Don’t forget his first sentence:  She Should Have Said No.

Oh isn’t he clever?

Sarah may not have slashed funds for special needs children, but she most certainly line-item slashed funds for teen mothers.  Cut ‘em in half and initialed it.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks it is sexist and totally paternalistic of men like doucehat to keep running to the rescue of poor little Sarah. Politics is a rough business and anyone (male or female) who runs for office should expect to have their lives turned inside out and examined. She seems to have temporarily discovered that she doesn’t have the temperament to take what is dished out at every politician so she up and quit. Let’s hope it sticks and we don’t have to deal with her lies ever again.

And I’m tired of Republicans comparing her decision to quit to Richard Nixon’s. Say what you want to about Nixon, but at least his resignation speech was coherent and written in advance by someone who understood the English language.

The article is especially stupid because he talks of SP as a success story—someone who pulled themselves out of poverty to become someone—and more or less ignores Obama’s story being pretty much the same. Somehow I’m supposed to see Palin as more authentic because she stayed trashy.

How can you stand next to Hillary??  Don’t you know she killed Vince Foster?  Probably with her bare lesbian hands.

The meritocratic ideal? Maybe, but the Republicans have been running for decades on the idea that going to expensive schools and working up to prestigious posts that actually have duties that give you experience is a Bad Thing.

That what qualifies you for the Presidency isn’t your Ivy League background or the fact that your family was in circles that would acquaint you with power, but that you can drive a tractor and would be fun to have a beer with. That running a racetrack qualifies you to run FEMA, and so on.

Even if that were the democratic ideal (bread and circuses?), Palin isn’t an example of it - she wasn’t a hugely popular figure that the masses raised to power. Nobody outside Alaska had heard of her until the gods reached down from Olympus and plucked her out of obscurity. She isn’t an example of democracy, she is an example of mediocracy - Fox News and People Magazine created her.

And what they created, they can destroy, if she doesn’t continue to be their good little Galatea.

it had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class.

That “social class” is not only Douthat’s transparent and lame attempt to avoid any mention of even one of the million variations on Hillary as bitch/termagant/harpy/etc., ad nauseum, but yet another whine of universal conservative victimhood. In this case, because it’s Monday I guess, conservatives are persecuted for being salt-of-the-earth bootstrappers, tomorrow it will be because oppressed trust-funders and CEOs are victims of the “politics of envy.”

Not to mention his begging the question of Palin’s exceptional harassment. The usual misogyny aside, were any politician to have such a ludicrously hypocritical freak show thrust into a national spotlight the jokes would have been pretty much the same—being ridiculous will sometimes inspire ridicule all on its own.

Soooo remember when the Democratic candidates wouldn’t debate on Fox, and guys like Y’all Want a Single, Said Douthat were claiming this proved they couldn’t face down al-Qaeda? Do they honestly see nothing wrong with turning around and saying their grand new Reaganella is perfectly justified in resigning, because the internets are meanies?

Oh, and! I guess I get to be the one who links to Palin’s feelings on female politicians, victimization of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC-tOzXQOsk

Yeah, nothing like a New Haven CT prep school boy who glided through Hah-vad and then has coasted on that ever since telling folks the way to success.

What’s really annoying about Douthat’s comment that, taken from a less incoherent and partisan author it is definitely worth mentioning: the US governing class is increasingly drawn from too few schools.  Harvard, Yale, the occasional Other-Ivy grad for tokenism, and that’s it.  The USA has a TON of superb universities but there is, amongst the elite, a perception that only those noted schools Really Count.  Case in point?  Can anyone here honestly assert that Douthat would be where he is, let alone at the age he is, if he was from, say, San Francisco and had gone to UCLA?

In another thread I noted this:

I’m rather more troubled by the fact that Presidents seem to think that Harvard and Yale are the only two faculties of law in the US of A capable of producing a USSC justice.  Only Stevens (age 89, appointed 1975, Northwestern University School of Law) and Ginsburg (Columbia) aren’t from those schools.  By way of contrast, only two of Canada’s 9 Supreme Court Justices went to the same school: both Binnie JA and Abella JA got their LL.B.s from U of T[oronto].

[typos corrected]

Think about that: so far as the elites are concerned, only one judge out of nine who is not Ivy League is a good enough lawyer to be on the USSC.  And when Stevens retires or dies you can bet the farm on the fact that his successor will be Ivy League.

