Here is a bit from Maureen Dowd today in the New York Times:
Republican hypocrisy fell flat at the Sotomayor hearings. After railing all week against the ‘empathy standard,’ as Senator Jeff Sessions called it, the Republicans tried to play the empathy card by calling in two New Haven firefighters, one white and one Hispanic, who were on the losing end of Sonia Sotomayor’s ruling. Wearing their dress uniforms, the pair told their heart-tugging tales of studying for an exam that got thrown out after they scored high. Frank Ricci, who studied hard to overcome his dyslexia, used his finger to trace under the words as he read his testimony.
But the Republican complaint against Sotomayor in that case boiled down to wanting her to be more activist. They were upset that she sided with elected officials and precedent rather than intervening to strike down a result that many people, including me, found unfair.
There you have her opinion on the entire basis for New Haven decision to scrap the test: It had “a result that many people, including me, found unfair.”
And here is Frank Rich today:
The hearings were pure “Alice in Wonderland.” Reality was turned upside down. Southern senators who relate every question to race, ethnicity and gender just assumed that their unreconstructed obsessions are America’s and that the country would find them riveting. Instead the country yawned. The Sotomayor questioners also assumed a Hispanic woman, simply for being a Hispanic woman, could be portrayed as The Other and patronized like a greenhorn unfamiliar with How We Do Things Around Here. The senators seemed to have no idea they were describing themselves when they tried to caricature Sotomayor as an overemotional, biased ideologue.
Reality certainly is turned upside down here. Instead of liberals playing identity politics, Rich says, it’s Southern senators who do that. In other words, when Sotomayor raised her racial identity in speeches from the past, and conservatives responded, it is conservatives who are the identity politicians.
Oh, for the days when the Times op-ed page was populated by liberals such as Anthony Lewis. You might disagree with them, but you also could imagine sitting across the table from them and arguing back and forth. They appear as giants compared to these snippy, off-the-cuff, innuendo peddlers.