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You are here: Home / Open Threads / The affirmative action that dare not speak its name

The affirmative action that dare not speak its name

by DougJ|  May 8, 20095:00 pm| 79 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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I can’t stay away from the Sotomayor stuff and I have to warn you this may be a long post. Via the great Dahlia Lithwick (who is the only good thing about Slate) makes an excellent point about Rosen’s history with women in the judiciary (via burnspbesq):

But more troubling still, he seems to have been arguing that female jurists are by definition “mediocre” for more than a decade! Here’s a piece he did for the New York Times in 1995, arguing that President Clinton’s “single-minded pursuit of diversity, combined with an eagerness to avoid controversy, has kept him from appointing the best available legal minds to the courts.” He then names the many, many white men passed over for federal judgeships and contends that liberal judges lack the intellectual firepower to challenge brilliant conservative jurists because “nearly 60 percent of the Clinton appointments have been minority members and women.” (Read: mediocre.) His single data point to illustrate that mediocrity: Instead of appointing a serious intellectual heavyweight to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a/k/a “The scholars Court”), Clinton tapped “Diane P. Wood, a little-known professor of antitrust law at the University of Chicago, who is currently an assistant to Deputy Attorney General Anne Bingaman.”

That same mediocre Diane Wood is not only on every shortlist for the Supreme Court today. She’s also widely regarded as one of the finest judges on the bench, to whom other brilliant judges turn for reviews of draft opinions.

Now, with all the whining about supposed de facto affirmative action for women in the judiciary, it needs to be said: there has to be an awful lot of de facto affirmative action for wingnuts in the judiciary. At this point, 38% of federal judges were appointed by George W. Bush. All indications are that the vast majority are more or less wingnuts.

Perhaps I’ve got this all wrong, but, as I see it, unless law is radically different from all other human intellectual endeavors, there is no way on earth that anything like 38% of the best legal minds in the country are staunch conservatives.

I work in an area (pure mathematics) that is infamously dominated by men. And, even so, if I went through the list of people I know of who would be suitable for some kind of Supreme Court for the area, it would be no easier to find a qualified wingnut than to find a qualified woman. Of the, say, 25 people I know relatively well who might be suited (I’m applying the standard of whether or not they’re close to the National Academy of Science level), there are no women and one borderline wingnut (a guy who voted for Bush twice but says he would have voted for Lieberman in 2004). If I go up to the level of qualified people I know more vaguely, there are about three women and two actual wingnuts (it’s possible that there’s more wingnuts in there I don’t know about, but not that likely, since the few wingnut scientists I know like everyone to know that they are wingnuts, keep blogs about being wingnuts on their departmental home pages, etc.) out of maybe 80 people. So it’s pretty much a wash.

I doubt that law is as male-dominated as math is. And I suspect that the proportion of wingnuts in law is similar to the proportion in math (though I could be wrong, I’ve never met a reputable math professor anything like Dijontard). So whatever affirmative action there is for women in the federal judiciary must surely be surpassed by the amount of affirmative action for wingnuts.

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Reader Interactions

79Comments

  1. 1.

    Brandon T.

    May 8, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    At this point, I favor introducing legislation to add 8 new seats to the supreme court, all of which will be filled by women. Seriously, this is ridiculous.

  2. 2.

    Jeff

    May 8, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    liberal judges lack the intellectual firepower to challenge brilliant conservative jurists

    Clarence Freakin’ Thomas, mmmkay? The aothor of this piece can shut his coke-hole.

  3. 3.

    Punchy

    May 8, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    Alan Keyes for the SC. He’d make Thomas look like Michael Moore.

  4. 4.

    asiangrrlMN

    May 8, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    Oh, good grief. Mr. Rosen really needs to stop writing about SCOTUS picks. Women and POCS (people of color) are by definition mediocre????? He has lost complete credibility on this subject.

    As an aside, DougJ, are all the wingnuts you know men? I don’t think the two categories are completely mutually-exclusive (see: Coulter, Ann as a prime example).

