Joe Conason, Salon: Republicans had their own mediocre beneficiary of affirmative action

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Sonia Sotomayor is not Clarence Thomas

Why do Republicans think the Supreme Court nominee is a mediocre beneficiary of affirmative action? Because they had their own

By Joe Conason



http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/29/clarence_thomas/

May 29, 2009 | For Sonia Sotomayor, nothing could be quite so predictable at this moment as her vicious denigration by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, the denizens of the Corner at National Review Online and the myriad squawking noisemakers on Fox News. With instantaneous unanimity, the right-wing verdict against the judge was handed down. She is "dumb," or at least "not that bright," a slur that requires no evidence because she is obviously an "affirmative action" nominee for the high court.

And we all know what that means, don't we? Just ask Clarence Thomas.

The conservative campaign to dismiss Sotomayor's accomplishments and diminish her qualifications follows a pattern that is by now all too familiar. Yet she is measurably smarter than most of her critics -- if a summa cum laude degree from Princeton and a spot on the Yale Law Review are worth anything -- and overcame disadvantages that suburban sons and daughters of privilege (such as Coulter and Limbaugh) probably cannot imagine.

So why do some of Sotomayor's nastiest adversaries imagine that the public will accept these false characterizations of her intelligence and credentials? Perhaps that instinct follows from the right's own sad experiences with Republican affirmative action -- most notably in the matter of Justice Thomas, who embodied all of the problems that conservatives perceived in the pursuit of ethnic diversity. When the wingnuts attack Sotomayor with inaccurate stereotypes, they're projecting onto her the shortcomings of their own beloved Clarence.

[Theobald]

1. Well I don't want to get into and don't really care what Rush et al think, so here is what I think..

Clarence Thomas was not an affirmative action hire, he was a political hire. George Bush wanted to nominate an African-American to the Supreme Court for political reasons and Clarence Thomas being one of the few black conservative judges fit the bill. He thought of nominating him to replace Brennan, but didn't think he had enough experience at that time to pass muster. When Marshall retired, he had no choice politically, in my opinion, but to replace Marshall with another African-American justice and so Thomas was proffered as his replacement.

Judge Sotomayor is also a political hire, although in a slightly different nature. In my opinion Obama wanted to nominate a women to the supreme court and that was what he was going to do. He was doing this not just for political reasons, but also because he felt it was the right thing to do: because women are underrepresented on the court and there are a number of women who are eminently qualified to sit on the Supreme Court (I don't believe that there is ever a 'perfect' hire for a position like this; i.e. the one person who should be nominated whether they be black or white, man or woman or whatever else your qualifier might be). I don't think he picked Sontomayor just because she is Hispanic, but I think this was an added bonus for him as he making his decision. So while I think her Hispanic background may have played a minor role in her selection, I don't think she was nominated because she was Hispanic, because if she was a Hispanic male she wouldn't have been nominated.

I am not qualified to make exacting judgment on who is or isn't qualified to be on the Supreme Court, but in my layman's opinion she certainly is qualified.

[gratuitous]

2. Summa cum laude at Princeton

Yeah, "affirmative action." And how many Latina summas did Princeton miss out on prior to 1969, when it was a bastion of white male privilege?

From the photo, it appears the years haven't been very kind to Uncle Thomas.

[11 Bravo]

3. You're right about Thomas' s appearance.

Apparently 18 years as Scalia's lawn jockey really takes a lot out of a guy.