Sotomayor & Hate Here At Home

In the past few weeks I've heard some really ridiculous and bordering on insane comments made about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the least of which being what the Washington Post front-paged today regarding the completely non-legal decision made by Sotomayor to observe fashion trends that ignored femininity for the workplace. A letter to the editor printed in today's Twin Falls Times-News takes the prize for the most paranoid and outrageous.

The Mini-Cassia/Magic Valley area has for some time been a haven of hatred aimed at the growing Hispanic community. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Obama's Hispanic nominee to the United States Supreme Court would fuel a fire that has been raging for far too long. However, even I, someone with a broad understanding of how deeply rooted the anti-Hispanic sentiment is in that community, was completely blown away by one Rick Martin's (not to be confused with a Grammy winning Latin music powerhouse) letter disqualifying Judge Sotomayor for an alleged association with the National Council of La Raza.

A snippet of the letter:

Meaning "The Race," La Raza is a revolutionary Mexican-American group seeking to cancel enforcement of immigration laws and grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Even more, the organization backs the return to Mexico of what it labels Aztlan. The vast area targeted includes California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico and portions of Colorado and Texas. La Raza's designs for our country are perhaps the most divisive and dangerous seen since our tragic War Between the States.

La Raza's president, Janet Murguia, jumped for joy over the choice of Sotomayor. She heaped high praise on President Obama for his selection. Will Arizona's John McCain approve the choice? How about the senators from the other states claimed by Aztlan? Won't a positive vote for Sotomayor indicate their approval of the demand that the people in six states, in four cases the entire states themselves, become part of Mexico?

Perhaps I am excessively sensitive to a few of the terms used in this letter including 'revolutionary' and 'Aztlan' having just finished reading David Neiwert's The Eliminationists and God's Country, but I suspect I will not be the only reader that spent even ten minutes listening to Judge Sotomayor defend herself against attacks regarding her "wise Latina" speeches who takes this letter for what it is--a frighteningly shared hatred and fear manifest in beliefs about an "invasion" of this country by Mexico or Hispanics.

I know plenty of young people who live in the area in which this letter was printed, young people who are impressionable, that I worry about reading this sort of hatred and untruth. I have thought a great deal about the responsibility of the press and whether the editor of the Times-News or even my local paper the Idaho State Journal, and whether those editors have a responsibility to print every letter they receive regardless of the hatred they might be spreading throughout their respective communities. Specifically, I am reminded of a fellow by the name of Robert Mathews who wrote many a hate-filled drivel that the Sandpoint Daily Bee, led by Dave Neiwert, refused to print back in the days when Idaho was known for the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake and the Ruby Ridge incident. For those of you who are familiar with Mr. Mathews or his mention in Neiwert's God's Country, it wasn't simply a matter of black helicopter paranoia, he was in fact guilty of much violent hatred. Do we simply just hope that Mr. Martin of Buhl, the Times-News letter-to-the-editor writer, is paranoid and anti-Hispanic and not driven by the type of hatred that led Mr. Mathews to violence? It's unfortunate that we have to take these types of chances. It's unfortunate that the cost of maintaining our freedom of speech is this sort of freedom given to those who use it to spread and fuel hatred and violence.

As for Judge Sotomayor, having listened to her responses to the borderline racist questions posed to her by Senators Graham (R-South Carolina), Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Kyl (R-Arizona), and Sessions (R-Alabama), I don't believe for a second that any of her decisions on the bench will be driven by her own ethnicity. Having gone into her confirmation hearings as someone skeptical of her nomination by Obama as both a woman and as an American who has not come around entirely to Obama's presidency, I am completely convinced that Sonia Sotomayor is immensely qualified to serve on our highest Court and that she will bring her vast array of experiences, not as a woman, Hispanic, or student impacted by affirmative action, but as a jurist that has served as a prosecutor, private lawyer, district attorney, and federal and appellate judge. She is, as has been said, one of the most qualified nominees to the Supreme Court in approximately a century.

