Gingrich, Sotomayor and Hunting Giraffes
Republican poobah Newt Gingrich has lambasted Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a 'racist' because she implied that a Latina woman could empathize with certain situations as a judge better than a white male could, and so would come to sounder judgments.
Just so everyone remembers, this is Newt Gingrich's idea of the difference between the sexes:
' If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections.... Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.'
I rest Judge Sotomayor's case.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/28/2009 01:24:00 AM
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12 Comments:
Touché
somehow the Freudian implications of women living in dirty ditches and men hunting tall clean giraffes never leapt out at me before.
Newt has a very, um, interesting fantasy life.
But the saddest of all is he has such a large audience! What is wrong with people? How can they think so little of their own selves to listen to this stuff let alone find it entertaining?
I wonder if most people know their local radio stations (at least in rural areas) do not have to pay to broadcast Rush. It is free to the station.
Oh MY! Look at that! I confused Newt with Rush! How amazing! They are beginning to sound so much like each other - I got confused...
Imagine...
Great quote from Gingrich! I'd love to pass it around. What is the source?
Time to drug test The Newt.
The citation for the Gingrich quote is in the hyperlink in bold-- just click on it
Wait, is Newt arguing that women shouldn't be allowed to serve as giraffe hunters?
I am no friend of your Newt Gingrich – over and above I am not american, but what would have happened in the U.S. and what would have been your reaction if the quote was as follow:
"(...) because she implied that a (white) woman (male) could empathise with certain situations as a judge better than a (black or latino) male could, and so would come to sounder judgements.
Id this is not racism and/or gender bias toward in this case a blacks/latinos and males what is ? in her case therefore towards whites and males beside that technically speaking latinos are white (she is even wrong there)
The fact that Newt is absolutely wrong does not make her right.
I rest my case.
Both Newt and Sonia are wrong when they generalize about women and men or Latinos and whites. Generalizing about race or gender is unfair to individuals. However, Newt hasn't been nominated to sit on the highest court in the US. The main concern with Sonia's comment is not the racism or gender bias. It's the fact that she feels judges can "empathize with certain situations AS A JUDGE". I trust she knows a judges job is to adjudicate using British Common Law and precedence, in her case specifically the American Constitution, not empathy.
The most long experience of Sotomayor is being pro-corporates lawer.
"For the past 12 years for instance, under two Democratic presidents and one Republican, the post of US Secretary of State has been occupied by, in succession, a white woman, a black man, a black woman, and a white woman. This exercise in “diversity” has not the slightest progressive significance. It has not democratized American foreign policy or made it one iota more conciliatory to the interests of the oppressed, either internationally or within the United States"
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/pers-m28.shtml
Newt Gingrich teaches history and has written critically acclaimed works on the civil war here in the United States. I wonder if his opinions regarding biological differences between the races are similar to what he has expressed here about the sexes.
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