What are they afraid of?  They see the world slipping through their fingers.  Deep in the cold little hearts they know it is inevitable.  Sotomayor is just a symbol.  It isn’t necessarily about her specifically.  I see little difference in the sweaty palm demeanor of Sessions and crew than I saw as civil rights for blacks took hold.

Who says Lindsay Graham is a straight white male?

Heh, well, if I put self-identified, it would get a little unwieldy.

I’m surprised that Republicans are so hostile (I mean, I expected them to bitch about anybody, that’s their job as the party of Obstructionists.).  In some ways, Sotomayor is the best (policy-wise) judge they could expect, given who Obama’s constituents are.  So you’re right, the only explanation for their weird hysteria must be some kind of fear of losing privilege.  That or they are trying to whip up the privilege losing anxiety of their base.

As a progressive, I’m a bit nervous about the pick, actually.  We don’t know anything about her stand on Roe V. Wade, for instance, and she tends to side with government and authority, which also worries me. She was appointed by Bush the first, after all.

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Yes, losing privelege is a component.  But think now of the base.  Many of them aren’t rich, aren’t privileged.  They’re afraid of change, any change.  They’d rather keep driving their clapped out rust-bucket than chance a future where things could be better for all.  Conservatives have a deep abiding belief that the size of the pie is fixed.  Anybody getting a bigger slice necessarily reduces the size of their slice.

It is weird, since there’s no way Obama was going to appoint a conservative.  They were not going to get a forced-birth judge, so why all the fuss? 

Racism and sexism are stupid, after all.

They’d find something else to attack if Sonia Sotomayor was Sonny Mayor.  His religion or, lack thereof, his biases—there’d be something b/c they look at all politics as team sports and they have to play defense regardless.

It’s just in this case, since Sotomayor is female AND brown, they have their case neatly laid before them.  No woman or minority is as qualified as a white man, so if they can just show that she’s female and brown, she should be rejected. 

they do understand they don’t have the votes, but they seem to think if they can get her on the record as being female and brown they win something, perhaps the right to push harder at the next nominee.  “We let you have your affirmative action pick, Barry, now nominate someone qualified.” 

Qualified now means white and male.

The 700 Club came on my TV last night (Princess Bride was on!  Who knew whackaloons were on deck?)  Before I could find the remote, I had to listen to teh crazy—>again, it was acknowledged that she’s going to be confirmed, but they want to get it on the record that she’s a liberal, brown woman.

I don’t know what they think that gets them.

—————

In slightly depressing news, Chris Kennedy looks like he’s the nominee for Obama’s old seat.  I like Chris Kennedy.  His politics are in line with mine.  I will vote for him.  I am confident he’ll be a good Senator.

But I’m sad that both of my Senators will be white and male again.  I wish Lisa Madigan had decided to toss her hat in, at least she’s female.

Because it really does matter.  No matter how well intentioned, when the Senate is almost entirely white and male, it cannot represent the people.  Those men, even if well intentioned (and often they are not), really don’t have the same experiences and therefore will miss important facts about how the world really works.

It’s a frightening thought that the appointment of people like Sotomayor might actually make a practical difference in their world, but not impossible. Remember, the world of Graham and Sessions is one where having an affiar with your subordinate’s spouse and keeping them both on the payroll is a problem only if it becomes public, where feeling up journalists at dinner is perfectly acceptable behavior, where choosing women as vice-presidential candidates because you think they’re kinda hot is a bold strategic move. So it doesn’t take much to bring large parts of that world tumbling down.

And on the more obvious level, christianism/patriarchy/old-white-guy-privilege is very much a totalizing world view—one of its tenets is that there are no other acceptable belief systems. So any woman or minority at all in a position of power is terrifying.

Just imagine what it’s going to be like when Obama nominates another woman for his second vacancy.  Heads will explode.

Emmett, thanks for the laugh.

