Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayors nomination into a personal Olympic event. Pay no attention to her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later.
And oh by the way did you hear that she was poor?
Its a compelling personal story as we heard 20956 times on Tuesday. Sotomayors a real person. Why she even read Nancy Drew as a young girl President Obama told us. Shes faced down barriers overcome the odds and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago Obama said.
If Sotomayor were auditioning to be Oprah Winfreys fill-in host Id understand the over-the-top hyping of her life narrative. But isnt anybody on Sotomayors side the least bit embarrassed by all this liberal condescension?
Republicans are not allowed to mention Sotomayors ethnicity lest they be branded bigots but every Democrat on cable television harped on her multicultural diversity and obstacle-climbing. Obama made sure to roll his rs when noting that her parents came from Puerrrrto Rrrrico. New York Sen. Charles Schumer stated outright: Its long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court. Color-coded tokenism dominated the headlines with blaring references to Sotomayor as the high courts potential first Hispanic.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- one of the leading Democrats tasked with guiding Sotomayor through the nomination process -- carried the compelling personal story talking points to the tokenist extreme in an interview on Fox News:
If you look at what this woman has been through and the obstacles that she has had to overcome I think she does have a richly uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country McCaskill asserted. Overcoming incredible odds and I think that is an experience that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American trying to grow up in public housing reaching for scholarships reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I dont think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience.
Clever. Challenging Sotomayors credentials and extreme views on race and the law is not merely anti-Hispanic. Its anti-American!
More significantly McCaskill waved the high-hurdle card after being asked to defend Sotomayors infamous statement at a 2001 University of California at Berkeley speech asserting brown-skin moral authority: I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasnt lived that life. McCaskill actually denied that Sotomayor had made the remarks then argued the words were taken out of context.
You want context? Its even worse than that sound bite. As National Journal legal analyst Stuart Taylor reported Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. And she suggested that inherent physiological or cultural differences may help explain why our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. The full speech was reprinted in something called the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. La Raza is Spanish for The Race. Imagine if a white male Republican court nominee had published in a law review called The Race.
The selective elevation of hardship as primary qualification demeans the entire judiciary. If personal turmoil makes one incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country lets put reality-show couple Jon and Kate Gosselin on the bench. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their compelling personal story of life with eight children on television. Its a richly uniquely American experience of facing obstacles and overcoming the odds. Get them robes and gavels stat.
The lesson is that not all compelling personal stories are equal. McCaskills assertion that overcoming incredible odds is new to the courts is ridiculous. Is she arguing that Thurgood Marshall Felix Frankfurter and Sandra Day OConnor faced lower hurdles than Sotomayor? And how about Clarence Thomas a descendant of slaves who grew up in abject poverty in the South without a father? His crime of course was embracing the wrong ideology. So his incredible set of odds and obstacles dont count in left-wing eyes.
Democrats are eager to celebrate diversity you see as long as the diversely pigmented pledge allegiance to the Left for life.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayors nomination into a personal Olympic event. Pay no attention to her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later.
And oh by the way did you hear that she was poor?
Its a compelling personal story as we heard 20956 times on Tuesday. Sotomayors a real person. Why she even read Nancy Drew as a young girl President Obama told us. Shes faced down barriers overcome the odds and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago Obama said.
If Sotomayor were auditioning to be Oprah Winfreys fill-in host Id understand the over-the-top hyping of her life narrative. But isnt anybody on Sotomayors side the least bit embarrassed by all this liberal condescension?
Republicans are not allowed to mention Sotomayors ethnicity lest they be branded bigots but every Democrat on cable television harped on her multicultural diversity and obstacle-climbing. Obama made sure to roll his rs when noting that her parents came from Puerrrrto Rrrrico. New York Sen. Charles Schumer stated outright: Its long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court. Color-coded tokenism dominated the headlines with blaring references to Sotomayor as the high courts potential first Hispanic.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- one of the leading Democrats tasked with guiding Sotomayor through the nomination process -- carried the compelling personal story talking points to the tokenist extreme in an interview on Fox News:
If you look at what this woman has been through and the obstacles that she has had to overcome I think she does have a richly uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country McCaskill asserted. Overcoming incredible odds and I think that is an experience that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American trying to grow up in public housing reaching for scholarships reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I dont think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience.
Clever. Challenging Sotomayors credentials and extreme views on race and the law is not merely anti-Hispanic. Its anti-American!
More significantly McCaskill waved the high-hurdle card after being asked to defend Sotomayors infamous statement at a 2001 University of California at Berkeley speech asserting brown-skin moral authority: I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasnt lived that life. McCaskill actually denied that Sotomayor had made the remarks then argued the words were taken out of context.
You want context? Its even worse than that sound bite. As National Journal legal analyst Stuart Taylor reported Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. And she suggested that inherent physiological or cultural differences may help explain why our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. The full speech was reprinted in something called the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. La Raza is Spanish for The Race. Imagine if a white male Republican court nominee had published in a law review called The Race.
The selective elevation of hardship as primary qualification demeans the entire judiciary. If personal turmoil makes one incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country lets put reality-show couple Jon and Kate Gosselin on the bench. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their compelling personal story of life with eight children on television. Its a richly uniquely American experience of facing obstacles and overcoming the odds. Get them robes and gavels stat.
The lesson is that not all compelling personal stories are equal. McCaskills assertion that overcoming incredible odds is new to the courts is ridiculous. Is she arguing that Thurgood Marshall Felix Frankfurter and Sandra Day OConnor faced lower hurdles than Sotomayor? And how about Clarence Thomas a descendant of slaves who grew up in abject poverty in the South without a father? His crime of course was embracing the wrong ideology. So his incredible set of odds and obstacles dont count in left-wing eyes.
Democrats are eager to celebrate diversity you see as long as the diversely pigmented pledge allegiance to the Left for life.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
