Elena Kagan, Careerism and feminism

Another scintillating proof that it takes a Canadian or an American living in Canada (distance is essential) such as Gil Troy to make poignant and astute analysis of America and Americans:

The football great Rosey Grier sang It’s All Right to Cry, encouraging boys to show their emotions, too, because “crying gets the sad out of you.” A pre-disco Diana Ross sang When We Grow Up, reassuring youngsters, “Well, I don’t care if I’m pretty at all/And I don’t care if you never get tall/ I like what I look like and you’re nice small/ We don’t have to change at all.” Alan Alda and Marlo Thomas performed William’s Doll, with William ultimately being vindicated after being taunted by his friends: “a doll, a doll, William wants a doll.”
All this delightfully iconoclastic feminist propaganda paved the way for an unmarried 50-year-old woman to become what she dreamed of becoming.
And yet, Ms. Kagan’s résumé seems too perfect. She may have forgotten the essential message of Free to Be … You and Me’s title song: “Every boy in this land grows to be his own man. In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman.” This woman, who posed in judicial robes for her Hunter College High School yearbook, may have been too calculating in climbing to the top. She has taken remarkably few public stands, entered into surprisingly few public controversies for a woman of her prominence and power.

I have to admit that I'm starting to be troubled by the fact that I don't know anything substantive and relevant about Elena Kagan that would tell me not that she would be a competent justice, but rather one that would be in the mold of Justice Stevens and stop the US Supreme Court's worrisome tilt to the right. Vacuity here is starting to become dangerous because it means two things. The first is that being on the left on legal issues and expressing those views is a bad career move. The second is that the right has won when it comes to the Supreme Court politics for Liberals and moderates (non Conservatives) have to guess when it comes to a Supreme court nominee that is appointed by a Democratic president and to trust that the judgment of the president is infallible