Update: Also, what Matt said.

Maybe it’s because I live in Texas, where there’s a heavy Spanish language influence on the culture, but I’m genuinely surprised that people are carping about Sonia Sotomayor’s name, as if it’s hard to pronounce.  I can’t pronounce anything correctly, but I’ve got “Sotomayor” down.  Obviously, the reason that Mark Krikorian is kicking up dust over this is that he’s looking for an excuse to race-bait, and he’d never do this to a white person with a difficult to pronounce name, even if it’s genuinely hard to pronounce. Like “Scalia”, which I still don’t know how to pronounce, which is my fault for being too lazy to look it up and not Scalia’s fault for having that name. (And that’s probably the first and last time I’ll compare myself to Scalia negatively.) 

Sorry if my continued harping on right wing attacks on Sotomayor is tiresome, but I have my reasons.  As a fellow member of the “people who have to constantly correct others about the pronunciation of my name” club, for one, I have to stand up for a fellow citizen whose name is easy to pronounce, once you know how to pronounce it.  I’m also sure that Sotomayor has faced the same problem I have, which is people insisting that I’m pronouncing my own damn name wrong, that it just has to be fancier than it is.  I’m also endlessly fascinated by the right wing attack machine, where they throw every fool thing they think of at the wall, and hope that something eventually sticks, and it often does.  It’s interesting that a day plus into the process, they’ve decided to go with race-baiting over sexism in their attacks on Sotomayor, however, which is really fascinating because usually the rallying issue for conservative action and fund-raising around the Supreme Court is gender, which is struggled over through abortion rights.  I suspect part of the reason is that the fundamental impetus behind conservative resistance to Sotomayor is the belief that Obama is an illegitimate President, which is far from a de-racialized belief.

My hope is that the right wing urge to personalize everything is going to be their downfall in this case.  If they want to kick up racist beliefs about quotas and affirmative action, they’d better find a way that doesn’t involve these personal attacks on Sotomayor that rely on stereotypes of Latina women, because that’s just going to make them look like fools.  Call her a temperamental bully, and you’ll find that her clerks are happy to rush forward and claim that she’s an utter sweetheart.  Call her stupid and imply that she only has her position because of soft-minded affirmative action that puts unqualified people in certain jobs, and you’ll have to convince people that their eyes are lying to them when they’re looking at her long resume.  It’s the same backfire problem that conservatives face when they try to deny that Obama is an intelligent man. 

Of course, even using the affirmative action gambit appears to be too sophisticated a form of race-baiting for a lot of conservatives, who are resorting to variations of “how dare that uppity Latina uppity about like that” attacks, which is exactly what Mark Krikorian is doing by throwing a shit fit over the fact that Sotomayor doesn’t anglicize her name.  In 2009.  It makes you wonder if Krikorian is still trying to get over the fact that Desi Arnaz didn’t try to hide his Cuban identity when he played Ricky Ricardo.  Of course, it’s worth remembering how conservatives tried to attack Obama during the campaign by calling him “Barry”.  I don’t know what the rationale behind that was, but obviously the emotional appeal was to scare people about how “foreign” Obama’s name sounds.  It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

I really can’t think of anything that has less of a hook than crabbing about the evils of cultural change and diversity.  Sure, true believers love to hear about how the world is going to hell now that you can easily purchase tacos and hamburgers, or about how rap isn’t “real” music, but I just don’t see those arguments bringing fence sitters in.  If anything, it just makes people laugh at you.  For instance, on our way back from Minehead to London a few weeks ago, my friend and I stopped at a diner in this small town called Taunton.  Someone had left a local-seeming newspaper out, and it didn’t take long for us to realize it had a more conservative bent.  But even with this foreknowledge, I almost lost it when I saw a story griping about how kids these days can’t tell the difference between traditional British food and new-fangled favorites like curry and pizza.  I kid you not—-kids these days don’t have enough respect because they’d sooner eat a curry than some bangers and mash or whatever.  Since my beans and toast were actually pretty fucking good, I shouldn’t have been making some of the vicious cracks I did about why kids these days might have very solid reasons for their culinary preferences, but when you read a story like that, you have to. 

