I wish I had time to do a Ph.D. level dissertation on how messed up the controversy around Sonia Sotomayor’s nomimation to the Supreme Court. Someday someone or many someones will. In the meantime, my reaction to what I’ve seen and heard of the confirmation hearings has left me nauseated and furious. Maybe if she brought some beer, guacamole & chips to the hearings and sang “La Cucaracha” while dressed in a revealing peasant blouse, it might make those old narrow-minded southern jackass bigots more comfortable. The GOP must walk back from the racism and sexism if they hope to have a future in the contemporary United States or go the way of the dinosaurs.

I had to turn to the always “salsamatic” (as he describes himself) Unapologetic Mexican to get a more cogent meta-analysis than you might be getting in the mainstream media. I suggest you dig the whole piece but here’s a slice:

THEY BESEECH THE WISE LATINA TO SOOTHE THEIR TREMBLING AND WOUNDED EGOS. Like petulant babies they repeatedly, almost to the point of absurdity, demand she confess her irrational temperament. And throughout it all cannot see the irony.

…TO SOOTHE THEIR TREMBLING AND WOUNDED EGOS. Like petulant babies they repeatedly, almost to the point of absurdity, demand she confess her irrational temperament. And throughout it all cannot see the irony. But how could the very powdered and privileged and paternalistic and patriarchal? How could poor souls like Lindsay Graham, and Jeff Sessions peer into the soupy dawn of this era’s changing landscape and see through the ironical miasmatik haze clouding their aging gaze? The room is so thick with it, it has curdled into Clown Show Custard.

I’m not nailed to the nomination grilling kabuki because I get too angry when I try to plant myself in front of a façade that tries to pretend it is important and real, and yet lacks a sense of humor or any salacious product placement. Anyway, I’ve seen enough to see what’s up.

I read an article yesterday that took a different angle than most of those out there now and offered the idea that this idiot show (the ridiculously unsubstantial and redundant and at times racist and sexist) grilling of Judge Sonia Sotomayor in this nominations process) was a message for “the rest of us.” That being, The Left, I guess? The article mused that this “tuff” show the Senators are giving is a way for the old guard to say “we will nail you if you try to move the agenda left,” etc. Which is an interesting idea. Except for two things.

One, this is not a very effective threat. They are making asses of themselves out there! To anyone with a grain of intelligence.

Two, appointing an intelligent, accomplished woman to the Supreme Court is not “moving the agenda left” any more than a President being dark skinned makes him “radical.” How silly. How these evaluations and associations are born of a mind that cannot see itself as anything other than the absolute center standard comparison for all other reference points, and all of them deviant. Oh, the veil of Witeness that falls over the eyes and makes one so very sure, so very loud, so very wrong, so very dangerous. [snip -- read the rest]

Here’s more recommended reading:

Related Posts with Thumbnails