  5. 5.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    May 8, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    Matthew Iglesias said something I think is excellent:

    the nature of the Supreme Court is that a great many of its most important cases concern the rights of women and various kinds of minority groups. It’s absurd to think that a forum of nine white, male, heterosexual Christians could possibly compose the best possible forum for deciding these kinds of issues.

  6. 6.

    DougJ

    May 8, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    As an aside, DougJ, are all the wingnuts you know men?

    Believe it or not, in the larger group I mentioned, one of the two wingnuts is a woman.

  7. 7.

    Thankovsky

    May 8, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    @asiangrrlMN:

    See also: Gallagher, Maggie – http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/malkin-award-nominee-4.html

    I don’t ever use the c-word, but I’d make an exception for her.

  8. 8.

    Silver

    May 8, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    As an aside, DougJ, are all the wingnuts you know men? I don’t think the two categories are completely mutually-exclusive (see: Coulter, Ann as a prime example).

    Yeah, that’s not a good example…

  9. 9.

    Mr. Stuck

    May 8, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    I say DougJ for the Supreme’s. Our first master spoof justice math guy. Given the times we live in, is it really a stretch?

  10. 10.

    Joel

    May 8, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    I like to call this affirmative inaction. Basically using the specter of “affirmative action” to advance sexist, racist, and when the time is appropriate, anti-semitic views. Jeff Rosen better get to know the kind of dogs that he’s lying down with.

  11. 11.

    asiangrrlMN

    May 8, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    @DougJ: Oh, I believe it. Wingnuts of color are much more rabid than white wingnuts, too (see: Malkin, Michelle and Keyes, Alan). I was just curious because of your framing of the question. So, Obama could explode some heads by appointing a female wingnut. Heh.

  12. 12.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    May 8, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    @asiangrrlMN:

    As an aside, DougJ, are all the wingnuts you know men? I don’t think the two categories are completely mutually-exclusive (see: Coulter, Ann as a prime example).

    Of a wingnut or a man?

    Oh come on, it was out there begging to be picked up.

  13. 13.

    Steve V

    May 8, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    The GOP has had 20 of the last 28 years to fill the judiciary. I think it’s fair to say the GOP appointments have tended to be more ideological than Clinton’s were, although in my litigating experience a fair plurality or majority of judges were relatively non-ideological, whoever appointed them. They also appoint them young, as exemplified by people like Sotomayor (a GHWB appointee who was in her 30s when appointed), Alex Kozinski (35 when appointed), John Roberts (50 when nominated), Clarence Thomas (low 40s), Scalia (50), etc. The GOP has made dominating the judiciary much more of a priority than the democrats and thanks to their electoral success they have succeeded wildly.

  14. 14.

    Thankovsky

    May 8, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    @Silver:
    Ahahaha, zing! Did anyone happen to catch Coultergeist on Larry King Live when Joy Behar was hosting? Talk about a warm and pleasant interview…

  15. 15.

    asiangrrlMN

    May 8, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    @Thankovsky: No. I don’t want to see her. I’ve seen quite enough of her, thank you very much.

    @Joel: Affirmative inaction. Very nice. I’m stealing it.

  16. 16.

    mere mortal

    May 8, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    “nearly 60 percent of the Clinton appointments have been minority members and women.”

    About 81.9% of the adult population was white under the Clinton years.

    About 48.5% of adults were male under the Clinton years.

    So, about 39.7% of the population were white men, leaving *over* 60% minority members or women.

    Yeah, that Clinton, appointing white men to the bench at a rate higher than their percentage of the population. Such a clear case of discrimination against white men.

  17. 17.

    Thankovsky

    May 8, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    @asiangrrlMN:
    I used to avoid her, too, but now that her book sales are crashing and she’s scrambling to find something, ANYTHING to complain about, I find her much more entertaining to watch. Nothing pleases me more than to watch the slow, painful deflation of a right-wing ideological blowhard. :D

  18. 18.

    eemom

    May 8, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    well, it was “nine old men” who came up with Roe v. Wade and all the landmark civil rights decisions that preceded it.

    and AFAIK, 50% of the women to have served on the Supreme Court deserve to rot in hell for Bush v. Gore.

    That said, I would like to see Souter’s seat go to a woman. I’m no kind of “quota” type or stickler for proportional representation. I just would.

