In the coming weeks, you will hear that Judge Sotomayor is
- a liberal activist judge, whatever that means. In conservative circles, it's o.k. and even desirable to be a right-wing activist judge, but woe betide he or she who grounds rulings in actual human experience;
- believe it or not, the possessor of a funny last name that should be pronounced whatever way "Americans" feel like and not how she calls herself. Fair enough: From now on, I'm going to pronounce "Krikorian" as "Idiotic";
- not especially intelligent. Judge Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that she's smarter than, say, a Yale legacy student with a C average;
- a racist and a bigot, based on her decision in Ricci v. DeStefano. Stanford Law's Richard Thompson Ford explains why the decision upheld decades of civil rights law...
One thing is certain: She and we will not be spared this kind of stupidity. God/Buddha/Allah/Yahweh/Higher Power help Oklahoma...
Just A Song: Thanks to Stupid And Contagious for this insightful entry about the duende suffusing Townes Van Zandt's "Rake"...
Just my little piece of the world has more on Judge Sotomayor here...
Hispanics now comprise 15% of the population of the United States and are our fastest-growing ethnic group. Is it too much to ask that one of them sit on the Supreme Court and that she not be self-loathing? Especially after the way a Hispanic Attorney General embarrassed himself, his heritage, and his country with his disgraceful performance in office...
Fifty years ago last Sunday, Harvey (The Kitten) Haddix pitched 13 innings of perfect baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates, an individual pitching feat that no one has come close to equalling since. In these days of relief specialists and closely monitored pitch counts, it's unlikely that anyone ever will, too...
Justin Townes Earle, Midnight At The Movies. I was all set not to like it on the assumption that Earle was simply riding on the coattails of his father, Steve Earle. How wrong I was. More country and less gruff than his father, Earle has a vision and sound all his own; he mines traditional country themes of love and loneliness with a fresh and at times rollicking perspective. Best of all, though, is the autobiographical "Mama's Eyes" about a son torn between respect for his father's genius and his mother's sense of right and wrong. One gripe: At 32 minutes, Midnight At The Movies is far too short. If Earle felt like he didn't have enough original material to stretch the album, he could have included more trad songs along the lines of his excellent reading of "They Killed John Henry"...
It's purple martin time in New Orleans! More on martins in a post to come...
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