The most discouraging and disgusting about American politics is that the sleaze is the same, making cheap points works, and that journalists just complain just to complain and to feel, for a second, clean before covering the whole demolition derby like their sport colleagues cover major sports events. Here is an example of this vicious circle:
What is absolutely extraordinary at this moment is that anyone,
anyone, is opposing Sotomayor on the matter of intellect, or, God help
us, so-called temperament. Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) wonders if
she has “the right intellect.” (The mere phrase “right intellect”
boggles our wee mind. Is that too big or too small? Or perhaps the good
senator invokes a Buddhist interpretation of intelligence? OK, never
mind.) Unnamed sources in Jeffery Rosen’s New Republic piece sniff “she’s not that smart.” Come on.
It would be a stupid mistake for conservatives to take the road most traveled by the left in its decimation of Sarah Palin. Republicans or Democrats who resort to suggesting that smart women aren't should be sent to the political dunce’s auditorium, the wilderness dutifully staked out by the Republican Party. Why? I’d like to say because respecting women’s intelligence is the right thing to do. But I’ll be more practical. Question the intelligence of a woman who has worked hard and achieved much against odds, and you will really irritate women. Really. Ask those Hillary Clinton supporters and those Sarah Palin supporters. They didn’t agree on much, but neither group liked watching male politicians diss women.
Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh already know this. That’s why they’re hanging their Sotomayor attack hats on her “identity politics,” which apparently means the politics a woman espouses when she notes that her life experiences are, well, a little different than Newt’s and Rush’s.
It would be a stupid mistake for conservatives to take the road most traveled by the left in its decimation of Sarah Palin. Republicans or Democrats who resort to suggesting that smart women aren't should be sent to the political dunce’s auditorium, the wilderness dutifully staked out by the Republican Party. Why? I’d like to say because respecting women’s intelligence is the right thing to do. But I’ll be more practical. Question the intelligence of a woman who has worked hard and achieved much against odds, and you will really irritate women. Really. Ask those Hillary Clinton supporters and those Sarah Palin supporters. They didn’t agree on much, but neither group liked watching male politicians diss women.
Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh already know this. That’s why they’re hanging their Sotomayor attack hats on her “identity politics,” which apparently means the politics a woman espouses when she notes that her life experiences are, well, a little different than Newt’s and Rush’s.
This type of articles just make me tired. They are easy to write, they are predictable, and we know that they never lead to anything in great part because the writer after complaining stops and goes on to better and bigger things.
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