We should not let the astonishing lack of qualifications and character found in Palin and Douthat and his slimy hypocrisy distract us from an otherwise worthy debate

“The real story of Palin isn’t that she was treated so shabbily, it’s that she cut a ridiculous enough figure as a prominent Republican that the media finally felt comfortable treating her the same way they would a Democrat.”

...after a months-long delay while they were trying to figure out a way to let her slide, until the overwhelming evidence of her being a completely ridiculous choice for McCain veep couldn’t be ignored any longer. 

It was her mouth that sunk her.  If Republican media discipline had kept her reigned in tighter, Princess Sarah might still be seen as a substantial figure.  As it is, there are still Rethugs who will carry a torch for her until their dying day. 

Never forget that Bush Jr. was entirely the product of Reichwing fabrication.  If they can take the ne’er-do-well son of an aristocratic New England family with deep roots in politics and turn him into an outsider from Texas, bringing in a new era of government accountability and no more being The World’s Policeman (that really worked out well, didn’t it?), I don’t think they would have had too much trouble packaging Palin the way they wanted — that is if they could control her and keep her on script…

***

BTW, why should anyone ever listen to a son of White Male Wingnut privilege like DoucheHat tell us about Real America?...

Palin never lived in Poverty ... her parents were teachers and fishing isn’t exactly subsistence in Alaska - it isn’t wealth, but it isn’t like working in a cannery.

That said, Palin is not a success story - she was elected governor of our smallest population state and couldn’t even finish that without throwing a fit and quitting.  She wasn’t elected VP either and her presence on the ticket and her behavior while a candidate was partly to blame for the failure of the McCain Palin brand in the voters marketplace.

Seeker - FYI: the Supreme Court of the United States is usually referred to as SCOTUS, not USSC.

Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story.

Please ignore the Yalies who have inhabited the White House for the past 20 years.

And what’s wrong with Rutherford B Hayes anyways!?

Perhaps a good deal of the reason that the ivies have provided so many legal scholars and leaders is their long-term quest to identify, educate, and elevate talented people regardless of social status???

A fair number of “lesser” law schools have such entrenched nepotism that they shut out the best and the brightest - or simply educate for their state’s needs rather than national perspectives.

Think about that: so far as the elites are concerned, only one judge out of nine who is not Ivy League is a good enough lawyer to be on the USSC.

It’s a very recent development—Earl Warren, one of the most famous and influential Chief Justices ever, went to UC Berkeley.  His successor as Chief Justice, Warren Burger, went to William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota.

Hmm, funny how as soon as you had justices like Warren and Burger start siding with the little guys, we started to be very restrictive about the “right” schools for them to come from, innit?

But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

Apparently, Douthat thinks that democratic ideal precludes actually accomplishing anything else of importance.

Who was it who said in the past year that, while William F. Buckley said he’d rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard, he didn’t mean those should be the only choices?

What, Ms. Kate, people like Douthat and Shrub?

It’s pretty much a binary situation, Ms. Kate.  You either believe that the Ivys (and specifically and almost uniquely Harvard and Yale) are the only schools fit to produce the nation’s SCOTUS judges, or you don’t.  If you do, then say so.  If you don’t then concede that 8 out of 9 or 9 out of 9 seats being held for their graduates is simply wrong.

And what Mnemosyne said about the Right Schools.

Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith.

It’s so terrible that this happened to Palin, because we know none of this ever happened to the alleged Muslim, Arab socialist who wants to teach kindergarteners with porn and who forged his own birth certificate, amirite?

Ross Douthat is a pompous, finger-wagging moral scold.  I went from never having heard of him to thinking he’s the most annoying pundit other than Mike S. Adams.  He has no redeeming value.

And I would have a lot more respect for the triumphant everydayness of Sarah Palin if her rise had ever showed any evidence of, what’s the word, success.  Mayor for 6 years, Governor for 2 1/2.  It’s ridiculous, and it’s always been ridiculous.

Also, after Douthat’s last post about how everyday heartland denizens have better sex, I think we have a convergence of politico-sexual Sarah Palin fantasies here.

