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Eminentoes
The Sonia Always Wished For
Justice has been served to us on a silver platter, she is blind as a bat, and her name is Sonia Sotomayor. All that is lovely in humanitarian terms, since she seems a nice lady. It is also tragic in legislative terms, as she arrives laden with more biases than a recording studio. Just another lib ad for diversity, here to offer diverse ad libs in support of the tired old leftist agenda. A real yawner of a dog-bites-man story not worth the new Sprint phone it was blogged on.
But no, the press presses, this is historic. Why, because the President says another "barrier has been broken moving us to a more perfect union." Decoding this, we understand him to mean that hitherto there had been some obstacle barring Hispanics, or perhaps Hispanic women, from becoming Supreme Court Justices. We further hear a boast echoing in his words: only a man of his superior breadth is capable of breaking these barrister barriers, while another President -- take his predecessor for example -- would be overcome by his panic.
Incidentally, George W. Bush, the aforementioned forerunner, nominated twelve Hispanic women to the Federal judiciary, compared to five such appointments by Bill Clinton in his eight years. Lest one think to credit Bush for this… er, broadmindedness, a recent study by American and Oregon State universities is quick to remind readers that Bush was courting Hispanic voters. Otherwise, they say, he put ideology above diversity, a priority at which they frown between the lines.
It should be extraneous to note how ridiculous this talk is, both by Obama and by this team of colleges. Judging the law of the land at the highest level should be the province of the worthiest jurists. The standards should be more about Mensa than menses, or as I wrote some years ago, it should go to the swift, not to the race. If anything, Bush is impressive in that he rewarded excellence and promoted a healthy view of the judiciary. Still, this battle has long been lost to a series of absurd premises that dominate discussion of these subjects.
What is most riling is the burial of a great Horatio Alger story under the phony racial historicity. The fact of Sonia Sotomayor being a Hispanic woman is utterly meaningless. The term Hispanic is in any case an absurd construct, equating people from Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, the Philippines, Honduras, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Spain itself. The idea that all of those citizens from all of those cultures belong to one racial category is ridiculous, insulting and utterly misguided. Thus, the grouping of Hispanic women includes the late Evita Peron and Corazon Aquino, in addition to the sitting presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Is it so all-fired amazing that such an individual becomes a Supreme Court Justice in the United States?
By contrast, the real story goes lost. The impressive history of Justice Sotomayor is her rising from the semi-slum of Bronx, New York, living in a housing project, with a mother working as a domestic, determined to propel her children to prominence by the toil of her gnarled fingers. That those children are a doctor and a Supreme Court Justice, that is a touching and beautiful story, a hopeful saga, an uplifting tale. It is the story of the real America, not the corrupt leftist distortion; it is the story of a perfect union without imaginary barriers; it is the story of the individual triumphing without the intervention of government.
Hence the ultimate irony. Nothing could be better for all Americans than the erasure of racial identities from the public thoroughfare. I want to hear for once in my life a radio announcer say that Barack Obama has chosen Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court without the stupid postscript about Obama's Kenyan father and Sotomayor's Puerto Rican mother. She is an inner-city New Yorker like me, who went to Princeton, who became a good lawyer and a good judge. It is inspiring to behold her career, and I say that as a severe critic of her decisions on the bench.
This politicizing and racializing of America by the left since the Civil Rights Movement is not civil, not right and impedes our movement forward.
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L. Ross| 8.11.09 @ 11:24AM
Jay:
Couldn't agree more. Why can't people just be people? Why do leftist insist on clumping and classifying people into ever tinier distinctive boxes? Why do these "triumphs" become every smaller, while praise for the "triumphs" becomes ever larger? If only Michael Jackson hadn't died, he could have been appointed to the supreme court. That would have been a triumph. An apparent transracial, transexual (or at least cross dressing), child molester on the supreme court. That that would have been diversity, baby.
Dixie Pixie| 8.11.09 @ 12:48PM
Is it my imagination or is the only people considered for high public office comes from the Boston, New York City, Washington DC axis. Has anyone else noticed “Diversity” means excluding from high public office anybody not from the North-East Region. Could I be imagining the exclusionary principals of liberals.