I fear for my state, a state that harbors these paranoid, hateful, and often bordering on insane beliefs about minorities, liberals, and other groups targeted by an immense amount of xenophobia that exists here, but more than anything I fear for the younger generation of Idahoans that are growing up with these influences. It isn't just Zeb Bell, it's an entire belief system embedded in our backyards.

Smorgasbord Saturday

A Walter Cronkite tribute post is in the works and should be posted at some point this weekend. Cronkite passed away yesterday at the age of 92. In the meantime, here is President Obama's statement on the death of Cronkite:



Two worlds collided last night as the Mets announcers in their booth noted the passing of Walter Cronkite, as the news was breaking, and the Braves announcers in their Peachtree TV booth were joined by Greg Maddux. Maddux, a former Brave with eleven seasons of domination on the mound, was recognized at Turner Field yesterday as the newest member of the Braves franchise hall of fame. His number joined those of Braves' legends Phil Neikro, Warren Spahn, Hammerin' Hank Aaron, Dale Murphy, Eddie Mathews, and of course Jackie Robinson (his number has been retired across the league by each of the individual franchises) retired and on display at Turner Field in Atlanta. You know it is a huge night in Braves history when Bobby Cox says it was one of the best nights he's spent at the ballpark. Can you imagine how many nights Bobby Cox has spent the ballpark? And in true Maddux form, he was overwhelmed by the ceremony and truly too humble to admit he deserved such an honor. There on the field with guys like Chipper Jones, Eddie Perez, David Justice, Don Sutton, Phil Neikro, Dale Murphy, and Tommy Glavine via video, Maddux simply said, let's go out and beat the Mets "just like old times." And beat the Mets they did. Jair Jurrjens, perhaps the most Maddux-like pitcher in the game right now, threw six shutout innings and made a superb play fielding off the mound channeling eighteen-time Gold Glove winner Maddux. I'm with Bobby Cox on this one...what a night to be at the ballpark!

While I'm on the topic of the Braves, last night as I was watching the Padres/Rockies match up on FSN Rocky Mountain, I was reflecting on the fact that this is the third time in my life that I've lived in an area where the television lineup offered team-specific programming. I grew up, as I said yesterday, a kid in the Braves on TBS world. As a teenager, before our lineup stopped offering WGN in exchange for the WB (which is now the CW, I believe), I got non-stop coverage of the Chicago Cubs. And now, because of my location, the Fox Sports Network on cable here is the Rocky Mountain region which means instead of the Seattle Mariners that viewers in Boise get, we get all access coverage of the Colorado Rockies. Despite having probably an even number of years watching each of those three teams play whichever team was on their schedule, I stuck with the Braves and never much cared for the Cubs or Rockies. So, when I say I'm a Braves fan and people mention that I must have grown up watching the Braves on TBS, I get a bit annoyed. That and the whole 'fair weather friend' comment annoys me. Just because the Braves won fourteen straight division titles doesn't mean I like them any less now that they've had a few rough seasons and haven't made it to the playoffs. All of this, I'm sure, is far more than anybody cared to know...

There's another insane letter to the editor in the Times-News this morning. Unfortunately, this is pretty much all there have been in the days since Obama's election.

If any of you regular readers are students, I highly recommend taking a look at the Google Student Blog. I just recently discovered it, I'm a huge fan of the Google blog, and the student blog offers all sorts of wonderful tools. I've yet to take full advantage of the new tasks lab Gmail is offering, but Google for Students has a video tutorial and I hope to start using it regularly. One of the tools I was thrilled to see is a resume and cover letter template. It's geared toward recent graduates, but anybody can and should take advantage of the template. It can be so difficult to put a resume or cover letter together for the first time and not starting from scratch is a huge leg up.

Hopefully I'll have an update on my summer reading list in the next week. I finished Dave Neiwert's The Eliminationists and decided to pick up another of his works, God's Country, which I started last night. I haven't picked up the new James Patterson book, the new Janet Evanovich title, or the posthumous work of John Updike's, all of which were released recently, if that tells you anything about the status of my summer reading list.