What a whiney-arse titty baby Do-That is. Palin was run through the mill because she was a bloody joke of a candidate, and the thought of that proud ignoramus as VP under a septuagenarian with a heart condition scared the bejeezus out of any reality-based person with an advanced degree and a basic understanding of the Constitution—that wouldn’t have changed whatever the colour of her skin, her gender, or her political party.

It’s really projection—guys like Douthat and Goldberg understand as well as we do that their careers don’t rest on their stellar intellects or their knowledge of historical and economic facts, so of course they’re going to defend Palin.

“But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.”

Sarah represents the Unscrupulous-Uneducated-Bigoted-Trashy-looking “housewife” (she conducted a lot of State business from home, while charging the State per diem) with 5 kids and a Jock husband.

She, like Bush II,  really showed the idiot-racist’s that “anyone” could be powerful and famous.  Except she couldn’t hack it.  She doesn’t have the intelligence to run a town, let alone a state, and she doesn’t have the sense to let others do the work while she gets the credit.

Perhaps a good deal of the reason that the ivies have provided so many legal scholars and leaders is their long-term quest to identify, educate, and elevate talented people regardless of social status?

The problem is, over the years Ivy law school attendance has become a lazy sorting method (par for the course in the Human Resources Culture). There are plenty of excellent public university law schools (e.g. UC Berkeley, U Mich, UCLA) that both make it their mission to do just what you say (perhaps to an even greater degree than Harvard or Yale), and which also take a national-level perspective.

Shorter SCOTUS vetters:

“I suppose you attended law school at one of the great universities: Harvard; Yale; Hull?”

“I suppose you attended law school at one of the great universities: Harvard; Yale; Hull?”

That’s right! Yale is a complete dump!

Seeker, don’t be obtuse about a legal system you might be less familiar with.  My impression, from knowing dozens of Harvard Law types (having worked with their spouses) and others who went to law school from my high school debate days is that you go to Harvard or Yale if you want a law education that is national and general in focus.  If you go to many state schools, you will understandably receive an education appropriate for a different type of law practice - smaller firms or own shingle, and local.  Nothing wrong with that, but people who get to the supreme court are more likely to come from those with strong familiarity with federal law.  That means that they go to one of the Ivy league schools or similar, and they come up through a different track that familiarizes them with the federal judiciary system.

The fact that people here could turn an intelligent discussion of a disturbing SCOTUS trend into a throwaway Blackadder reference is indicative of the moral decline of our discourse -

Ah, who am I kidding. It’s way cool, and we all know it.

I’m not being obtuse, Ms. Kate, I’m pointing out the obvious:

You are, whether you realize it or not, taking the position that only the Ivys and especially Harvard and Yale are fit to produce SCOTUS judges.  Others disagree, myself included.

You’re also, if I may say so, being a tad patronizing about it.  Your last post basically says, “look, if you don’t go to the Ivys then hang out your local shingle and don’t disturb your betters”.

I’d also point out that there is a whole world of difference between one’s education and one’s practice.  Some people who go to Harvard ending up doing nothing but dirty-fingers level poverty law.  Some people who go to whatever law schools exist under the stairs and beneath your approval go on to practice in the state appellate and federal courts, and many manage to do it wearing real shoes and without picking their teeth with straw during oral arguments. 

By your standards Thurgood Marshall wasn’t fit for SCOTUS.  Think about that one for a bit.

I’d be interested to hear Jesse’s take on this debate, if, of course, he hasn’t been slain by Hilary Clinton because he knew too much about Vince Foster.

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith.

Okay, so life’s hard for goobers.  Fine.  Lots of goobers already know that and don’t need Douthat to describe their predicament while quivering with outrage on their behalf.  They don’t need it because they realize that nothing Douthat’s ever going to do or say is likely to operate to their benefit.  Take it from me.

that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

But only if you’re shamelessly corrupt.

“The USA has a TON of superb universities but there is, amongst the elite, a perception that only those noted schools Really Count.  Case in point?  Can anyone here honestly assert that Douthat would be where he is, let alone at the age he is, if he was from, say, San Francisco and had gone to UCLA?”

Careful there, seeker.  The ReThugs, far right sect, have branched out.  LIberty University, Patrick Henry College.  But I have a feeling thath’s NOT what you meant?

OK, and something I shoudl have asked long, long, ago: can anyone either do a quick explain or send me to a site that gives directions on block quotes for the format challenged?

