Though the Obama media have been ballyhooing her brilliance -- No. 1 in high school, No. 1 at Princeton, editor of Yale Law Review -- her academic career appears to have been a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.
Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton, Sotomayor was advised to read children's classics and study basic grammar books during her summers. How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of "Chicken Little" and "The Troll Under the Bridge"?...Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review -- all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.
This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries.
One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated "with the base alloy of hypocrisy."
His column is entitled "Miss Affirmative Action 2009."
Anyway this notion that two Ivy League schools nefariously plotted to make Sonia Sotomayor number one in her class and then editor of the Yale Law Review, is not simply unserious, but paranoid. Really fucking paranoid.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Maybe someone should do a post on Pat Buchanan and the limits of identity politics?
Win.
Pat lost his mind a long time ago.
I'll take Judge S. at her word that she was admitted to school because of affirmative action, but then Pat will have to explain to me how affirmative action put her at the top of her class. No, never mind. I lose too many brain cells listening to Pat.
What is Pat's view on alumni preference?
It is not only PB. Paranoia is the main fuel of the right these days, much more than racism. They have a very dark idea of what the future will be. Trust me on that one most of my Cuban friends in Miami and even in Madrid are paranoid. And in their case, I know it is not race the issue. They were before with Clinton and what Kerry will bring, etc. It is unbelievable and I think quite dangerous.
Historically, the case against leftist control politically seems to be--and pardon me for playing jr. pop psychoanalyst here but...
"My GOD, if we were willing to break laws and bones for control, what will happen when THEY take control?"
This is why a peaceful transition between parties in power was one of the first things that establish the US as a future major player.
(See 1800 election, Jefferson)
But Pat is in a category all of his own.
Personally, I think that being able to successfully arrange for both Yale and Princeton to provide you with a stellar undeserved academic record can serve as reasonable evidence for applied intelligence.
Indeed!
If we are going to have right-wing crazy writing about Judge Sotomayor, can't they at least do it as some sort of numerology or anagram code?
It would at least have the benefit of being creative.
I'm stumped ... are there any good anagrams to be made out of "Judge Sonia Sotomayor"? I haven't tried hard, mind you, but what I've come up with mostly involve variations on Roto-Yam, which sounds less like a leftist conspiracy than like something Ron Popeil would sell on TV at 2AM.
I'm the worst ever at this, but I think there's meaning in:
I guess many door jot DOA
I cheated and went to an online anagram generator which revealed THIS:
Toss Iran! Yo a moo.
Anagram generator ... excellent suggestion!
Okay, this is just surreal: Goriest Joy! A No-Sumo Ad.
I suppose the good news is that there's no way to connect that to the good Judge without the assistance of about a metric ton of recreational pharmaceuticals.
Buchanan doesn't actually allege that there was some grand conspiracy to get her to the top of her class because she was Hispanic... he just completely discounts it. To him, the fact that she was admitted to Princeton because of affirmative action means that all of her subsequent accomplishments are meaningless. Because Princeton took into account her race and background, everything she's ever done is "because she's a Hispanic woman." It's pretty mind blowing, but there it is. The craziest part is that it implicitly admits that affirmative action is necessary by placing such a huge emphasis on where you go to college.
Anyway, we're all supposed to be outraged for the poor 54 year old white guy who had to go to Bucknell or something to get his C average.
How about the C-average Yale legacy that ended up being President of the United States for two full terms. From my eye drops a tear
seriously. this is just so insulting all around.
Paranoid, yes, but all of a piece for the Nixonian style of politicking that is Pat Buchanan's stock in trade. Having just read Rick Perlstein's great book Nixonland, this argument Buchanan makes seems all too familiar (evil ivy leaguers work in cahoots with minorities to keep the white man down).
To pile on Pat B:
Given how controversial the decision to go co-ed at Princeton was isn't it likely there were a fair number of old school professors who resented that they had to teach women? Guys who would have been just dying to prove that these "affirmative action" students, especially a two-fer woman and minority weren't up to snuff?
If anything the women in these early classes probably were graded tougher.
"The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism. The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism. The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism."
Ah. I feel so liberated from my own common sense. It's as refreshing as bathing in the morning dew on the fields of an Alpine hill in early Spring. Pat is right, you bigots!
Your fellow blogger, Glenn Greenwald knocked this one out of the park last week. I admire him for even trying to explain the infantile self-absorption of folks like Buchanan.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/12/self_absorption/index.html
I love how someone can take this quote (from the feature):
"She spent her summers inhaling children’s classics, grammar books and literature that many Princeton peers had already conquered at Choate or Exeter."