  19. 19.

    TenguPhule

    May 8, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    All indications are that the vast majority are more or less wingnuts.

    Impeachment time.

  20. 20.

    superking

    May 8, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    There are a lot of wingnuts in law. The conservative legal movement was an integral part of the larger conservative movement and the backlash against integration and the civil rights movement. Conservatives realized they were getting killed in the courts and decided to do something about it by creating more conservative lawyers to legitimize their looney world view. That’s why it seems credible to some people now when Hannity/Beck/Whoever starts saying that Obama is gutting the constitution–they have conservative scholars and judges who have been arguing for almost 30 years that conservative policy prescriptions are coextensive with the original intent of the constitution.

    This is the threat of originalism: it is a very sneaky way for conservative judges to create conservative legal outcomes. It’s a fig leaf for blatantly political judging that in turn works backward to corrupt our conception of the constitution.

    There’s still a lot of work to do to take the country back from them.

  21. 21.

    Zifnab

    May 8, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Perhaps I’ve got this all wrong, but, as I see it, unless law is radically different from all other human intellectual endeavors, there is no way on earth that anything like 38% of the best legal minds in the country are staunch conservatives.

    Oh DougJ, DougJ, DougJ. You should know by now that 100% of the best legal minds in the country are staunch conservatives. That’s why they’re always right.

    Just read Ann Coulter’s latest book “Moran: Why Liberals are Stoopiding Amerika to Death.” Or consult the smartest minds on radio – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. And if they aren’t good enough for you, ask any of the Masters of the Universe which way they were voting in 2000 and 2004 (or in 2008 for that matter).

    There’s nothing special about conservative judges, except for the fact that they might just love Jesus a little more than they love America. And that’s the way it should be.

    Stupid Liberal.

  22. 22.

    Indylib

    May 8, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    OT Some interesting developments on EFCA. I think Specter just realized that he can’t get re-elected in Pennsylvania as a Dem if he fucks with the unions.

  23. 23.

    asiangrrlMN

    May 8, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    @mere mortal: I like this. I am going to steal this, too.

    Put me firmly in the quota camp. It has always been an unstated expectation that a SCOTUS be white and male. Now, let’s make it a stated expectation that the next seat will go to a female.

    It’s like when I used to tell people I primarily read Asian American female authors. They used to accuse me of discrimination. I would say, “Damn right.” If I asked what they read, they would usually respond with a litany of white men (mostly dead). I would then say that they were discriminating as well, only subconsciously. Furthermore, I had probably read more dead white men than they PEOPLE of color combined. This was fifteen years ago, but the same principles apply.

    It’s only noted as discrimination when it goes against the majority or in the case of gender, the norm. There are women who are qualified to be on the court–progressive women, even. Find one. Choose her.

  24. 24.

    Zifnab

    May 8, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    @eemom:

    and AFAIK, 50% of the women to have served on the Supreme Court deserve to rot in hell for Bush v. Gore.

    Nonsense. I have it on good authority from any number of Balloon Juice regulars that Bush getting elected in 2000 was all Ralph Nader’s fault.

  25. 25.

    Laura W

    May 8, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    I’m throwing my support behind Goldie Hawn.
    She is rockin’ Hardball (on education, how children learn, etc.)

  26. 26.

    geg6

    May 8, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Well, using your standard, Doug, my very small branch campus has two math professors, both of National Academy of Science level with multi-million dollar research grants. Both liberals (they) canvassed for Obama) and both Asian American. One male and one female. I’d take either of them for SCOTUS. Fuck Rosen.

  27. 27.

    flounder

    May 8, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    I think I read 48% of law degrees are earned by women. DOn’t quote me on that.

  28. 28.

    Existenz

    May 8, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    There are more women graduating from law school these days than men. This isn’t like the days of Sandra Day O’Connor, when female lawyers were few and far between. They are becoming the majority.

  29. 29.

    Zifnab

    May 8, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    @asiangrrlMN:

    If I asked what they read, they would usually respond with a litany of white men (mostly dead). I would then say that they were discriminating as well, only subconsciously.