It appears I wasn't the only one preoccupied with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week. Michael Gerson of the Washington Post, as well as a string of other journalists, reported on comments Ginsburg made in an interview with the New York Times Magazine. He calls it a scandal, I wouldn't go that far, but I will say that the comments Ginsburg made this week are precisely why I said in sixteen years on the bench we've never come to a full understanding of what Ginsburg thinks or believes about reproductive rights in this country. When Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate, the Democrats probably weren't as sure as they have been with other nominees of what they were getting. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Ginsburg has turned out to be what O'Connor was for Reagan and disappointed conservatives or what Earl Warren was for Eisenhower and enraged conservatives, but Ginsburg has definitely been hit-and-miss in terms of reproductive health, equal rights for women and minorities, and other largely progressive causes. Perhaps that makes her a good justice--a fair justice even. The jury is still out on that.

Today's tunes include Martina McBride's new single, "I Just Call You Mine," and "Alright" by Darius Rucker. I saw one of the funniest videos this morning by Randy Houser. I don't much care for the song "Going Out With My Boots On," but check out the video and you'll see what I mean. The kid in it is absolutely adorable! And don't think you have to like country music to like this video. Yesterday it was all Vienna Teng, today it's all country. Go figure!

Have a wonderful Saturday afternoon.

TGIF Tunes

"Daughter" by Vienna Teng.

Retiring No. 31

Greg Maddux is a guy I grew up watching. I, like the rest of the Braves on TBS generation, saw more Maddux wins on television than any other player in baseball. For a young baseball fan, watching Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz take the mound for Atlanta was like watching pure perfection.

Today the Atlanta Braves will honor Greg Maddux for his eleven year service to the franchise and all the winning that came with it by retiring his number, 31.

The Atlanta press release noted that the Braves will honor Greg Maddux today by "inducting him into the Braves Hall of Fame and retiring his uniform number. The induction will take place at the Braves Hall of Fame Luncheon at the Omni Hotel at the CNN Center during the day and the uniform number retirement will occur in a pre-game ceremony that night before the Braves take on the New York Mets." I can't think of a more deserving guy in baseball.

There's so much to point to in the career of Greg Maddux, this Nike commercial of the less serious highlights:

While with Atlanta, Greg Maddux had 194 wins, 1,828 strike outs and was a key part of the Braves 1995 World Series championship. And what he did in Atlanta he was able to do in L.A., Chicago, and San Diego. All in all, Maddux won a World Series, earned an unbelievable 18 Gold Gloves, won the National League Cy Young Award four consecutive years, was selected for the All-Star Game 8 times, won 355 games, and struck out a whopping 3,371 hitters. Maddux is now in the Braves franchise hall of fame and without question will be inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

Recently, Orel Hershiser referred to Chipper Jones as the "last soldier standing" in that amazing fourteen season run of division titles for the Braves and what I hope will happen today is that Chipper will be on hand, along with a lineup of Braves that grew up watching the genius that was Maddux on the mound, to truly honor a good and decent legend of the game.

Unfortunately, the franchise hasn't been as kind (as was deserved) to Tom Glavine and it remains to be seen what the Red Sox acquisition of John Smoltz will do to his chances of being recognized by the Braves. My guess is that when Smoltz retires we'll be having a similar ceremony for him--Maddux left Atlanta, too, and he's getting the ceremony he rightly deserves.

The Blatant Racism of Lindsey Graham

(Update: To hear for yourself what Senator Graham said today, the video is available via YouTube and the exact comment in question appears at the 5:10 mark.)

If there was any doubt about Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) being a bigoted, racist and awfully pretentious blowhard, there is no longer.

I simply could not believe my ears a few moments ago when Senator Graham, taking part in the Sotomayor confirmation hearings in the Judiciary Committee, questioned Lt. Ben Vargas, one of the New Haven fire fighters who was part of the Frank Ricci, et al. v. John Destefano, et al. case (decided by Sotomayor on a three-judge panel and recently ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court), about how he, a Latino, was received by minorities when he took the side of the white fire fighters in the case. Senator Graham, eluding to retribution on the part of other Latinos and minority fire fighters, asked Lt. Ben Vargas of they had called him "an Uncle Tom." For those of you unaware, the term 'Uncle Tom' is a disparaging pejorative used against minorities who have been perceived by others as being subservient to white authority figures. Clearly, the term's origin is from Harriet Beecher Stow's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I don't know which is more shocking, that Senator Graham would use such a term in front of his colleagues and the American public paying attention to Sotomayor's confirmation hearings or that not a single person in the hearing room called him out on it.

