Sotomayor critics are playing the identity card, not Obama

Run time: 02:59 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MARFjR4lD8A   Posted on YouTube: May 28, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: May 28, 2009 By DU Member: seraphicx Views on DU: 496

 
The conservative critics of Sotomayor are themselves playing "identity politics." Explained beautifully in this vid analysis of Beck, Rush, Coulter et. al.

As with Eric Boehlert, who went toe-to-toe, head-to-head with known bigot and racist and former US Congressman Tom Tancredo on CNN earlier, Gil Smart did a fine job of defending Sonia Sotomayor's remarks. However, like Boehlert, he too fell short of landing the knockout punch in regard to this issue. I wish someone who has the ability to either produce a great webspot like Gil's, or who has the ability to get on a major television network would take note of what I'm about to say, and use it to actually land that knockout punch. Here is all they'd have to say to land said punch:

"Listen, here it is in a nutshell. Sonia Sotomayor made the statement she made in the context of speaking about race and sex discrimination cases. And in light of that, let's take a good hard look at what she said. She said, as you just showed, and I quote, "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 hasn't lived that life."

So, she's saying in effect, that in any case involving race or sex discrimination 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."

She is not advocating that white males are incapable of reaching a better conclusion than Latina women. She's not stating that a Latina women would AUTOMATICALLY reach a better conclusion than a white male. In fact, she's not even stating anything at all about what WOULD happen. She's stating a HOPE. A hope that the richness of the Latina women's experiences would better inform her judgment in regard to race and sex discrimination cases than a white male's who has never been in those shoes.

In fact, she goes on in the rest of the passage this remark is pulled from to recognize that there are many cases in which white males, specifically the 9 white males on the Supreme Courts decades ago, reached great conclusions when it comes to race and sexual discrimination cases. However, she also points out that there have been, at times, "wise" justices such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose conclusions on such cases were, and I believe this is the prevailing thought nowadays, completely wrong. Her point being then, that she would HOPE that someone who's lived the life of a minority woman would be able to, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, better make a judgment than say...Oliver Wendell Holmes had in those cases.

There is nothing racist with that, and anyone who purports to make it so is grasping at straws out of desperation.”

That's what Boehlert should have said, and what Gil Smart should also have said. I know Boehlert was working under certain time constraints, but if he'd prepared, he probably could have said something like that, had his assistants pare it down a bit, and gotten it all out under thirty seconds to a minute. If he had, the entire case against Sotomayor would have been destroyed, right there. The emphasis should have been placed on talking about the fact she said "I HOPE" and "MORE OFTEN THAN NOT". That is the knockout punch, and he didn't deliver it and neither did Smart.