In the run up to the almost assured confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor as justice of the Supreme Court, there's been a lot of conservative barking and moaning and sobs. The right is very uncomfortable about her ethnicity, her liberalism, and her gender. One of the profound thinkers at Fox compared her to the Ku Klux Klan. These deep Solonic insights and pronouncements notwithstanding, most agree Ms. Sotomayor's chances of being confirmed in the Senate are virtually certain. At this point it's just a case of going through the motions of collecting the answers to questionnaires, submitting to some geriatric grunting and harrumphing from the Senators, and then counting the vote. Absent some forgotten or undiscovered skeleton in the closet (and it would have to be huge-- sex change? deserted children? religious extremism?), Sonya's safe to start shopping for black robes.
My thinking was about there yesterday-- that we were going to have a female Hispanic supreme court judge, and it didn't seem like a bad thing. And then I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by someone named Peter A. Brown, which came as close as I've heard to raising a class objection to Ms. Sotomayor's nomination. A CLASS objection! Mr. Brown, it's 2009 for fucks sake!
The objection raised by Mr. Brown-- and by extension by the Wall Streeet Journal-- in a nutshell is she may be unqualified because she's not richer! The fact that Ms. Sotomayor has and does hold high-visibility posts on the boards of more than one organization that effects community empowerment, outreach, and support seems not to hold much sway among the plutocrats. Law degrees from not one but two Ivy League universities aren't enough! What irks Mr. Brown is she didn't become a millionaire when she was a partner in a powerful New York law firm. Instead of squirrelling away every nickel of her substantial (and guaranteed lifelong) salary into investments in the likes of privatized prisons and Blackwater, Inc. and Chevron Oil, this poor deluded woman seems to have squandered it all on nice clothing and dental bills, paying her mortgage, donating to community causes, and supporting her Mom. She probably tips well. And the article all but comes out and says this reprehensible behavior should disqualify her from ruling on cases involving corporations and business in general, and hence from serving on the Supreme Court at all. How can someone who shows no obvious signs of rapacious greed and avarice be qualified to fairly handle the delicate affairs of litigants whose only reason for existence is greed?
Folks, this is the face of the class war. Take whichever side you like. But please don't just sit by and accept it. This article is repulsive, and wrong.
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