Blockquotes.  Easy!  Somebody taught ‘em to me here and now, Grasshopper,I pass them on to you.  For the following example, remove the { fancy brackets } and and replace them with the greater/lesser icons < like so > :

{blockquote}phylosopher says hey{/blockquote}

Yeah, Douthat’s love of the little people might be a little more convincing if he was not an Ivy League Populist himself.  As it is, he and Kristol (and others) come across as condescending asses weeping tears for the common man.

Seeker, your points are widely discussed among Con Law professors, some of whom argue that Ivys produce the best legal minds, most of whom argue that greater geographic and intellectual representation would be beneficial.  Most schools have faculties with at least some niches (Yale, for instance, is well known for a more theoretical, less practically oriented legal education) and I think there is a good case to be made that having people with varied intellectual backgrounds and, in all likelihood, coming from diverse student bodies, might bring something to the Supreme Court table.  There’s a reason it looks like a Catholic Boy’s Club right now-and it’s not just because they’re mostly Republican appointees.

phylosopher:  Listen to those feelings; they and you are correct.

I’m not sure, though, that my point is undermined.  Douthat might have rocketed into a position with the rebuilding (heh) efforts in Iraq, or into the Bush administration, but he wouldn’t have become an instant magic editor of the Atlantic or star columnist for the NYT.  Colleges like Liberty etc. function in a Leninist model; places like Harvard etc operate on an established privilege model. 

Some 20 years back an American girlfriend of mine (of stellar academic credentials) intended to make her way into a particular poli.sci. discipline.  She faced a myriad of hurdles in doing so.  Then she met a Harvard student who was in that program.  He came from the right families, the right schools, and had gained admission even though his marks weren’t as good as hers.  And, in doing his work, his family and their connections were lining up interviews for him with key policy makers (both past and then-current) in his area of interest which didn’t even interest him that much.  His privilege network was lining up a sure-fire success route for him even though he wasn’t even putting much effort into it: people were calling him and saying “so-and-so will make time to be interviewed for your thesis work”.

Yeah, there’s a lot of people in Harvard and Yale who are there on merit; the current POTUS springs immediately to mind.  But the main purpose and emphasis of the people who run those institutions remains Their People—the previous POTUS is the most obvious example—and there’s really no gainsaying that.  They are both remarkable institutions and they are both flawed institutions, both in themselves and how they fit into the American political and judicial fabric.  To take the position that they are the Alpha and the Omega of American intellectual endeavour and No Others Need Apply is a startlingly limited and self-damaging view.

Careful there, seeker.  The ReThugs, far right sect, have branched out.  LIberty University, Patrick Henry College.  But I have a feeling thath’s NOT what you meant?

He did qualify it with the term “superb”—Liberty and Patrick Henry barely qualify as universities. But yeah, privileged Ivy Leaguers like Douthat are happy to present them, in the service of being “anti-Ivy,” as the equivalent of Boalt Hall or UCLA or U Mich—even as they snigger privately about the sub-par reality of the wingnut schools.

Blockquotes.  Easy!  Somebody taught ‘em to me here and now, Grasshopper,I pass them on to you.  For the following example, remove the { fancy brackets } and and replace them with the greater/lesser icons < like so > :

{blockquote}phylosopher says hey{/blockquote}

seeker6079 on 07/06 at 12:50 PM

Testing.  ANd thank you seeker.  Missing Carradine, I see. Me, too.

This is the first wave at LU and PHC.  They are getting jobs (What was the % in the Bush Admin?)  They will be in a position to arrange interviews for the next generation of LU and PHC folks and that is SCARY.

I didn’t ever say that only Harvard and Yale law grads are fit for SCOTUS.  That is glaring distortion.  The question was asked “why does it seem this way” and I answered “because these colleges are federalist and they have been progressive about tempering their nepotism with wide recruitment of the best and brightest”.  The earlier justices?  Well, things change a hella lot in a century, you know.  Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that there weren’t reasons for it, or that it was all necessarily bad.

Seeker, why don’t you seek out the alma maters of state supreme court justices in the US?  I think you might find that US legal universities, for good or ill or both, have formed niches.

In any case, the vast majority of the graduates of Harvard, Yale, and other universities never serve on any bench.  They practice law with law firms.

