Sonia Sotomayor vs. old white men

Aging white Republicans attacked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for her alleged prejudices Tuesday, said Mike Madden in Salon, with Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) essentially accusing her of hiding her “true, white-man-hating thoughts” from the Senate. His fellow GOP “old white guys” joined in the act, ignoring her 17 years of careful rulings to fixate on her “wise Latina” comment—as if “the background and heritage of old white guys” is somehow neutral.

Her “wise Latina” riff went one step further, suggesting that “white male judges were incapable of equaling the prudence of those wise Latinas,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review Online. But you’d never know that from the Sonia Sotomayor who spoke Tuesday. From Sotomayor’s conservative-sounding answers, you’d think the “controversial, outspoken judge” of her speeches was her “evil twin.”

It’s not Sotomayor’s fault that “a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction” couldn’t trip her up, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Obama may have picked the “wise Latina” to add “some spicy seasoning” to an overwhelmingly white, male Supreme Court, but her robot-like “iciness” before the Senate probably served her better.

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All this talk of Latinas and “diversity” is misleading, said Roger Simon in Politico. Sotomayor “brings no diversity at all” to the court. Seven of the nine current justices went to Yale or Harvard law schools; Sotomayor is a Yalie. It’s “wonderful Obama chose a Latina for the job,” but a Latina without “an Ivy League degree” would have shown “real diversity.”