Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. This willfully misreads both my piece and the follow-up response.A few months ago I had the privilege of sitting on a panel with Chris Hayes, over at The Nation. We were talking to a bunch of students who hoped to one day be lefty opinion journalists. A woman asked Chris how the a liberal journalists can make a presumably apathetic, and ill-informed public care about liberal issues. Chris gave a beautiful answer--Do your fucking job.
OK, so maybe it wasn't that colorful. But the essence was that the reader has no obligation to pay attention to what you care about. It's your job to apply the basic tools of journalism--great reporting and writing--and thus make people care. His argument was that the best thing the liberal writer could do for other liberals, was be a great writer.
I thought about that when I read Rosen today. The fact is that he was sloppy, and his sloppiness empowered people whom he probably doesn't care much for. But had he not rushed the piece in the first place, had he taken more time, it never would have come to that. The first rule, always, always, is to do your fucking job.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
John Woo (http://blog.american.com/?p=1187) on Sotomayor:
"Obama had some truly outstanding legal intellectuals and judges to choose from—Cass Sunstein, Elena Kagan, and Diane Wood come immediately to mind. The White House chose a judge distinguished from the other members of that list only by her race. Obama may say he wants to put someone on the Court with a rags-to-riches background, but locking in the political support of Hispanics must sit higher in his priorities.
Sotomayor’s record on the bench, at first glance, appears undistinguished. She will not bring to the table the firepower that many liberal academics are asking for. There are no opinions that suggest she would change the direction of constitutional law as have Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, or Robert Bork and Richard Posner on the appeals courts. Liberals have missed their chance to put on the Court an intellectual leader who will bring about a progressive revolution in the law."
Sounds like plagiarizing Rosen to me.
Careful, Citizen E. Yoo, not Woo. Don't pull a Fuckabee.
Yeah people keep making that Typo.
John Woo's US movies haven't come anywhere close to the quality of his Hong Kong work but the man has done nothing that justifies confusing him with a War Criminal like Yoo:-)
I don't know, Paycheck was pretty torturous. Ahahahahahahahaha! (Seriously, it's terrible. Maybe not "crush a child's testicles" terrible, but terrible enough.)
As I age creepy dyslexia is becoming an embarrassment. Thanks Jingo--Yoo, mea culpa.
If they really believed that she was the light weight that they claim she is on the right; they would not opose her. They know that Obama is going to appoint a liberal. An ineffective liberal is their best case scenario.
I do not think she is going to be that ineffective because she folows TNC's first rule. She does her fucking job.
Saying Rosen was sloppy gives him the benefit of the doubt. Only Rosen, however, disputes the clear meaning of what he wrote about Sotomayor.
He used this most recent explanation to defend and re-launch his unsubstantiated attack....
"Of course, Judge Sotomayor should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. She obviously wasn't my first choice, for reasons I reported three weeks ago, having mostly to do with concerns about her temperament reported to me by former clerks and New York prosecutors."
Sloppy, no, orchestrated hit job yes. In that regard he did his job, just not the job we think should be done by a so called journalist. Good news is that if all they have is this gossip and calling her a racist she is in good shape.
Rosen wasn't sloppy, he was honest. Originally the question was within the party: who should we nominate?
Now the choice is made and he has to support the team. So of course he claims criticisms are misunderstood, apparently hoping his teammates will help him hide his intellectual dishonesty. No risk there, they know this part of the game.
He wrote a SMEAR PIECE.
Straight up SMEAR PIECE.
Folks called his ass out and now he's trying to backtrack.
English is our primary language...Nobody misinterpreted a damn thing.
Go for it. I give you even odds on getting a humiliating, Maoist-style apology from Rosen. It would serve him right. If he wants to advance the lefty cause, he should realize that its orthodoxies apply to him too.
That's one of the few lessons I actually took from J-School: Never blame the reader. If he doesn't understand, it's YOUR fault, not his. You're the one whose job it is to communicate.
Rosen wasn't sloppy, he just used some deliberate ambiguity in his first piece on Sotomayor, claiming he hadn't read enough of her work to decide whether he agreed with the views of her detractors. Reading between the lines, it seems pretty clear that he shared those detractors' views but didn't want to take the heat for personally criticizing the intellect and temperament of a Latina judge. Hence, the "hadn't read enough" dodge.