Seriously, that article is the first thing my mind went to when I read Krikorian complaining that Sotomayor pronounces her own name how it’s pronounced.  The knee jerk hostility to ethnic diversity, the anger at people who don’t share your prejudices, the complete cluelessness about how stupid you sound—-totally different subjects on their surface, but fundamentally the same story.

One of the most fascinating things about watching the identity politics meltdown on the right after Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination is the blithe assumption that men don’t have a gender and white people don’t have a race.  It’s the sort of thing people talk about a lot in abstract theoretical terms, but now you’re seeing it play out in real life. 

Example #1:

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy and that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

And example #2, from Senator Inhofe:

In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences.

Of course, white men utilize undue influence, called privilege, of their race and gender all the time.  But as the above comments demonstrate, people don’t see it that way, because we’re conditioned to think of white men as having neither race nor gender. 

Like I said yesterday, I’m almost startled at how quickly the right moved towards race-baiting.  You’d think that they’d try out a few other lines of attack before resorting to, “Fear the Hispanics!”, but no.  I guess that means they’ve got nothing else to attack her with, which makes sense, because Sotomayor is coming to her confirmation hearings with more experience as a federal judge than anyone sitting on the Supreme Court had before they got their jobs.  Of course, with the race-baiting, you’re going to get this disingenuous move of blaming the victim because she forced them to race bait by not showing the proper shame for being not white.  Thus, you have one wingnut after another pretending to be shocked, shocked I tell you, that Sotomayor made a speech where she acknowledged that the different experiences of different people might have some bearing on what decisions they make.  To find this offensive, you have to actually believe that white men don’t have a race or gender, therefore they can’t be influenced by race or gender.  Which, as the above statements demonstrate, is in fact the supposition that’s being made.

But the whole act of acting offended that someone would be so crass as to talk about racism in America is just a way to say that Sotomayor’s race should be held against her, without coming right out and saying it.  Over and over and over again, the assumption is that you can safely assume that Sotomayor is stupid, despite her years of experience and academic credentials, because there’s just no way a Hispanic woman could actually be that smart.  The concern troll argument against affirmative action has always been that if it’s in place, then people who benefit have to suffer under the assumption that they’re undeserving.  Obviously, said concern trolling is actually a threat.  But there’s no reason to think that if there was no such thing as affirmative action that conservatives wouldn’t find another excuse to argue that Sotomayor’s race and gender should be reason enough to dismiss her as stupid. 

Having had weeks to prepare for Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court hasn’t helped Republican hysterics take the time they need to think very carefully about launching attacks (god forbid they should accept that Obama has a right to nominate justices, of course—-no matter who it is, they’re going to shit bricks, 100% regardless of the person’s views or qualifications, simply because they just don’t accept Obama’s right to hold office) so that they don’t sound like braindead morons who are too laden down with sexism and racism to even respond coherently to this nomination.  They’ve got no excuse—-26 days is ample time to come up with attacks that aren’t blatantly racist and sexist, even if they are fundamentally racist and sexist.  But the idea of a woman of color taking a spot on the highest court of the land trumps 26 days of preparation time to learn to sound like you have a modicum of common sense.  It’s time for the hysterics!

There’s two front runners right out of the gate in the “you’ve got to be fucking with me” levels of racism department.  First is Mike Huckabee calling Sotomayor “Maria Sotomayor”, which is the sort of bigotry that could have easily been avoided by doing something conservatives find repugnant, and educating yourself on some basic facts. Even more startling is that Politico called Sotomayor a “Latina single mother”, a feat she managed to accomplish despite having no children at all.  Even better was the fact that they used this in one of those conservative rhetorical games, where they openly attack someone’s race by whining about how that person’s race is beyond attack. 

Over-the-top racist stupidity wins the day’s contest in the you’ve-got-to-be-fucking-kidding department, but sexism is bringing up the rear.  Ramesh Ponnuru is claiming that Sotomayor is “Obama’s Miers”, which is a fancy way of saying that women aren’t smart enough to be Supreme Court judges.  That’s because Sotomayor and Miers have nothing in common but their gender—-as Scott spells out, Sotomayor has a long resume as a judge, but Miers’ main qualification was that she was a lawyer who wrote mash notes to the Shrub.  Alas, the 26 days have given conservatives a little better grounding in attacking Sotomayor’s gender without coming right out and saying it, so I expect we’ll see more of these arguments that she’s stupid that have no real evidence, but just rely on innuendo that feels true to the base, because they think that “stupid” and “woman/non-white person” are synonymous.  Quoth Adam:

Sotomayor’s resume doesn’t just look good compared to Harriet Miers. Sotomayor has more than 10 years on the appeals court—by contrast, the current chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, had two years as a judge on the D.C. Circuit before being nominated. As a white man, however, his credentials and intelligence are beyond reproach.

