The absurdities of US politics

Reading the pronouncements of Newt Gingrich and other Republicans on the new nominee for the US Supreme Court prompts several reactions from me. I suppose the dominant reaction is incredulity. The whole "reverse racism" claim is so absurd that it's hard for me believe that anyone takes such bullshit seriously. I belong to the privileged class in this society - white and male. Just like Newt Gingrich and Rush. For anyone in this class to claim there is some sort of "bias" against him is just crazy. But those claims are aired in utmost seriousness on much of the nation's corporate news media.

This prompts another reaction: anger. I'm angry that this country has a media system that is so ready to defend the status quo and to ignore the serious problems that afflict this country. Racism is a huge problem in the United States, and when clowns like Newt claim that white men are the victims of racism, they distract attention from the real victims of racism. Hint: those victims aren't white males.

Supreme Battle

Tonight I watched a clip of ABC news coverage about the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court - just after reading MoveOn's talking points about the same nomination.

I'm not a legal scholar, but it seems like President Obama made a great choice. As I watched the ABC news report, I wondered about the news media in this country, which provides free air-time for conservative arguments, but gives much, much less coverage to the liberal point of view. The ABC piece was entirely composed of Republican complaints about the nomination - tired arguments that the judge might be "activist."

(There is this complete fiction that the corporate media push - that liberal judges are "activist," and conservative judges hew to the literal meaning of the Constitution. It's not that simple. Here's one discussion of the question.)

The ABC piece concluded with the news reader predicting that the Republicans would tread carefully in plotting their opposition to the pick because Sotomayor is a Latina, and the Republicans don't want to lose any more of this constituency. The way it was phrased emphasized the politics of the nomination, rather than Sotomayor's excellent qualifications.