[ NOTES ] – Eric Deggans: I’ve figured out what annoys me most about the media circus that has erupted in the wake of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It’s not watching a long procession of white males — and a few females — dissect what Sotomayor meant when she said eight years ago that she hopes a Latina would make better legal decisions about discrimination cases than a white male.
What irks me most, is what happens whenever race surfaces as an issue in politics: white politicians and pundits pretend their race and culture have no impact on their sensibilities. Why does the term “identity politics” only surface when people of color voice their concerns about stereotyping and institutional bias? [ READ MORE ]
From MediaMatters: Sotomayor, Gingrich, and the demise of our press corps — Last week’s press coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court was gruesome in so manyways, as reporters routinely fell down and failed to reflect even the most basic tenets of journalism.
One of the most disturbing examples of how fundamentals were ignored involved Sotomayor’s now-infamous quote from eight years ago about a “Latina woman” judge reaching a “better conclusion” on the bench than her white male counterparts. Sotomayor made the comment as part of a speech she gave at University of California, Berkeley, in 2001 in which she explored what it would mean to have more women and minorities on the bench.
To see just how dreadful the coverage of that story became, let’s look at the efforts by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which published nearly identical news articles about the unfolding political battle surrounding Sotomayor and the “Latina woman” quote, which conservatives have latched onto. The quote became the basis for the incendiary claim made by Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck, among others, that Sotomayor is, in fact, a racist because she thinks Hispanic judges render better decisions than whites. [ READ MORE ]
The current Republican party is so absurdly out of touch demographically (and, of course, politically) that the election of just one Asian-American Congressman in a fluke special election in New Orleans had the leadership gushing for days that the “future is Cao,” a creepy play on the name of the new member of Congress.
When a 19 year-old white supremacist recently gained a seat on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee, the election created such an outcry that embarrassed local politicians used a technicality to block his seating.
The entire process was buffoonish, although the views of the spawn of a grand wizard of the KKK and his supporters were not. Events such as this, or the stunning success of David Duke in Louisiana in 1990, occur every few years within the GOP, a reminder of the party’s racist faction.
Dead GOP Elephant
Even more standard for Republicans, especially in the year that saw Barack Obama’s election, are the off-key comments about uppitiness, Senators whistling Dixie, and, most recently, a funny little party-endorsed mailer called "Barack the Magic Negro."
All of this stupidity, and hatred, is a symptom of the larger problem for the Republican Party: it is utterly unrepresentative of America in the 21st century. Its Congressional representation is nearly uniformly white, and overwhelmingly male.
So much so, in fact, that there is not one single African-American GOP member of Congress (out of 219 or 220); nor, for that matter, are there any black GOP Governors (out of 22).
There are just four Republican Latinos in Congress, all Florida Cuban-Americans; one of them, Senator Mel Martinez, has announced his retirement. He is the only non-white or Hispanic GOP Senator…..[Continued]
Watch Zbigniew Brzezinski Skewer the ALWAYS WRONG ReTHUGliNUT Joe ‘Marlboro‘ Scarborough, as his daughter Mika Brzezinski watches. Dr. Brzezinski Called Republican Scarborough — ‘Stunningly Superficial.’