All of this reminds me of a book I read about Jackie Robinson. The author pointed out that the players who were never mean to Jackie were guys like Joe Dimaggio, players who were so good they felt no threat at all by Jackie being in the league. It’s always the folks like Sessions who know that they would never make it farther than Asst. Manager at the local Walmart if the playing field were really level who kick up the most fuss when they feel their unearned privilege slipping away.

Straight white men will never have to face having their gender or race be used to stereotype them and squeeze them out unfairly.  Giving other people the same opportunities to prove themselves that straight white men enjoy doesn’t diminish the benefit of the doubt that straight white men get automatically.

Ah, but it does.  There is nothing magical or special about “straight white men” that makes them any more or less cliche-ish and insular than “gay latina women” or “bisexual transgender Canadians”.  If you start seeing a large contingent of minorities ascend to power - and you’ve just spent the last five or ten generations hording said power within your race, class, and sexual orientation - its not surprise you get the fear that they’ll start doing to you what you did to them.

That may come across as somewhat assholish, but I don’t think it’s crazy.  I mean, take a look at the madness in Africa.  White people treat black people like shit for a century.  Black people get the reins of power and turn it right around on their white neighbors.  Admittedly, in this case the people getting victimized vastly outnumber the people wielding the reins of power.  But does anyone really believe that Jeff Sessions is “empowering” the poor rednecks out in Alabama by being an ass to Sotomayor?  :-p

Amanda, as Frederick Douglass said:

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

First of all, being a judge and being a Senator, particularly from a Bible-thumping district, have much different intelligence and temperament requirements.

Well, Sessions might actually think that the seat that Sotomayor is up for is rightfully his since he was denied a seat on the judiciary when it came out that he called black colleagues “Boy” and told them to watch what they said around white people.

(I’m trying to find a cite, but you can guess what kinds of results you get when you search for “Jeff Sessions judicial confirmation racist”)

Ah, here we go:

In 1986, Sessions was nominated for a federal judgeship by Reagan. The nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which refused by a 9-9 vote to let the nomination come to the Senate floor for a vote. Sessions’ opponents accused him of “gross insensitivity” on racial issues. Sessions made a variety of comments that opponents pointed to, including remarks that he thought that the Ku Klux Klan was not so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana. Sessions also had once labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “un-American,” “Communist-inspired,” and had said that they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” At his confirmation hearings, Sessions said that the groups could be un-American when “they involve themselves in un-American positions” in foreign policy. Sessions claimed that the remarks had been made in jest. One of those voting against him was Democratic Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama.

More on Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s failed nomination here

I went to my family reunion this weekend in extremely rural, north central Missouri and I got a peek under the covers of the psyche of the Bible-belt, rural, white “real” America. I think I understand their panic and I think it is more than just white males freaking out about the disappearance of their God granted path to power. The women folk are feeling it too, in fact they seem more freaked out than anyone.

The panic the right sees in Sotomayor is the specter of the disappearance of their entire way of life. There was a lot of talk about how nobody lives out in the country anymore. Nobody shows up for the reunions. The towns are decaying, dying before their eyes. The entire social structure they grew up with, what they thought of as “America” their entire lives is nearly gone. Of course the pressure on small farms has been going on since the early years of the twentieth century so this is nothing new, but we are at the terminal stages now. Much of the countryside is a depopulated factory farm.

As far as their understanding of the term “America”, it is rooted in that rural Andy Griffin Show/Norman Rockwell mystique. And while that was always a myth it used to be a believable myth. Sure there might be all kinds of thievery, rape and incest going on under the surface back-in-the-day, but on the surface it really did look like a Norman Rockwell painting, the towns really did look like Mayberry (or at least that’s how they remembered them), and all problems can be handled with a prayer to Jesus. Also, in their experience America is white, white, white. There just aren’t any black folks in rural Northern Missouri.

But now the president is someone with a goofy name and dark skin and he want to make some body else with a goofy name and darkish skin a supreme court justice (and she is a woman to boot, the temerity!). Where does it end!? What has become of the America where everyone was related is some fashion (Indeed my grandparents were fourth cousins) and went to the same church? Now America is overrun with people of different shades of skin, funny names, unfamiliar religions, weird accents or, worse, different languages all together.