    That’s hardly fair. When you go into an English class and 90% of the novels on the shelf are dead white dudes, you can’t honestly say, “Oh, I see you’re reading Emerson and Hemmingway… fucking racist.” It would be nice if American students were exposed to a more diverse selection of authors, but then you’d have to go back in time and make sure enough diverse authors actually got published.

    I mean, I didn’t read “Frankenstien” because Mary Shelly was a woman. Or pick up “Invisible Man” because Ralph Ellison was black. I picked them up because I thought they were going to have some comic book pulp fiction quality to them. And I was horribly disappointed.

    So screw it. I’ll be in my room reading graphic novels by Warren Ellis and the rest of you people can just sit on a pin.

  30. 30.

    The Tim Channel

    May 8, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    Yeah, and to think that John used to be a cheerleader for these asshats is almost too much to bear. Perhaps you could give us an insight into what kind of drugs he was doing at the time? If not drugs, was his paycheck somehow linked to the rightwing cause?

    I’m only asking because I read and post here a lot and John seems to (now) have a fairly good grip on reality. I just can’t help but wonder how in the hell he could have ever been so foolish in the past.

    Black asshats have to be even brasher than their white counterparts because they’ve got to work twice as hard to prove they’re worthy. Same with the screeching white women (Coulter et.al.)

    There must have been a ‘road to Damascus’ moment in there somewhere.

    Enjoy.

  31. 31.

    Zifnab

    May 8, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    @Existenz: And who can blame them. Have you ever won an argument with your girlfriend/wife? ZING!

    /ducks

  32. 32.

    LarryB

    May 8, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    John,

    In honor of the week’s top story, I give you Sauteed Portobello Caps and Dijon Garlic Sauce. Sounds pretty good.

  33. 33.

    RSA

    May 8, 2009 at 5:56 pm

    I’ve never met a reputable math professor anything like Dijontard

    Speaking of whom, it seems he’s “clinical faculty” at Cornell. Is anyone familiar with this category? From what I read, it sounds like “non-tenure-track teaching faculty”, but I don’t know if that’s accurate.

  34. 34.

    Llelldorin

    May 8, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    Totally off-topic, but:

    You’re in pure math? What field? Where?

    (I’m in numerical analysis, myself. Apologies for the thread derailment!)

  35. 35.

    Martian Buddy

    May 8, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    Clarence Freakin’ Thomas, mmmkay?

    See also: Harriet Miers. The GOP needs to shut their piehole — this is yet another issue they’ve lost any lingering credibility on.

  36. 36.

    DougJ

    May 8, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    You’re in pure math? What field? Where?

    I’m a number theorist. I want to preserve some anonymity so I’ll just say I’m at a university in western New York.

  37. 37.

    Zifnab

    May 8, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    @Martian Buddy: Hell, if you want to argue that route, you could probably paint Sandra Day O’Conner as an “affirmative action” candidate too. I mean, first woman on the SCOTUS? Are you going to argue her gender had nothing to do with it? Really?

  38. 38.

    Laura W

    May 8, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    @DougJ: Wow. I had no idea you were smart! (I kid.)
    Going for 5 OT posts in a row ‘cuz it’s Friday and John never yells about it, did you see my post on the two best NC wines? Out of 27 tried?
    Westbend Viognier and Chambourcin, both 2006.
    Very nice offerings.
    What ever happened to that imminent wine blogging anyway? I knew better than to hold my yeasty breath.

  39. 39.

    DougJ

    May 8, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    What ever happened to that imminent wine blogging anyway?

    I had an amazing syrah from the Niagara escparpment and I’m waiting for the exact info on it (it’s from a tasting and we were all supposed to mail in info about the wines, but the guy who brought that one hasn’t yet).

    It was a dead-ringer for Cornas, I kid you not.

    I think I will just do a post about a local winery, Ravines, instead. Sorry for the delay — this wine was totally fascinating and I was dying to write about it.

  40. 40.

    Dennis-SGMM

    May 8, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    @Laura W:
    C’mon, Laura, tell us about the subtle overtones and hints of whatnot – not to mention the soupçons and frissons. You know you want to.
    Bwahahahaha!

