Great biographies through the party looking glass
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Great American success stories have tugged hearts since the founding of the republic.
A recent radicalizing of the media, however, has focused admiration — or lack of it — through the prism of rank party politics.
Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin and Sonia Sotomayor – three examples.
Thomas, a black American raised in direst poverty by his grandfather in backwoods Georgia, is now one of the nine justices on the Supreme Court of the United States.
He got there, however, only after one of the most bizarre displays of partisanship by committee Democrats in memory. Solemn questioning touched, among other things, on whether “pubic hair on a Coca Cola can” or the phrase “long dong silver” had any relevance to anything.
So vile was the testimony allowed into the record of one magically-appearing woman witness that Thomas complained during confirmation that he was being made the victim of the nation’s first “high-tech lynching.”
It wasn’t racial bigotry that nearly brought down the Clarence Thomas nomination. His problem was that he was black —and Republican.
In another context, Thomas would have been just the energetic, dedicated, high achieving black man the Democrat Party sought, as a candidate or lawyer working his way up the legal ladder.
Sarah Palin shares the Thomas problem — the R-word. By any other measurement, were Palin a Democrat, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Democrat leadership and the radical left would embrace her as triumph of womanhood. The media would lap her up.
Consider that Palin, pretty and smart, arose from a white middle class background in small town Alaska, the land of heroes, heroines and legend. Toss in her leadership in everything she tried from sports to classroom to hunting. And then she makes it big in local and state politics, and even takes on the leadership of her own party to stop corruption. It’s a natural. That is not simply the stuff of media adoration. It’s Hollywood. Directors and producers hot on the trail of “small town America.”
Only that darned R-word gets in the way.
When it does, watch out! Democrats and media knew how to handle Thomas and they know how to handle Palin. The Thomas remedy updated isn’t just to slander Palin. Put the radical left blogs on her. Throw in a full court press from the New York Times to MSNBC and the murderer’s row of Matthews, Olbermann and Couric. Put the word out to ACORN.
Stick her with big double-digit legal bills to defend against false charges. The allegations keep the cheerleading left pumped, even as charges are tossed out.
With Sonia Sotomayor, things work out differently.
She appears to be cruising to Senate confirmation to join the high court. She is a Latina, a totem to the Hispanic-aligned La Raza group, a defender of affirmative action, as judged by her decision in the Ricci case, and, according to multiple past speeches and writings, a follower of judicial empathizing as proclaimed by President Obama, who appointed her.
Sotomayor has a great biography, good enough to carry the day with Democrats. She was raised in the relatively poor surroundings of the borough of the Bronx in New York City. She graduated from Princeton and went on the bench and rose to be an appellate court judge.
Without the woes that Clarence Thomas faced, Sotomayor is on cruise control, brushing aside her wise Latina women comments or New Haven firefighters who got shucked by a Sotormayor decision, later overturned by the court she seeks to join.
If biography – and empathy – can be said to be judicial destiny, Sotomayor will quickly be Justice Sotomayor.
July 2009