The panic is palpable and they are lashing out at whatever looks odd and different. Obviously with the Senators themselves there is probably a dose of Male/Female, WASP/everyone else resentment going on too, but with the GOP rank and file it is just plain old, flat out cultural existential dread.

I still sense their hearts aren’t in it, given that her getting out of Judiciary and getting 65-70 votes is a foregone conclusion. I would wager that South Carolina (Graham) and Alabama (Sessions) voters probably don’t care too much about the hearing, and that it’s all theater for their idiot hardcore bases and their turnip-fundraising machine.

Very well put, Amanda.  I hope that you are correct, and that the end of the era of the hot-tempered, slow-witted dumb fuck is at hand, because I’ve never read a better description of Sarah Palin.

Norbizness, isn’t that what all confirmation hearings are for? An opportunity to pander? 

I did especially like Al Franken’s opening remarks in which he lambastes the Roberts court in that “No, of COURSE I’m not criticizing anyone” sort of way.

Fashionably: Exactly. Except that one party has as its vanguard and Judiciary Chair a documented racist, proving that, for at least one-quarter to one-third of the population (and 50+% of the voting population in Alabama/South Carolina), nothing matters and what if it did?

Well, the Hot Air crowd is convinced that Sotomayor is lying.  I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be lying about, but she’s a liar!

Not unlike Alito and Roberts, then, except they actually did lie.

One guy suggests that a Senator should just sit there and stare at her for the entire time allotted, b/c liars can’t stand that.

My favorite comment?  They only need to ask her one question: does she think she’s the most qualified jurist in the nation?

I think they’d about vomit to discover she IS.

I can’t help but think that there’s a heaping helping of “put that boy in his place” behind much of what an asshole like Sessions is doing with Obama’s nominees.

The Civil War is still being fought, even 140 some odd years later…

And don’t forget Harriet Myers and Clarence Thomas. Promoting women and minorities (notice a republican may not be both) to the supreme court should happen only to cyphers and sycophants who are almost comically not fit for the job. It’s called tokenism, and it is used to keep the power structure intact.

(Jeff Sessions) thought that the Ku Klux Klan was not so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana

Wingnuttery distilled to its essence.

You know, the more I get to know my new Maple Leaf Wingnut kin, the more I realize that the major difference between them and their American brethren is ... FEAR.

Of course the American Wingnuts have much to fear, but it isn’t from gays or minorities or women, but from the callous, greedy, and sometimes just stupid group they have picked to lead them.  Maple Flavored Wingnuts may have some specific and valid complaints about health care - but then they say “but at least I’m not going to die because I can’t afford a doctor!”.

Social support makes it easier for Christians to act like Christ said they should - which is what the American Wingnut Alphas are afraid of.

If Sessions’ sheet didn’t fly under Reagan for shit’s sake ... then he isn’t being “slurred” by being called a bigot - he’s being described appropriately as a bigot.

I’m surprised that Republicans are so hostile

I’m not at all surprised.  Hostility is all they got left!

Much of this is simply because a certain kind of white person is very insecure around brown people who are manisfestedly smarter and more accomplished than they are.

I agree, fastandsloppy.

Adding to that, when everyone they’ve considered people looked, acted, and sounded like them, they know how to act, how to think, and how to get things done. Even the ones who weren’t overtly racist or overly sexist understood the rules and the tricks. 

The horror of having women involved in politics had at least as much to do with not having any idea how to behave if the “smoky back rooms” were abolished, or if they had to change the way they did things, watch their language, and so on.

They would have no idea how to interact with Sonia Sotomayor if they found themselves standing next to her at an event. What do they talk about? How do you break the ice? What jokes do you tell? Can’t talk sports, can’t talk about the little wifey, can’t gossip about shared friends. (Of course, it would never occur to them that she may be a rabid sports fan, have spouse stories of her own, and know people they know.)

So it is far easier to try to restrict things to the way they have always been.