  41. 41.

    slag

    May 8, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    Reason # 1,851 why I don’t read TNR is now Jeff Rosen. A$$hole.

    Keep it up, DougJ!

  42. 42.

    kid bitzer

    May 8, 2009 at 6:25 pm

    look, dougj: the fact that your discipline is hostile to principled conservatives means nothing.

    numbers have a liberal bias, that’s all.

  43. 43.

    Laura W

    May 8, 2009 at 6:32 pm

    @Dennis-SGMM: Dennis, while I find your constant ridicule of my pitch-perfect palate and Bloodhound-like olfactory gifts un peu jejune, you also possess a certain, je ne sais quoi? Joie de vivre?
    Grey Poupon!

  44. 44.

    Vincent

    May 8, 2009 at 6:32 pm

    What really annoys me is nobody notices that the default position for a nominee is a white man. If Obama tries to reach beyond that pool then he’s engaging in ‘affirmative action.’ As if a qualified person could not possibly be a woman or a minority. How convenient that the call to not engage in affirmative action leads us right back to where we started, the default.

    There are probably hundreds of people of all races and genders who are qualified for the job. Hiring a new employee involves all kinds of filtering and subjective decision-making. You don’t pick a less qualified person over the more qualified one but if a group of people are equally qualified why not go for diversity as a tie-breaker?

    And diversity can be a broad concept beyond race or gender. Someone with different life experiences will have a different way of looking at the world and it seems to me that judicial temperament is about recognizing that who they are and what they’ve done shapes how they think. Judges aren’t machines.

    I don’t think the Court should necessarily be representative of the population, but it’s hardly absurd to look at traits that aren’t on a resume when making a selection decision.

    And before somebody says it, this is not like a situation in which a white job applicant is being punished for something he has no control over. Nobody is applying for a job here. Obama can literally select anyone he wants. No one is getting harmed because they weren’t chosen.

  45. 45.

    Doctor Science

    May 8, 2009 at 6:36 pm

    I actually kind of stayed up all night writing about Sonia Sotomayor and why she was not an “affirmative action” student at Princeton. Yes, I suspect being Latina was a plus in her admissions profile. But she applied at a time when women were held to a restrictive quota, and she didn’t benefit from the substantial boost given to athletes and/or alumni children.

    And at graduation she got the Pyne Prize, Princeton’s highest undergrad honor. I want Jeffrey Rosen to come over here so we can “discuss” whether graduating summa from Harvard is more important than his absolute determination to be stupid.

    Also, after the recent display the male justices put on during oral arguments about that strip-search case, I want to see the next *3* appointments go to women.

  46. 46.

    gwangung

    May 8, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    What really annoys me is nobody notices that the default position for a nominee is a white man.

    Oh, if you’re not a white male, you notice the default position plenty.

  47. 47.

    Joel

    May 8, 2009 at 6:44 pm

    Man, has Slate fallen a long way or what? I even made the mistake to like Gross, Saletan, and Yoffe for a while. Then I wised up.

  48. 48.

    kid bitzer

    May 8, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    #46–
    well, sure: but the default position is not to notice the default position.

    didn’t you notice?

    (actually, i thought your #46 was very witty).

  49. 49.

    Trollhattan

    May 8, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    @ Martian Buddy

    Yeah, Harriet Freakin’ “I think the president is just dreamy” Miers for bog’s sake.

    I understand it’s too much to ask that these people get over themselves but, “Git ovah yer goddamnselves!”

  50. 50.

    B

    May 8, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    o, omigod, dijontard is so. fucking. funny.

    must be parody?

  51. 51.

    Walker

    May 8, 2009 at 7:35 pm

    @RSA:

    Speaking of whom, it seems he’s “clinical faculty” at Cornell. Is anyone familiar with this category? From what I read, it sounds like “non-tenure-track teaching faculty”, but I don’t know if that’s accurate.

    Yes, that is correct. This was part of our “be nice to lecturers, because they do all the real work” movement.

    It makes me wonder what is going to happen to him. I assume this is a contractual position, and we usually do these things on three year contracts. But every department is being asked to budget 5-10% cuts over the next three years. Non-tenured people without external funding are not in a pretty position right now.