And twist it to mean that she was reading the "Troll under the bridge" like some misunderstood five year old.
My goodness. Please explain to me why he is still considered relevant enough to deserve my outrage or my pity (instead of simply ignoring him).
It's funny, because as I was reading my kid Beatrix Potter, I realized her vocabulary was significantly smarter and more sophisticated than that of most adult books I was reading. (Quick, tell me an author of modern fiction who's used 'soporific' lately.) Classics are classics because they're well-written, not because they're simplistic.
Quick, tell me an author of modern fiction who's used 'soporific' lately.
Most of them. (Sorry, those are authors who have been soporific.)
I am loving this. Obama became president because he was black, Sotomayor will become a Justice because she is a latina. Seems like conservative/racist are having nightmares about minorities overtaking America.! Take a chill pill, Pat.
Of course, the amazing, ironic thing is that Pat's ancestors were just another dangerous minority 150 years ago. Hell, they weren't even considered "white" at the time! Does he ever stop to think about that? Nooooooooo...
But using his logic, one could say that Irish people have taken over America. Why, look at St. Patrick's Day. Damn Paddies!
(full disclosure: I'm part Irish-American)
I also blame the Irish for the Celtics Basketball team, Notre Dame Football, and the Lucky Charms cereal! Those are abominations.
:)
We'll take the Celtics and Notre Dame, but Lucky Charms?! That leprechaun is racist!
Exactly. And there were crazy conspiracy theories about Catholics too. When John Fremont ran for president for president in 1856, he was rumored to be a secret Catholic.
"Buchanan" is a Scottish name. He just plays Irish on TV.
Even the admissions claim isn't right. It's not an exception, an accommodation, or a thumb in the scale to believe that a high school valedictorian with strong recommendations is ready to make things work.
Good admissions officers know that grades are a much stronger indicator of readiness than those test scores. That's standard, well-known, long-proven point. Whoever read the transcripts and recommendations, and decided they were more accurate than the scores, knew exactly what he was doing, and the results have proven him completely right. The Judge may believe she got an edge, but she really only got what she'd already earned.
Similarly, Princeton professors let no one tell them how to grade. It couldn't happen. If anyone tried it, word would have ricocheted allof the planet, leaving a trail no one could hide. The deans are rolling on the floor laughing at the very idea.
Finally, Yale Law students bow to no one, and the students choose the Review editors. No one on earth had the power to rig that choice for Sotomayor. If anyone had tried, that too would be legendary. If she'd gotten the role and not done it at world-class levels, word would already be out. It's a small school and everyone knows who's pulling their weight and who's blowing smoke. If that was the story, there would be 50 highly placed conservative lawyers saying so right now, with Ken Starr, Robert Bork, and Stephen Calabresi of the Federalist Society in the lead.
Buchanan's reaching so hard because the truth is that, while no one quite earns a spot on the Supremes, Sotomayor got her spot on the short list the old fashioned way, by talent and effort on a level old Pat will never get close to.
Yes, excellent point. Just try to get a bunch of profs to agree on anything. let alone to take marching orders, and then try to get them to be quiet about it. For nearly 40 years. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
Am I alone in thinking that Sotomayor's reading was evidence of remarkable intelligence? There are plenty of students in her position who would have been too ashamed and/or too unimaginative to drill on the basics this way. I rank it up there with Malcolm X looking up "aardvark" -- I don't think his subsequent speeches were so eloquent because of affirmative action, but maybe I'm crazy. I think it reflects what her judgements have apparently reflected-- a passion for getting the small things right, getting fine-grained details of the case down pat for the sake of discernment and acuity.
Hey GOP, I thought you were all about the bootstraps. I guess they have to be made of English leather.
You're not alone. She did something very logical!
Oh yeah, and those bootstraps have to be attached to Prada boots.
Well said.
I don't know how many times I've heard people insist that minorities could succeed if only they applied themselves, but the moment you find one that did just that, the default assumption is that she cheated her way to the top because... you know, a brown skinned woman couldn't possibly have earned her way into her position.
Disgusting but par for the course.
I'm against race-based (as opposed to class/economic based) AA but there's no denying that whether you like her politics or legal philosophy, Sotomayor is clearly well-qualified and has proven herself academically as well as professionally. The idea that she's an unqualified woman who got where she is solely due to racial minority status just doesn't hold water. I see her more as an example for why kids from poor families should get a boost rather than treating kids differently based on their racial background.
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts though that if her politics and legal philosophy were closer to that of Clarence Thomas, you'd be hearing Buchanan talk about what a wonderful story of hard work and can-do spirit she represents.