Alan Brooks| 8.11.09 @ 1:28PM
Commies where I live say "hispanic women are so beautiful". Sure they are, but when there are scores of millions more of them decades from now, they wont seem so attractive anymore.
denise| 8.11.09 @ 1:46PM
PUTTING ANOTHER LIBERAL IN HIGH OFFICE IS NOT BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS. I DON'T CARE WHAT NATIONALITY THEY ARE. THE FIRST HALF BLACK PRESIDENT HAS BEEN A DISASTER. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH THEM YOUR RACIST. WELL THE RACE CARD IS OVER BABY. THE ONLY RACIST I SEE IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE. AND NOW ON THE SUPREME COURT. GREAT JOB POLITICS AS USUAL
Marc Jeric| 8.11.09 @ 2:47PM
I lived and worked in Mexico (2 years) and in Spain (4 years). The Spaniards hate to be mentioned as "Hispanics" and so grouped with Mestizos and Indians from Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Philipines, and so on.
As for La Sotomayor - she is a typical product of affirmative action (like Obama), nurtured by tenured marxist professors (like Obama), and a coplete racist; her future rulings are 100% predictable and I will take bets on that.
Joe| 8.11.09 @ 4:05PM
I wish people would get out the truth. This is not the first Hispanic. We have one (half anyway) in the 1910s. This is the first Hispanic woman. But who cares. The court is to be made up of good judges who will follow the constitution which she will not. It is a bad day for Hispanics.
jr| 8.11.09 @ 4:58PM
Who paid for Sotomay-or's education? Is she aware that Obamacare will get after her for being obese? Along those lines, is it true that twiggy ACLU-Ginsberg offered to have Sonia sit in her chair for a tryout, and it was a perfect fit, except that two were necessary.
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vatvince37| 8.11.09 @ 10:40PM
There are, mirabile dictu, ways Sotomayor can be considered a type of the "American success story," but reality demands that I repeat that there are, the Horatio Alger comparison to the contrary notwithstanding, considerations which lead me to conclude that the new Justice is not good for America. I, too, was raised in a low-income housing project (in Brooklyn) but when I attended the City Colleges of New York, I did not agitate that more new faculty be hired whose last name ended in a vowel. This is part of her persona. Sotomayor's past is replete with her advocacy of "identity politics," and if you think that will change once she's on the Court...think again.
I, too, would agree with the author that there are elements of Sotomayor's background that are worthy of our applause, but the fact is that her background and mind set developed in the housing project will not be the template for her legal action: that was developed at Princeton and Yale, and that is what is at hand. The Obama people know precisely what they're getting, and to believe otherwise is delusional.
a presto
lukeweyland| 8.11.09 @ 11:10PM
Denise,
It amazes me how a person who is both the first black president and the 40th white president can be called a racist.
Anyhow, time will show Obama to be rather more on the side of Wall Street than main street and far more than that of the back streets.
Last November Pro-war Yanks voted for a pro-war McCain and most Anti-war Yanks voted for an equally pro-war Obama.
ClaudiaM| 8.12.09 @ 12:04PM
Dear Jay,
YOU HIT IT Smack, dab in the middle of the head of that nail. nary a word is left unsaid to illuminate the non-history of this (ugh) "HISTORIC EVENT" (well, small critique..CAPS were self-evident Jay..Now as to Biases; once the swift is for the race was dangled before our tingling ganglia those biases demanded the usage of the inside track at Belmont Park for your comment or even stretched to the contention that her ludicrous appointment was cut "against the bias" (in itself suggesting another Obama apology touur of South America)...Latina-Americanas (BTW you do NOT mention Portugal in your string of countries of origin..thus eliminateing Benjamin Cardozo from earning this extraordinary honour) in any event do we speak of my native Argentina where the sight of a black face attracts clicking cameras, oohs, ahs and utterly complete wonderment, or do we speak of the Dominican Republic where the vices are all versa?
You have penned a masterpiece. The New York Times and The Washington Post will little note or long remember it, but I, your humble Servant will forever cherish it.
Thanks,
Claudia Monteverdi
andy lowings| 8.15.09 @ 4:36AM
Over here in Europe we have a special group called "ASIANS". This lumps together Pakistanis and Indians, but also the Burmese, Sri Lankans and arguably the Chinese and Russians. It seems however to exclude the entire Arabic world.
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