  52. 52.

    Napoleon

    May 8, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    @flounder:

    I think I read 48% of law degrees are earned by women.

    I read that recently but I think it was that 48% of attorneys are women. I graduated from law school in 86 and my recollection is that they had just pulled even at 50% of graduates, and I am sure at this time they make up a majority of law school graduates.

  53. 53.

    Martian Buddy

    May 8, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    Hell, if you want to argue that route, you could probably paint Sandra Day O’Conner as an “affirmative action” candidate too. I mean, first woman on the SCOTUS? Are you going to argue her gender had nothing to do with it? Really?

    There are some interesting parallels, aren’t there? Both female, both nominated by a Republican president, both the target of vociferous objection from conservatives. Of course, there are also some major contrasts between the two. O’Connor’s nomination was primarily opposed by pro-life groups who thought she was pro-choice. Miers, on the other hand, was criticized for a wide variety of flaws including lack of experience with constitutional law and appeals, lack of a clear record on the issues, an inability to articulate basic concepts of constitutional law, and her close ties to George W. Bush. One was confirmed by a 99-0 vote, the other withdrew her nomination before it could even come to a vote.

    You ask if O’Connor’s nomination was due to her gender — of course it was. Reagan promised a female appointment during his campaign and he delivered. The thing is, he chose a woman who graduated near the top of her class from the Stanford Law School and was an experienced jurist. Bush, by contrast, was perceived even by some within his own party as having nominated an inexperienced and incapable person as a reward for her loyalty to him.

    All of which goes back to the original point: there are a hell of a lot of wingnut judges now thanks to The Decider — a fact which shouldn’t surprise anyone familar with the Department of Justice hiring scandal.

  54. 54.

    Martian Buddy

    May 8, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    @Doctor Science: One interesting tidbit from the article DougJ linked:

    Carp’s research also found that the minorities and women whom Bush has appointed to the bench are somewhat more liberal in their voting patterns than the white males he has appointed to the bench.

    So if one must choose from a pool of candidates that’s been heavily stocked with wingnuts, we may end up seeing more women and minorities appointed to appellate courts as a result.

  55. 55.

    Napoleon

    May 8, 2009 at 8:12 pm

    BTW, on the way home I caught Nina Totenberg on NPR talking about potential SC nominations and she flat out called out Rosen and TNR as running a hit piece (she didn’t use that phrase, but that was the sum and substance of what she said).

  56. 56.

    Dennis-SGMM

    May 8, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    @Laura W:
    Heh! Nice catch. It’s joie de vivre: at this point every day above ground is a good day.

  57. 57.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    May 8, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    What really annoys me is nobody notices that the default position for a nominee is a white man.

    Well, aren’t most people in the world white men? ? ? ? ?

  58. 58.

    El Cid

    May 8, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    Well, aren’t most people in the world white men? ? ? ? ?

    The ones that matter, at least. I mean, what — you think someday African tribes will form ‘nations’ and lead themselves without British and French forces to guide them? Ha.

  59. 59.

    Rottenchester

    May 8, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    Via , the great Dahlia Lithwick (who is the only good thing about Slate)

    There are two good things about Slate — Dahlia is one, and Fred Kaplan is the other.

  60. 60.

    slightly_peeved

    May 8, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    Terry Tao for SCOTUS! Brilliant Math Professor (Erdos number 3, Fields Medal), namechecked on Colbert, and helped develop the rules for the Discworld card game “Cripple Mr Onion”.

  61. 61.

    Doctor Science

    May 8, 2009 at 9:28 pm

    Napoleon:

    Cool. Did Totenberg give any hint as to motive?

  62. 62.

    RSA

    May 8, 2009 at 9:36 pm

    @Walker: Thanks! Interesting.

  63. 63.

    Napoleon

    May 8, 2009 at 9:39 pm

    @Doctor Science:

    None at all. She just mentioned something like there was spirited push back and oh, she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and went to Yale Law.

  64. 64.

    Anne Laurie

    May 8, 2009 at 10:35 pm

    Did Totenberg give any hint as to motive?

