How Many White Men Have been Lynched By Spanish-Speaking Mobs (of Latinas)?

This blogger is not only slaving over a hot keyboard, but the slaving occurs on the road in a Holiday Inn Express. Of course, the TV ads tell us that you can perform brain surgery or pilot an airliner if "You stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night." So, in the midst of power outages and a raging (not quite) summer rainstorm, this blogger doesn't miss a keystroke. Today's post comes from a Latino/Californio columnist who is fed up with the faux outrage of privileged white males in public office and in the media. Give me a "wise Latina" like Judge Sonia Sotomayor over a heartless white bastard like Justice Antonin Scalia or Senator Mitch McConnell. All of their miserable lives, those bastards — and all of their ilk — have been the agents of discrimination and now they want to play the discrimination-victim card. As they say in Texas, that dog won't hunt. May Judge Sotomayor rise to the Supreme Court of the United States of America and may she discriminate against white bastards everywhere for the rest of her life. If this is (fair & balanced) rage against the machine, so be it.

[x San Diego Fishwrap]
Who's The Victim Now?
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

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action affirmative barnes bennett better conclusion confirmation conservatives court critics duties empathy excuse fairness former given going hearings helps hope issues judge judicial latina leader lived males mcconnell members memory nominee party politics princeton qualifications radio recent republicans senate solemn someone sotomayor speech standard talk victim white wise world years

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is angry at Democrats for speeding up the start of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings — to July 13.

"They want the shortest confirmation timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest record in recent memory," McConnell said. "This violates basic standards of fairness and it prevents senators from carrying out one of their most solemn duties, a thorough review of the president's nominee to a lifetime position on the highest court in the land."

What gall for anyone associated with the Republican Party, much less one of its leaders, to talk about "fairness" and "solemn duties" given how conservatives have reacted to the Sotomayor nomination.

If McConnell finds himself short on time, it's because too many members of his party — on talk radio, in the right-wing blogosphere, and in the political chattering classes — wasted too much of it in recent weeks talking about side issues that had nothing to do with Sotomayor's qualifications. And while all this was going on, McConnell said he had "better things to do than be the speech police."

I can see why Republicans weren't eager to talk about the nominee's credentials — graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, editor of the Yale Law Journal, a former prosecutor, nearly 17 years on the federal bench — since her achievements are all first-rate.

Instead, Sotomayor's critics used speech fragments and YouTube footage to label her a judicial activist, a radical liberal and a racist. When some Republicans — including Senator John Cornyn of Texas and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — winced at that final jab, the critics tried to tone it down by switching to "racialist." Whatever that means.

The judge's detractors set out to try to make her look bad — and wound up making themselves look much worse. Even her qualifications came in for character assault. During one exchange, radio talk show host Bill Bennett and the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes suggested that Sotomayor might never have gotten into Princeton if not for affirmative action.

As someone who has written about diversity issues for 20 years, I was stunned by the reaction. Wouldn't you assume that Bennett, Barnes and other critics — given that they have accomplished much in their own lives — would be more secure than to jump to the conclusion that there is a new world order coming and they're going to be out in the cold?

The ruckus over Sotomayor isn't about judicial activism, empathy or identity politics. It's about how some white males got their noses out of joint because Sotomayor said in a 2001 speech that she "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 hasn't lived that life."

Despite the insistence by the White House that Sotomayor misspoke, it was soon learned that she made similar remarks in a series of other speeches from 1994 to 2004.

So she misspeaks habitually.

The media helped stir the pot by doing what it does best: promoting conflict. Take note of the recent headline on a CNN story about Sotomayor: "'Wise Latina' vs. White Males."

We can expect the "wise Latina" comment to pop up a lot during Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. And that's silly. Here you have a nominee for the Supreme Court whose paper trail is a six-lane highway. She probably also has views on some of the most controversial issues of the day — from abortion to illegal immigration. Yet what many members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — and certainly many Republicans — are likely to obsess over are Sotomayor's provocative but ultimately harmless statements about the insight, judgment, and, yes, empathy, she would hope to see from fellow Latina judges.

Other conservatives are itching for a fight over affirmative action, and they plan to make their stand during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. I do hope they get around to mentioning that affirmative action helps white males too by giving them a built-in excuse when they fall short and don't get everything they desire.

It's sad, really. There was a time when the Republican Party would challenge those who played the victim, made excuses for their shortcomings, and thought the world was out to get them.

These days, that's the team motto. Ω

[Ruben Navarrette Jr., a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union-Tribune, is a fresh and increasingly important voice in the national political debate. His twice-weekly column offers new thinking on many of the major issues of the day, especially on thorny questions involving ethnicity and national origin. His column is syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group.

After graduating from Harvard in 1990, Navarrette returned to his native Fresno, CA, where he began a free-lance writing career that produced more than 200 articles in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Fresno Bee, the Chicago Tribune and The Arizona Republic.

In 1997 he joined the staff of The Arizona Republic, first as a reporter and then as a twice-weekly columnist, before returning to Harvard in the fall of 1999 to earn a master's in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government. He joined the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News in July 2000, and in 2005, moved to the Union-Tribune. His column has been in syndication since 2001.]

Copyright © 2009 The Washington Post Writers Group

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