Oh, while you are at it, maybe check on who is serving in the federal circuit courts, too - perhaps the concentration has to do with picking non-jurists for service in SCOTUS than it does a skull and bones cabal.

There’s that word again, “meritocracy”. Why, exactly, does Douthat think it’s a bad thing? Is this the new conservative populism? “These liberals are such elitists, with their demonstrated abilities and competence. The average American Joe Six-Pack didn’t go to law school and has no political experience, so our political leaders should be completely unqualified, not like those snooty liberals with their merit.” That’s really a stretch. They’re getting very obvious about it. It’s almost sad.

Although this was essentially the plot of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, so he may be on to something there.

Chareth, I agree that it is curious that nearly ALL come from a few colleges.

What I dispute is Seeker’s grasp of the US legal system, particularly the federal branch.  Most of the work of the federal system isn’t done at the SCOTUS level - it is performed at the circuit level, which has a highly heterogeneous population. 

More recent appointments have been those of W sending various lawyer and scholar buddies to the bench for a year or two and then trying them for SCOTUS.  This is a big reason why there is so little diversity on SCOTUS.

Choosing someone who went to Harvard or Yale instead of someone of equal or greater intelligence and accomplishment who didn’t because the Ivy League holds out-sized brand goodwill in your class/political milieu is almost as unhealthy in the long term as choosing someone who went to Liberty or Patrick Henry instead of someone of equal or lesser stupidity and mediocrity who didn’t because the Wingnut Welfare Circuit holds out-sized brand goodwill in your class/political milieu.

It’s wonderful that the Ivy grad schools aspire to be meritocracies and mostly (the b-schools excepted) succeed at that goal. But they’re not the be-all and end-all of meritocratic graduate education, as those who make hiring and appointment decisions often assume in our society.

More recent appointments have been those of W sending various lawyer and scholar buddies to the bench for a year or two and then trying them for SCOTUS.  This is a big reason why there is so little diversity on SCOTUS.

This does not seem to be particularly accurate explanation for the SCOTUS’s relative uniformity since Bush only made two appointments and certainly this does not apply to Alito.  And Roberts was initially nominated by Bush Sr. Both guys have careers as a-hole conservatives that pre-date W. 

I like Gracchus’ description of the problem with the Ivy “meritocracy.”  There seems to be a vast sea between always looking to the Ivies (or, hell, federal courts—there was a long time where SC Justices were drawn from a wider range of political/legal experiences—like Governor of CA for example) OR nominating Harriet Miers because she’s been loyal and happens to have a law degree.

I’ve got an Ivy league law degree.  Not Harvard or Yale, but Columbia - so maybe this doesn’t count.

But what I saw when I was there was that there *were* a lot of children of privilege, in that a lot of the people there had at least one lawyer in their immediate family, and consequently even if they didn’t have a family job lined up upon graduation, had sufficient knowledge of how the system worked to know what they were supposed to do and when.  (I’m from a fairly well-off background, but of a different sort, and I didn’t know basic things like the importance of the summer associate position in getting jobs or that one needs a science degree to be admitted to the patent bar.)

RE: Ivy League governing class:

Biden went to University of Delaware and Syracuse. Cheney went to Wyoming. So I guess if you graduate from a public school, you get to be Vice President?

I’d be very interested in your opinion in the upthread debate, jfpbookworm.

The summer associate’s position is key.  I can’t speak for the American experience but here in Canada such positions are of huge value in powering-up your CV for key articling jobs.  That reality creates a situation whereby students who can afford to work for a pittance or for free at summer placements (which are, generally, the children of privilege of whom you speak) get a considerable leg up on the competition who have to work other, non-legal jobs for fiscal reasons.

And regarding the Supreme Court, yeah, I want the next Justice to be from a public university. I mean, its not like someone who graduated from UVA Law or Chapel Hill would be a dummy!

This may be a bit OT but whenever there is a discussion on the qualifications of a Supreme Court justice I think of Nixon nominating G. Harrold Carswell, which drew much protest from the legal community regarding his mediocrity. Congressman Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska) sought to defend the nomination thusly:

  “It has been held against this nominee that he is mediocre,” he told the Senate chamber. “Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? And a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there.” 

Hruska himself became a subject of ridicule for this.  Carswell didn’t make it onto the Court.

