look for them. But I also don’t doubt that there will be no filibuster of Sotomayor. We also might disagree as to who qualifies as a “leading Republican”.

    If you want to find vitriol from left leaning “leaders” you can find it, you just may disagree with who is considered a “leader”.

    Anyone who makes a comment as inane and disgusting as “Sotomayor is an illegal immigrant” is leading nothing. I have no doubt that if given time, one could go back into archive.org and other archive to find comments reaching the same level of stupidity given the constant comparisons of anything related to Bush to hitler, nazis, racists, etc, etc. I can recall a certain celebrity singer amoung other individuals refer to African Americans within the White House as “house negros”.

    The proof will be in the pudding. Will the confirmation vote be blocked for years on end as Obama and other Democrats did with Estrada, or the confirmation process be put to a vote?

Comments are closed.