Pictured Above; Obama and Sotomayor Laugh at the Sheepishness of the State Run Media
It is indisputable that the media is helping to inflate Barak Obama’s approval for his policies. There is the state run media outlet NBC and Obama’s personal infomercial station ABC. On Obama’s election, Chris Matthews announced that “it’s my job to make Obama’s Presidency a success.” I wonder how the public would accept his policies if the media actually reported on them. One only needs to look at Sotomayor for an example of how leftist ideology is quickly rejected by the public.
When Obama announced Sotomayor’s nomination, the media was abuzz with excitement over the template the White House had given them. Soon countless articles and news reports flowed out of the state run talking bobble head media about how wonderful her story was. She was born to immigrant parents, in a poor part of Brooklyn and made it to the top of her class at Yale. Most importantly, she was a Latina. The first black president had nominated what would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. The best part was, the public could help Obama bring this to fruition with their support.
One month later the press reports on how Sotomayor was overturned in the Ricci case. Like Sotomayor’s nomination, Ricci had a wonderful news template. He was a dyslexic firefighter working hard to better his situation in life. He planned on accomplishing this by passing a lieutenant’s test at the fire department he worked at. The test is a requirement for promotion. He spent thousands of dollars to have people tutor him and record books on tape that were all but impossible for him to read given his learning disability. When the test came, he received the highest grade of those who had taken the test. His hard work had paid off. It had all the makings of a Disney movie, except that no minorities managed to pass the test. No big deal for Ricci, right? After all, what does his hard work have to do with anyone else’s? When people compete, someone has to lose. Ricci did everything in his power to ensure it wasn’t him.
Sotomayor on the other hand saw it differently. Ricci was not a person entitled to advancement on the merit of his hard work. No, he was the benefactor of racism. It didn’t matter how qualified he was, it only mattered that no minorities passed the test. It’s no surprise to me that Sotomayor’s line of thinking is out of step with the beliefs and traditions of the American people. That’s why the polls brutally punished her with unfavorable ratings once the media was forced to finally cover a story about her legal underpinnings and ditch the wonderful, historic nature of her appointment. According to Rasmussen, Sotomayor dropped 12 percentage points once the public heard the news of Sotomayor’s poor judicial judgment on the Ricci case. The polls recently showed that 37% approve of her confirmation and 39% oppose.
No surprise here. Most do not agree with leftist ideology. Philosophies like Sotomayor’s, the believe that all people are not equal in the eyes of the court, represents a regression to the schools of thought over 100 years ago. I wonder just where the polls would stand had the details of the Ricci case been publicized when Sotomayor was nominated? I wonder where Obama would stand had the media vetted his stimulus and health care plans. Where would he be if the media reported cap and trade as a tax instead of a jobs bill?
2 comments
"It didn’t matter how qualified he was, it only mattered that no minorities passed the test. It’s no surprise to me that Sotomayor’s line of thinking is out of step with the beliefs and traditions of the American people."
July 3, 2009 at 11:56 AMThis is incorrect. Sotomayor's decision was based on a precedent that did not require as much burden of proof to throw out a racially bias test. That's what made this case so difficult. If strictly following precedent, then the case is pretty simple... the firefighters would have lost. Here is a case where we redefine the boundaries of what is racially charged by nature or design. In my view, the ruling (which by the way I agree with the Supreme Court overturning this one) is actually a very progressive one, and Sotomayor's initial ruling was actually rather conservative!
Now the burden of proof to prove that a test has racial bias is way higher, which says something about where our country is going with race relations. Either we use this ruling to make tests more difficult for minorities to pass, ushering in an "under the radar" new age of Jim Crow, or this means we have taken a significant step towards levling the playing field for all Americans. I'd like to believe the latter, but only time will tell.
Given that this was a 5-4 ruling, let us not take this case out of perspective here. This case has everything to do with legal precedent, and nothing to do with race. This is a bad example of Sotomayor being a leftist, in fact, it is a great example of Sotomayor being rather conservative!
In the famous Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a case where a student urged others to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands during school hours, the two dissenting justices (Harlan and Black I believe) are not by any means by justices... they applied a conservative judgement using the same exact precedent the other judges used to overturn the initial ruling. This case is one of the cases used as precedent for freedom of speech in schools to this day, and at the time, was a very progressive change in political and social ideology.
To sum it up, Sotomayor plays ball for your team more often than she plays ball for mine. I think the polls reflect a complete lack of understanding on how the supreme court works, and right wing spin that Sotomayor is a racist. And given Justice Souter's ruled with Sotomayor, we're either replacing one bad justice with another, or maybe, just maybe, the case was *that* difficult.
tL,
July 3, 2009 at 8:27 PMGood points. Fair enough. I will defer until I've looked at the statutes and precidence and we can debate after :) I'll probably make a second post since it'll be a good amount of research. If you have sources you've read I'd appreciate them, cutting down on research time is always a good thing.
I don't like going into a debate and making up points I haven't researched.
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