‘Scuse me
The attention Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s remarks are getting in much of the media just won’t go away as fast as the president wants them to, and in spite of his unprecedented control over the White House press pool.
So he’s making an excuse and trying to brush it off as something like a slip of the tongue that Sotomayor never meant. Or wait…..that’s not what he’s saying.
President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. “I’m sure she would have restated it,” Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.
This is a recurring theme in this administration’s gaffes. Not to actually apologize for remarks that offend, but to say that given the chance, the offender would just put it another way.
Like Janet Napolitano did when she issued a threat assessment saying right-wing extremists might recruit returning military veterans “to boost their violent capabilities”.
Only when this report was made public and outraged decent American citizens and veterans groups and many congressional representatives did Napolitano come out and say ’sorry, I wish that part had been worded a little differently.’
Are they sorry, or sorry that they got caught? President Obama’s campaign team did the same thing last year when they first learned that Sarah Palin would be the Republican party’s vice-presidential candidate.
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.â€
Not classy. Had a sniping tone that didn’t serve Obama well. So he rapidly changed it.
What happened?
Did the campaign suddenly regret failing to take note of Palin’s unique place in American history as the first woman tapped by the Republican Party as a vice presidential nominee? Did it regret missing an opportunity to tell women (especially Hillary Clinton loyalists) across the country that Palin deserved at least a cursory compliment before being subjected to the natural rough-and-tumble or presidential politics? Did it regret a swift descent into the negative, back-and-forth politics that Obama has so earnestly railed against?
It would appear so.
Now, it’s Sotomayor, whose now famous statement (or one of them) is being called frankly racist and sexist. Hard to dispute that, so just say maybe she’d re-word it if given the chance.
After three days of suggesting that reporters and critics should not dwell on one sentence from a speech, the White House had a different message Friday.
“I think if she had the speech to do all over again, I think she’d change that word,” presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Gibbs said he did not hear that from Sotomayor directly, but rather from people who had talked to her, and he did not identify who those people were. Sotomayor herself has made no public comments about the matter and was not available for comment.
And that’s that.
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Ann Coulter once observed that “the beauty of being a liberal is that the history of the world began this morning….”
It has gone beyond even this; any time a liberal blatantly lies (like Speaker Pelosi) or “mis-states” something like ‘the appellate court is where policies are made’ all they have to say is the equivalent of ‘well we didn’t really mean it’. Since the media are basically one collective brothel and the republican party are scared of their own shadow, the disinformation becomes the matter-of-fact. People paying attention continue to slip ever closer to the brink of insanity, administration supporters wallow in their own already-achieved insanity, and republicans worry about being called racists.
All of this would be hilarious but for the all-too imminent consequences which we have at once warned against and also will be blamed for once realized. I observe that the beauty of being a liberal today is that you can lie, cheat, steal, be caught red-handed and be completely exonerated based on the notion that the American people are too fat, dumb, lazy, and disinterested to do anything about it, a notion that appears to be a reality with each passing day.
Liberals aren’t the only ones who regret the wprds they have chosen in the past.
From the Guardian, June 11, 2008..
“Better late than never. George Bush has admitted he could have chosen his words more carefully and that he has come across as a “guy anxious for war” because of his gun-slinging rhetoric.
In an interview with the Times on Air Force One, Bush, who is bowing out as one of America’s most unpopular presidents, said he regretted the bitter divisions caused by the Iraq war and was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. ‘I think in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.’ ”
I think that most of the quotations taken from Sotomayor by the Conservative right are proof texting. They cannot find a consistency to their theory that she is somehow part of the lunatic fringe. From what I read, even Republicans feel Sotomayor is not a hill to fight on. Unlike others, hispanics are consistent voters.
You can find people from all walks of life who have said things they later wish they’d said differently…or not at all. In fact, I’d say everybody has said something or other they later regret. It’s an easy thing to fix though. One simply says, “I wish I’d said that a bit differently.” Exactly as George Bush did in your example. But that is exactly NOT what has happened with Sotomayor. She hasn’t said anything at all about her statement and so all we have is The President speculating that “she would if given the chance” – which is pretty much the subject of this blog. Now is a great time to clarify Judge Sotomayor. The country is listening.