Media Matters' Jamison Foser asks "How come it's okay for Republicans to call Judge Sotomayor a racist based on a deliberate misinterpretation of a single sentence in an eight-year-old speech, but when Democrats pointed out that Judge Alito had been a proud member of a sexist and racist organization at Princeton, that was over some line?"
So it seems the news media treat even a suggestion that a Supreme Court nominee might be guilty of involvement in a bigoted organization as a vile slur. Even if the nominee touted his membership in a group that sought to limit the number of women and minorities accepted into his alma mater. Even then, such questions are treated as inappropriate and abusive scrutiny that have no place in civil discourse.I'm sure that's a question no ombudsman at any news organization will ask of its staff; introspection about "objectivity" is nearly non-existent these days.As long, that is, as the nominee in question is a conservative white male, nominated by a conservative white male president.
But as we learned this week, if the nominee is a progressive Latina nominated by a progressive African-American president, you can just come right out and call her a racist -- based on nothing more than a distorted quote and a ruling nobody has read -- and the media will take you seriously. They will amplify your complaints. Far from denouncing you for going "too far," they will pretend that your false descriptions of her comments are accurate.
The comment is racist, that much is certain. She said Latina and white. She didn't say poor and underprivileged, and rich and privileged. Her being Latina is no guarantee of empathy, and if you've spent any amount of time seeing brown on brown discrimination in action, then you should get that point. It isn't her race, but her experience, and some "poor white trash" in Appalachia have the same experience and so Latina doesn't contrast with white in terms of having the experience to provide the understanding that gives to the empathy.
Posted by: TheRealPaul at June 2, 2009 02:52 AM