This may be a bit OT but whenever there is a discussion on the qualifications of a Supreme Court justice I think of Nixon nominating G. Harrold Carswell, which drew much protest from the legal community regarding his mediocrity. Congressman Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska) sought to defend the nomination thusly:

“It has been held against this nominee that he is mediocre,” he told the Senate chamber. “Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? And a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there.”

Hruska himself became a subject of ridicule for this.  Carswell didn’t make it onto the Court.

I can’t help but think of Ogden Edsl’s great line in “Dead Puppies” - “One more time for Roman Hruska!”

WF

Hruska himself became a subject of ridicule for this.

How times have changed.  Now about one third of America accepts it as gospel.

It’s wonderful that the Ivy grad schools aspire to be meritocracies and mostly (the b-schools excepted) succeed at that goal. But they’re not the be-all and end-all of meritocratic graduate education, as those who make hiring and appointment decisions often assume in our society.

The legal profession is designed in such a way that the inevitable result will be a bunch of SCOTUS justices from a few top-tier ivy league law schools. The choice clerkships, firms, and prosecutor’s office jobs will go to those top students from prestigious law schools. And those are the places from which the other choice jobs, including federal judgeships, are drawn, and this is the pool of people being chosen for SCOTUS. Plus, since a president is appointing a justice to the supreme court for ideological reasons, he doesn’t want the opposition to be able to come up with any plausible attacks against the candidate, so the incentive is to nominate a justice with such a golden unassailable resume that the only possible objection from the senate can be, “this candidate is too liberal/conservative for me!”, which turns it into a partisan dispute that the president is typically qualified to handle.

The structure of the legal profession is such that they prefer the students who got the best grades in college, and want the best law schools to admit those students. Then the top firms, judges, and prosecutors will hire the top law students from those schools. That will then set the stage for the rest of your career. Law really isn’t geared towards “late bloomers.” The claim that someone from UNC-Chapel Hill would make a great SCOTUS justice sounds perfectly plausible, but the profession is structured in such a way that they would expect that someone who could have gotten into an ivy-league law school would have gone, so if they didn’t go, it must have been because they weren’t good enough to get in at the time, the “SCOTUS track” will already be filled. Though you will still make tons of money.

BTW, why should anyone ever listen to a son of White Male Wingnut privilege like DoucheHat tell us about Real America?…

Not sure, but David Brooks wants his shtick back. 

That said, Palin is not a success story - she was elected governor of our smallest population state and couldn’t even finish that without throwing a fit and quitting.

No joke.  Population of Alaska: 685,000 (roughly).  That places it in the same ballpark as Memphis (669,651) or Charlotte (687,456).  There are 4 cities in California and 5 in Texas alone with larger populations than the entire state of Alaska.  Though of course, you can’t see Russia from either state (or from Memphis, for that matter).

Ms Kate  on  07/06  at  12:19 PM:
My impression, from knowing dozens of Harvard Law types (having worked with their spouses) and others who went to law school from my high school debate days is that you go to Harvard or Yale if you want a law education that is national and general in focus.

No you don’t. You go to Harvard or Yale for a garaunteed job after law school. It has nothing to do with merit or focus and doesn’t have a damn thing to do with specialization. In fact, it’s the opposite since you can study at Harvard or Yale such that you tend to specialize in a field of law that doesn’t take advantage of a “national or general focus.” You can, of course, do that at pretty much ANY decent law school. Not even the quality of education is guaranteed to be superior to t2 schools at an Ivy.

I didn’t ever say that only Harvard and Yale law grads are fit for SCOTUS.  That is glaring distortion.  The question was asked “why does it seem this way” . . .

That isn’t really the question. The question is “is merit an inferior quality to social status and privilege in legal hiearchies?” and the answer is yes.

Oh, while you are at it, maybe check on who is serving in the federal circuit courts, too - perhaps the concentration has to do with picking non-jurists for service in SCOTUS than it does a skull and bones cabal.

This undermines Ms Kates’ point: it’s my understanding that federal judgeships cover a wide variety of law schools, but the most prestigious positions thereof do no.

It is remarkable that a system that intercects at politics at its higher levels, complete with political value exeeding the value of skill and merit—still maintains the veneer of a meritocracy. Hell, ask a practicing litigator, over a drink in private, and he or she will happily rattle off the names of incompetent judges at the state and federal level.