Despite Republican threats to filibuster Sotomayor, I’m skeptical they can get all Senate Republicans on board with this, since some moderates have got to realize that Sotomayor’s as centrist as they’re going to get.  So even if not all Democrats are in their proper seats by the time it comes to a vote, giving us the 60, I think we’ve got it.  Republicans can try to kill this in committee, and I suspect that’s what they’ll try to do.  Not because they object to Sotomayor so much as they need to take every opportunity possible to grandstand about how they don’t accept that Obama is President.  Either way, if they try to kill or stall this appointment, it’s just going to draw out the period that Republicans can go on TV and continue to say blatantly racist things.  I’m of two minds on this.  On one hand, I appreciate that this is an opportunity for Republicans to out themselves as the party of bigots, and let the growing population of Hispanic voters know where Republicans stand on the topic of blatant, vicious racism against Hispanics.  That said, when stuff gets racialized like this, it creates on the ground antagonism to rise, which isn’t good for anyone.  The political gains from this have to be weighed against the real world animosity this sort of thing sows.

So let’s hope my instinct is right, and Republicans may actually let this one go.

UPDATE: And as you already know, the CA Supremes upheld Prop 8, but those who were married in that small window while same-sex marriage was legal (about 18K), will remain married. A copy of the ruling is here. Predictable, because California’s constitution affirms mob rule.

As we await the 10:30 ET official word on Sotomayor as the President’s SCOTUS pick, and the 1PM ET ruling on the constitutionality of Prop 8

, Here is a thoughtful piece by Christopher Geidner@ Law Dork. He discusses the forthcoming Prop 8 ruling by the California Supreme Court and the possible reactions in the LGBT and allies community if the ruling does not overturn it—either by nullifying all the same-sex marriages or allowing the thousands of existing marriages to remain intact while still affirming Prop 8. He believes the Supreme Court will have the split decision. He also shares my concern that we have to worry just as much about misplaced anger turning into violence as we do from the right.

Assuming that outcome, which I believe is most likely, I’d ask — and hope our national leaders would ask — that we all take a breath before acting.  As, I wrote Friday, the decision to be issued today is a legal determination about the structure of the California Constitution and the procedures available to the people to amend it.  A fair and vigorous debate has been had about whether Proposition 8 was the type of change envisioned as an amendment or if it was a revision, which would require a more lengthy and difficult process.

The California Supreme Court, at least a majority of its justices, already has shown its support for marriage equality.  There can, thus, be no claim made that this court comes at the issue of gay and lesbian equality with anything less than good faith.

I understood — and participated in — rallies held across the country following the passage of Proposition 8.  I understood the stark awakening that the vote was for many young LGBT people and our allies.  I supported this rejuvenated “gay movement.”  We have seen the fruits of that awakening in Iowa, Vermont, D.C., Maine and New Hampshire, as well as in countless other states, cities and communities across the nation.

We must not let today’s ruling change that momentum.

Geidner reminds readers that this ruling is not about the merits or legality of same-sex marriage—the same state Supreme Court is the one that decided gays and lesbians could marry. So what we—or perhaps Californians—should be angry about is a state Constitution that allows civil rights to be placed on a ballot measure.

More after the jump.

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CNN is currently airing a segment on conservatives’ response to Obama’s rumored Supreme Court nominees.  This matches their dozens of other segments on how conservatives are going to respond to Obama’s nominees.  It will also match the future months of similar stories on Obama’s nominees.  It will also provide a great lead-in when one of Obama’s nominees is filibustered by 40 Republicans and Ben Nelson for being an “activist”, because the only thing the average person will know about Obama’s nominee is that they made a controversial anti-Christian ruling. 

I, for one, look forward to months of GOP talking points being proffered as “balance” to this nomination, because I don’t have a nail gun to shoot into various parts of my body.