Late on Friday afternoon — the traditional dumping time for distasteful news — Sotomayor quit her all-female club. She doesn’t want it to be a “distraction,” she says. Uh huh. But really, if it is all on the up-and-up why would she quit?
The real issue was her justification for membership, which only served to re-enforce her pattern of victim-mongering: those who aren’t white males have special status because of past wrongs and therefore don’t have to abide by the same rules regarding those in the majority. That’s how she comes to the conclusion that her membership in an elite female club figuratively posting a “no men allowed” sign didn’t really violate the judicial code of conduct barring membership in clubs which practice invidious discrimination.
That is a subject for further inquiry by the Senate: what does she think invidious discrimination is? One suspects she doesn’t think white males can ever be the victims of invidious discrimination. That’s how we got the result in Ricci — a back-of-the-hand dismissal of a white firefighter’s claim. His claim to a promotion on the merits is subsumed to the “noble” efforts of the city to maintain a particular racial mix — and kept the NAACP and other groups off the city officials’ backs. That same perspective accounts for her touting the wisdom of Latina judges over those of their white, male colleagues. The former have some enhanced status simply because of their minority status. And of course this fits nicely with the PRLDEF agenda — one devoted to multiculturalism, quotas, preferences, attacks on hiring by merit and the like. In all of these white men get the short end of the stick. One suspects her attitude is: “What of it?”
It is all consistent and all disturbing. Sotomayor can resign from her club, but she has a career, speeches and views that won’t be so easily discarded. The Senate needs to ask some hard questions.