And there is a threat. Look at recent events, where firmly entrenched long-term politicians get voted out for trivial things like Confederate flags, nooses, and “macaca” comments, things that always worked just fine before. They are like executives faced with the death of the steno pool and expected to learn to work a PC. Yikes.

Add to that the fears that brown people are outbreeding white people, and yes, in fact, it feels like old white guys are getting marginalized. Even if qualifications matter, allowing the other half the white population and all the brown people the right to actually compete really does require a higher level of competence. And performance.

I tend to agree with Norbizness’s assessment of the Republican strategy: try to stir up some lame bullshit, in order to enrage their base. I don’t get why this doesn’t make the senators feel embarrassed, but then, I am not one of them. Amanda has an interesting angle about the racism seeming most useful to the more marginal members of the “in-group”. Fastandsloppy has a good point too.

Privilege tends to preserve itself; revolution brings counter-revolution. The principle of white male supremacy in modern western culture is robust and flexible enough to tolerate exceptional white women in power—an Elizabeth I, a Thatcher, a Hilary Clinton—and elite homosexual men (e.g. Lindsey Graham) via notional closeting (“confirmed bachelors”, as they’re apt [still!] to be called here in Charleston). Cycles of anti-semitism and the vicious stereotyping of non-Anglo European ethnicity serve to maintain the core principle too.

A black president and a Latina justice allow for no polite preservative fictions or casual enforcement. And so out come the rage and the guns, because the core principle is now under mortal threat. We’re going to see some scary things soon, I fear.

I remember hearing the news on NPR yesterday, and they commented on Sotomayor’s calm and measured manner of speaking, in contrast with that of the often loud and shrill Republicans questioning her.  I thought at the time:  “Well, yeah.  As a judge she’s probably had more than a few damage cases before her bench.”

It was the slickest trick of the right to assign the blame for the erosion of small-town America to “the liberals and the welfare queens,” when the real culprits were the industrialists who shut down the factories and underwrite the GOP to this very day.

It was the slickest trick of the right to assign the blame for the erosion of small-town America to “the liberals and the welfare queens,” when the real culprits were the industrialists who shut down the factories and underwrite the GOP to this very day.

It’s a lot easier to blame the guy out on skid row holding you up for your wallet than it is to blame the factory owner that moved his operation to China, fired skid row guy’s father, and put the whole family out on the street to begin with.

I still love the “Dey tooker jobs!” assholes who demand an iron curtain to keep out the Mexican’ts, but think Free Market Capitalism (see: outsourced jobs) is just dandy and minimum wage is totally unnecessary.

The modern GOP philosophy was never designed to solve problems, just profit from pain.

wapsie

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Frederick Douglass

I too, fear that we may be seeing some ugly things happening during Obama’s presidency.

I know this is a huge derail, but I can’t less this pass:

I mean, take a look at the madness in Africa.  White people treat black people like shit for a century.  Black people get the reins of power and turn it right around on their white neighbors.

Zifnab, by “Africa” do you mean that huge continent that contains numerous cultures, countries, languages and histories?  That contains countries that managed a relatively peaceful handover of power, also countries which are sinking into quagmires of war and hatred, and still further countries that experienced huge upheavals and horrors out of which they are finally emerging?  Even countries that were never subject to direct white minority control at all?

If you do, then say so, because the paragraph you produced gives the distinct impression that you consider “Africa” to be a homogenous land full of “Africans” that have all done exactly the same thing under exactly the same circumstances.  I.e. someone who doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about.

Whatever, Monkey.  It’s not like you and yours don’t make a million goddamn jokes about Barney Frank in an effort to discredit him.

I would wager that South Carolina (Graham) and Alabama (Sessions) voters probably don’t care too much about the hearing, and that it’s all theater for their idiot hardcore bases and their turnip-fundraising machine.

The fund-raising aspect gets lost in this, but it’s actually the main thing.  Thanks for reminding me.  Sotomayor’s picture gets slapped into a bunch of “they’re trying to take over!!!!” mailers and the funds start flowing in.