    Hey, if “Girl cooties! Euuagh!” is good enough for Rosen…

  65. 65.

    gwangung

    May 8, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    Reagan promised a female appointment during his campaign and he delivered. The thing is, he chose a woman who graduated near the top of her class from the Stanford Law School and was an experienced jurist

    You know, that was something I couldn’t (and didn’t at the time) argue with. Experienced, decent record, good pedigree. That’s not something ANYBODY really argues with, even though you hate the judicial philosophy.

    That, however, doesn’t apply to people with law degrees from Liberty University…

  66. 66.

    asiangrrlMN

    May 8, 2009 at 11:35 pm

    @Zifnab: True. I should have been more clear, though. I was talking about my spare-time reading as I am a voracious reader. I became an Asian radical in my junior year and realized there was a whole world out there. I read a quantity of people of color in general an of Asian American women in particular. I would take about whom I’d read, and then I would get the accusations. When I pointed out the aforementioned, they would trot out classics, blah, blah, blah.

    At any rate, they were still discriminatory if only through ignorance and omission. It’s the same when it comes to positions like the SCOTUS. As Vincent asked and I have pointed out repeatedly (so often, I want to punch myself in the nose), white male is considered default and standard.

    As I wrote in my blog, one of the benefits of diversity is the diversity itself. It has to be counted as a plus.

  67. 67.

    jenniebee

    May 9, 2009 at 12:05 am

    @Zifnab:

    That’s hardly fair. When you go into an English class and 90% of the novels on the shelf are dead white dudes, you can’t honestly say, “Oh, I see you’re reading Emerson and Hemmingway… fucking racist.” It would be nice if American students were exposed to a more diverse selection of authors, but then you’d have to go back in time and make sure enough diverse authors actually got published.

    AIIIIGGGGHHHHH! (and let me say again: aiiigggghhhh!)

    Women got published a lot, actually, especially with regard to novels and especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Radcliffe, George Eliot, Jane Fucking Austen, Margaret Oliphant, Gaskell, the Brontes – shit, for women of a certain class, writing was a regular cottage industry.

    And not only are they good reads, they’re no less insightful about the human condition and an important part of the historical record. Dickens wrote almost entirely about the city but always from the perspective of the Christian Moralist Gentlemen. If all you read is Dickens, that’s all you’re going to get: a Guide to Reforming London Humbly Submitted by the Gentlemens’ Charitable Aid Society (Dickens is allowed to moralize like mad, but his female moralizers are all self-absorbed harpies who should concentrate on making a happy home – see House, Bleak). You have to read Gaskell to get the conflict between country gentry and a newly literate provincial workforce, or the documentation of the process of destruction of a way of life brought by the railroads, or even a treatment of the plight of this new urban factory worker kind of person where the factory worker is a real person and not an allegorical nitwit as portrayed by (as Trollope called him) Mr. Popular Sentiment. That’s not to say that there isn’t value in reading for the purpose of learning what popular sentiment really was, and in that vein it’s worth noting that while Robert Browning produced great art, you can learn far more about the popular Victorian mind by reading his wife’s work.

    (Understanding the full range of what was popular is also an excellent excuse for having a collection of Victorian porn. There is no porn like Victorian porn.)

    Sir Walter Scott may be more widely read today, but it was Edgeworth who wrote the first ever family saga, the first novel to be written in a regional accent (one of the hallmarks of naturalism), the first novel to use an unreliable narrator, the first historical novel, and the first Big House novel, and she did it all in the same book. Without Edgeworth’s stifled and suppressed natural genius, you don’t get Scott.

    And if you ever pick up the stuff that came out of the Harlem Renaissance, stuff like Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Passing it will completely alter your perception of race relations. If you must have a dead white male for balance, read Pudd’nhead Wilson after.

    When you just stop and say “it’s not that I wouldn’t read books by women, it’s just that women didn’t get published” you’re only demonstrating that your education has been so successfully directed by the idea that the white male experience of life is the “normal” experience and that all others are “special” that you aren’t even aware of the existence of the record of other perceptions of life.

  68. 68.

    MNPundit

    May 9, 2009 at 12:50 am

    @Napoleon: They do overall. Even at the school in the heart of midwest I go to it’s 53-47.