With racism this blatant, how can anyone believe that this confirmation hearing isn't being directly influenced by prejudice and racism?

The Death of McNamara

Historians are often forced to weigh the ultimate outcome of foreign policy decisions made during the Kennedy administration that contributed to the massive losses of American life in Vietnam from the fall of Dien Bien Phu to the fall of Saigon with the successful domestic policy measures that culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Kennedy's legacy is in many ways the most difficult to determine of each man having served as President of the United States. Where President Johnson's positive domestic legacy has been completely buried in the failures of his foreign policy legacy, President Kennedy's legacy is riddled with the unknown. Perhaps the greatest question surrounding the Kennedy administration is what may or may not have happened in regard to the Vietnam War. Nowhere has the difference in these administrations legacies been more apparent than in the death of their shared cabinet member, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.

Since media outlets began reporting on July 6th that McNamara had died, there have been obituaries and op-eds in nearly every world news publication, articles that have critiqued what has become known as "McNamara's War." Journalists the country over have taken the opportunity of his death to opine on the catastrophe that was the Vietnam War, hardly noting that underneath the heavy legacy of being the architect of the greatest foreign policy disasters in American history, Bob McNamara was a human being, a father and a man deeply tormented by his role in the death of 58,000 American soldiers and nearly an equal number of Vietnamese.

It could not be known in 1964 when the distinguished Senator Morse (D-Oregon) called the pending war in Vietnam "McNamara's War" that the war would last as long and with such horrifying consequences as it did. In April of 1964, Senator Morse could not have known that in August then President Johnson would approach the United States Congress requesting permission to "take all necessary measures repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" and that he, Morse, would be one of only two senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Notably, it could not have been known in April of 1964, when McNamara said he had no qualms with being identified as the chief architect and responsible party behind the Vietnam War, that when the quagmire would finally cease the weight of all that was lost in combat would so heavily weight on his conscience and his heart.

Robert McNamara left the Pentagon and the Johnson administration in 1968, a month prior to Johnson's announcement that he would not seek re-election. Clark Clifford took over in the Department of Defense and served in that capacity until the Johnson administration would leave the White House in January of 1969, making way for another administration, Nixon's, but not the administration that would see the final days of the Vietnam War. Of the many men who served throughout the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford administrations, McNamara took upon himself the most responsibility for the war and consequently became the most tormented by its monumental failure. Nowhere was his torment more evident than in his 1995 memoir In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam and the eventual Errol Morris film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. None of this served to erase McNamara's guilt or personal and professional responsibility for the war, it simply served an historical purpose. Too often we refer to the notion that those who do not know their own history are doomed to repeat it without recognizing the situations, like those surrounding the Vietnam War, that we truly must better understand to avoid repeating. Where many Americans saw an old man in his final years discussing his failures as if he were attempting to explain them away, historians saw a man deeply tormented yet equally determined to tell a story that might prevent future foreign policy failures of the magnitude of the lost war in Vietnam.

It is unfortunate that in McNamara's passing, some would rather resort to dragging out the arguments that have been used against McNamara for decades than simply acknowledge that a man who holds a place in our shared history is no longer with us to share both his failures and his successes for they are, after all, also our own failures and successes. It is altogether ironic that at a time when Republicans are throwing around the word 'empathy' as if it is a scarlet letter and one that should keep the current nominee to the United States Supreme Court, Republicans and Democrats alike can't seem to muster any empathy for a man who held the weight of our collective foreign policy failures on his shoulders for decades. Some would rather keep a candidate or nominee from a decision-making position because they might show empathy toward those involved in their decisions, yet when a man in a position such as the Secretary of Defense shows a lack of empathy toward the young soldiers he sends into war he is chastised by those same individuals for the rest of his life.