(“confirmed bachelors”, as they’re apt [still!] to be called here in Charleston

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, the term “Boston Marriage” has taken on an entirely new meaning!

Sotomayor’s picture gets slapped into a bunch of “they’re trying to take over!!!!” mailers and the funds start flowing in.

What, is their base going to get motivated to actually save, cash in, and contribute the procedes from their returnable bottles and cans instead of using them for target practice out of Fear of the Wise Latina?

I guess I don’t understand why they’re so intent on shooting themselves in the foot. Isn’t the US going to have a non-white majority by 2040? All those kids sitting in front of the TV watching this bullshit might remember it when the time comes. They’ll remember who nominated the kickass, super smart, ovaries of steel Latina lady and who sat around asking things like “Is there anything in the Constitution that forbids protecting the rights of the unborn in the first trimester?”.

Don’t they see that they can’t rely almost solely the votes of the angry white men anymore?

Agree x1000 with all of the above Amanda.

But being a Senator from South Carolina or Alabama is simple for any hot-tempered, slow-witted dumbfuck, if he can thump the Bible hard enough and allow himself to be schmoozed by lobbyists with the greatest of ease.

This spells out exactly why we need campaign finance reform. It costs millions just to run for certain offices and those who can afford to do so are most assuredly not the best people for the job.

When you ask yourself WHY someone would spend millions getting a job that only pays $110,000 (I think) a year and not the almost millions that other professions would make that you don’t need to get elected into - that’s when the lobbying part comes in. Once you’re out of office (or can quit in Palin’s case) you can get a job like that no problem. You’re valuable to them thanks to your connections.
There are so many people working for lobbyists that are former members of government and abusing those connections w/ former coworkers, staffers, etc. and getting PAID tons of money (much more than they ever made “serving the public) to do so it makes one rather ill.

I think that particular loophole needs to be closed.

Isn’t the US going to have a non-white majority by 2040?

Texas is expected to get there sooner than that:

Right now, Texas is 48 percent Anglo, 36 percent Hispanic.  With no major change in population, just progressing things outward, by 2020, every projection has Anglos being outnumbered by Hispanics in Texas.  That‘s in 2020.  By 2040, the Anglos will comprise barely a fourth of the population of Texas.

Straight white men will never have to face having their gender or race be used to stereotype them and squeeze them out unfairly.  Giving other people the same opportunities to prove themselves that straight white men enjoy doesn’t diminish the benefit of the doubt that straight white men get automatically.

Minor quibble:  For the purposes of our lifetimes, I’m pretty confident in agreeing with this, but further out than that I wouldn’t be so absolutely certain.  I’m not saying it would be some ultimate crime if it occured, BTW: the desire to be comfortable can easily trump a sense of fairness in human beings, and within the next 200 years it’s likely that whites (and particularly white males) will no longer be dominant, and it’s always a possibility that whatever group is dominant will use that power to oppress everyone else.

No one’s going to accuse [a straight white man SC nominee] of being too masculine, or suggest that uptight WASPness means his temperament is questionable.

I dunno.  After reading Jeffery Toobin’s article in the New Yorker about John Roberts I’d suggest that his uptight WASPness indicates such a narrowness of experience that makes for a poor Supreme Court Justice.  I suppose that’s not the same as “judicial temperament”, technically.

I think Roberts is Exhibit A for why Sotomayor was exactly right in what she said, and shouldn’t give any ground about saying it.  So far, that seems to be what she’s doing, with the standard “sorry if I offended” stuff, but also eloquent explanations of what exactly she was talking about.  As much as we get annoyed when President Obama gives undue deference to the current power structure, he or his staff must have decided that the Nixonland rules of domestic resentment against non-white males no longer apply.

“The rise of individuals like Obama and Sotomayor aren’t a threat to straight white men of intelligence and thoughtfulness who are qualified for the jobs they seek.”

Absolutely.  But it is a threat to unqualified hacks such as Graham, and, more importantly, it’s a threat to the historical, unjust dominance of this country’s influential institutions by rich, white men (though increasingly by women and minorities, though not by the poor).

