The right-wing rhetorical flap over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court puts me to mind of the failed nomination of Lani Guinier to the position of Assistant Attorney General back in 1993. As I wrote at the time,
One minute, [Lani Guinier] was a respected law professor and Justice Department nominee; the next [...]
The airwaves seethe and the fiber-optics networks thrum with right-wing attacks on Obama, many of them mean-spirited and just-this-side-of-rational. Sometimes the vitriol veers into the supernatural.
Let’s not pretend this doesn’t make a difference. What people think depends in part on what they hear and read; otherwise, none of us would bother talking or writing. I [...]
Some years ago, I spent a few emotionally rocky weeks in a city in which I used to live. There to get care in the wake of a traumatic event, I was in sore need of soothing. So, I switched on the television and tuned into the cable access station to watch the semi-weekly city [...]
