Back To The Playground

Matters Stateside have taken a back seat on Zelo Street of late, but that changes today: Barack Obama has made his second nomination for the Supreme Court, and it has provoked the usual barrel-scraping desperation from the right, showing that some people don’t get it.

Previously, the assault on Sonia Sotomayor was rabid and ferocious, including a bizarre accusation of racism from the deeply unpleasant Rush Limbaugh. Everything was thrown into the campaign against her appointment. And every participant in that campaign lost. Ms Sotomayor is now on the Supreme Court.

Now, Obama has nominated Elena Kagan to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens, and the abuse has begun in earnest. Another routinely rabid stalwart of talk radio, Michael Savage (né Wiener) has called her “a New York City radical, Marxist lawyer through and through”, which is so flagrantly dishonest it has earned him a PolitiFact “Pants On Fire” award.

There has also been the customary anti-Semitic outburst over Kagan’s Jewish faith, this coming from Pat Buchanan, who says that her appointment would mean that there were “too many Jews” on the Supreme Court. Elsewhere there has been a nudge-nudge campaign showing Kagan playing softball and therefore suggesting that she is gay (but, so what?).

It would be helpful if her confirmation actually considered Kagan’s suitability for the Supreme Court, but that does not look likely any time soon. The right are too busy trying to dig up nonexistent demons.

No change there, then.