  69. 69.

    Pip's Squeak

    May 9, 2009 at 1:54 am

    @ no.67 (jenniebie)

    You’re absolutely right about nineteenth and twentieth century women writers. However, this seems to be mostly true of English. I don’t think that German, French or Dutch literature (the only ones of which I’ve read any amount worth noting) has the same number or quality of female authors pre-1900, while one is compromised trying to remember any at all in Russian.

    P.S.
    Anyone else here enamoured of E.H.Young?

  70. 70.

    Pip's Squeak

    May 9, 2009 at 2:05 am

    DougJ!

    Great. You’re a mathematician. W/Could you reference an explanation of the Riemann Zeta function? I’ve had better luck understanding Sanskrit.

  71. 71.

    Jess

    May 9, 2009 at 2:42 am

    @jenniebee:

    Jenniebee,
    Thank you–that was a Thing of Beauty. (Especially the comment about Victorian pornography, which I’ve just been happily exposing my poor students to!) Now I’m going to have to read some of those authors you mention, even though I generally don’t read fiction (history is bizarre enough without further melodramatic additives, IMHO).

  72. 72.

    KevinNYC

    May 9, 2009 at 5:25 am

    Given all the shenanigans that went in the Bush Justice Department, how long until the Federalist Society is recognized as a criminal organization.

  73. 73.

    bob h

    May 9, 2009 at 8:12 am

    I seem to recall Rosen telling of having been sexually approached by a female student, and reporting her to the University. Whether she got thrown out I don’t recall, but the guy seems to have a screw loose.

  74. 74.

    grumpy realist

    May 9, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Also don’t forget that one of the first (and finest) works of literature in the world is The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Actually, most classic works of literature in Japan were by women–literate men occupied themselves with imitating Chinese poetry. Educated women were restrained from learning all those hard Chinese characters because it was supposedly too much for their feeble female brains, so wrote in a mixture of kana and Kanji…which freed them up to write like crazy.

  75. 75.

    Llelldorin

    May 9, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    @DougJ:

    Got it, and no problem—it was just that the odds that you were down the hall from me abruptly went up by several orders of magnitude. (You aren’t–I’m in California.)

  76. 76.

    Wile E. Quixote

    May 9, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    @Llelldorin

    @DougJ:
    Got it, and no problem—-it was just that the odds that you were down the hall from me abruptly went up by several orders of magnitude. (You aren’t—I’m in California.)

    Doesn’t that just mean, mathematically speaking, that DougJ is down the hall from you for certain values of “down the hall”?

  77. 77.

    Wile E. Quixote

    May 9, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    @Pip’s Squeak

    DougJ!
    Great. You’re a mathematician. W/Could you reference an explanation of the Riemann Zeta function? I’ve had better luck understanding Sanskrit.

    Jeez, I’d be happy if someone could show me how to use integration to determine the volume swept out by rotating a curve around an arbitrary line.

  78. 78.

    DougJ

    May 9, 2009 at 11:15 pm

    W/Could you reference an explanation of the Riemann Zeta function?

    Sure, it’s the function you get by assinging to each s the infinite sum 1/n^s as n ranges 1 to infinity.

  79. 79.

    citizen zen

    May 11, 2009 at 2:28 am

    regarding the comment by Zifnab : “Nonsense. I have it on good authority from any number of Balloon Juice regulars that Bush getting elected in 2000 was all Ralph Nader’s fault.”–

    that’s just not factually true
    Gore threw that race three times:
    1.] when his corporate paymasters made him stop campaigning about things that people wanted and needed [see “crashing the party” by ralph nader]
    2.] by his own admission, he didn’t contest voting irregularities in FL strongly enough
    3.] when he shouted down the attempt by the congressional black caucus to discuss voting irregularities [see it for yourself: “farenheit 9/11” by michael moore]

    besides, there were a total of six third party candidates ALL of whom got more than the # of votes that Gore “lost” by!

    in other words, the democratic party blaming their losses on Ralph Nader is like a street walking hooker blaming their V.D. on Mother Theresa!
    -citizen zen

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