There’s something else, a little less awful and a little more human.

My in-laws are the kind of people who use the word “ethnic” to mean “non-white.”  Because white people don’t have ethnicity, they’re just default.  Anyways, my MIL mentioned that we were at a restaurant that had mostly “ethnic” people, and I replied automatically, “most people are.”

I think that really threw her a bit, got her to think.  I hope it helps her deal with the waves of immigration which have really started to bother her.  I think some folks have just gotten used to the idea of everybody around them being basically like them.  I never felt that way, even among folks of my ethnicity, so that helped.

Another thing which has helped for me is coming to understand that I find some cultures to be more and less compatible with me.  That’s okay; I myself have a culture, and some will get along better and worse with it.  The point is for me to accept that my personal preferences shouldn’t dictate policy.  I’m allowed to choose to mostly hang with people I like.  It’s wrong for me to try to make that any kind of policy.  There’s space for me in there.

No one’s going to accuse him of being too masculine, or suggest that uptight WASPness means his temperament is questionable.

This would not be true if I were in the Senate. *eg*

But it is a threat to unqualified hacks such as Graham

Given his impoverished background, lack of close relatives to pull him into politics as the family business, and ascention through military service, I’d hardly call Graham unqualified - in fact, he’s likely much more qualified than much of the senate’s southern delegation put together.

Doesn’t prevent us from attacking his toeing of the party line on it’s merits, though.

Oooh, I got it: Graham pulled himself out of his own ass!

But being a Senator from South Carolina or Alabama is simple for any hot-tempered, slow-witted dumbfuck

As a longtime Alabama resident, I would add that in addition to being a hot-tempered dumbfuck (which label aptly describes both of our senators), the paramount legal qualification for one of our Senate seats is being born into or otherwise possessing adequate connection to the hot-tempered dumbfuck monied interests in this state.  We have plenty of hot-tempered dumbfucks who will never, ever even be considered for one of our Senate seats.

I have been steaming over Graham since yesterday, and today I finally had a moment to call his DC office.  A woman staffer answered the phone.  Honestly I don’t know how women can work for men like this in politics.  You are working to advance his political agenda dummy.  Anyway I told her that I am a woman, an American voter, and a business owner, in that order, and that I have had it watching Senator Graham, whom I do not think is fit to polish Sotomayer’s shoes, talking to her in that sneering, condescending manner.  I told her this is why women don’t vote for Republicans and specified that I am a white woman.  It is beyond obvious that the R’s have written off minorities.  Do they think that white women don’t get fucking pissed off when they hear and see this misogyny?  Are they kissing off white women too? 

So then they are the party of white redneck southern males.  And then I told her, well, good luck with all that.

She thanked m e for calling.  But, I’m not sure she really meant it.

She thanked m e for calling.  But, I’m not sure she really meant it.

If Graham is worried about reelection, he’ll appreciate the input one way or another.  If he’s got his seat all locked up, you wasted your breath.  You can consider yourself an unrepresented minority.

So then they are the party of white redneck southern males.

No wonder they peddle fear of being an endangered species ... they are just becoming aware of the fact that they are a dwindling minority.

Nobody is trying to eradicate them as much as they may fear that ... they are too inconsequential to do anything but laugh at and massively out vote at the ballot box whereever they fail to sufficiently self-segregate.

You forgot an important part of the equation: they are Rich, old, white men. They obviously aren’t going to win any elections with just the rich vote and they can’t really win over the rest with their economic theories (they do try with the general government=bad argument), so they turn to racism/sexism/gay bashing. It might seem stupid, but what else have they got (and it did work for a good 20-30 years)? This is a classic attempt to get a certain class of people to vote against their interests.

Also you have to think about who this is aimed at: poor/lower middle class whites. They don’t think they have white privilege (many of them had large obstacles themselves (where they were born or their parents or ...)). And they’re looking for someone to blame. Republicans are trying to give them a target other than the rich.