Princeton, Yale and all the other Ivies are well-known for showing a high level of favoritism for their legacy admits - how else do you think George W Bush got into Yale?
Exactly--and at Bush's time even more so than now.
I'm with you on this. I've always been against preferential treatment for minorities, yet the right-wing attack on it has been so over-the-top that I find myself in the position of defending its beneficiaries. (This in turn gives me another reason for opposing such policies: it gives too much of an excuse to whites like Limbaugh and Buchanan who want to attack minorities but make it sound like they're supporting equality.)
She could have also read children's books to understand cultural references. You wouldn't want to look like a dummy for not understanding what it means to "cry wolf" or be a chicken little. Plus, Shrek would have made fat less sense.
JK Rowling based a lot of the last HP book on just that--that children's lit is something you absorb when you're young, and gives you a ton of references to draw on when you're older. If you didn't read children's literary classics you are missing a part of the culture. For that matter, when I lived in West Africa we read a collection of folktales, every one of which started along the lines of "Vegetables A and B were friends. Then vegetable A got mad...." No single plucky heroes outwitting evil ogres; instead the repeated theme was "people need to get along. If people don't get along, then there are all sorts of problems, and so everyone needs to ensure that people get along." It put the village approach to problem solving, in which the first thing everyone needs to do is admit they're kind of wrong--Even If You're Not Wrong--into perspective.
Plus I read Alice as an adult, and our whole family will listen to Charles Kurault reading Pooh for hours on end. Harry Potter, Huck Finn, the Greek myths, all things most encounter as kids that bear up very well to adult visits.
I'm reading the Odyssey right now, and what I notice are all the Percy Jackson bits. Because I read the myths long ago but the Jackson series in the last few years. Both of my kids asked me to rent Troy because the stories had piqued their interest.
What our previous Yale graduate, affirmative action--heritage--President should have read on 9/11:
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf,"
"Humpty Dumpty,"
"The Emperor's New Clothes,"
"The Wizard of Oz."
It would have saved the nation immeasurable grief.
You're making the false assumption that he was capable of reading those books.
Cliche, I know, but the bastard has it coming
far less sense* I dont want to be accused of attacking her weight or diabetes.
Did anyone else find his statement borderline racist? Like, haha look at the dumb foreigner, she reads childrens books in college! Even if what he said is accurate (and I don't believe it is) shouldn't that be a sign of intelligence and initiative that she was able to master the English language?
Pat Buchanan doesn't do "borderline" racist.
It's flat out racist when you pay no attention to the border and run across the line.
And sometimes people do have to read and play catch up when they get to college. Growing up in America, I knew all of the cultural references in children' books. But I did have to read books like "The Great Gatsby" my first summer after college because it wasn't taught in my high school and that put my understanding of certain references that professors made behind those of my fellow students.
Regarding the accuracy of Buchanan's comments: According to Media Matters, the Children's Books in question were "books like Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and Pride and Prejudice."
The link is here: http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906160009
Wow.
"...all because she was a Hispanic woman."
You can just feel the condescension dripping from that guy's keyboard. I'm surprised he didn't dispense with the "niceties" and use the S-word.
This sort of bullshit writing is really getting tiring.
Q. When is Buchanan's MSNBC talking-head punditry contract up?
A. Not damn soon enough.
Is Buchanan some sort of "stealth" supporter of Sotomayor, trying to prove her point about "old white men?" 'Cuz he's doing it...
"One prefers the old bigotry."
This is the jaw-dropping line for me. Well why doesn't he just come on out and say it - oh he did.
and David Letterman is the one who had to appologize on National TV for crossing the imaginary line written in pencil. Paranoid is too generous, dude is a simple minded racist. He believes this crap.
The 1992 GOP convention to be exact.
Will never forget being in the parking lot of the Medford Mall with a bunch of small business repubs after our weekly meeting of the chamber of commerce. "But we're the party of Lincoln."
No you're not. Not any more. Probably never again.
I wish Pat was making sense and focusing on business and tax issues. Each time he talks about race and ethnicity i want throw up. The man get vile and hideous, you can see the hate and contempt in his eyes.
I wish they could just put Pat Buchanan in a rocket ship to Mars where all his batshit crazy will go unnoticed.
These people dont even know what they are insulting!
When I think of all the brilliant students at my university from Iran, Poland, India, Pakistan, and YES, latin america who were ALWAYS at the top of the class and winning all the awards, etc were also the ones working overtime to read books and catch up on perfecting their english.
Absurdly out of touch, these guys have NO IDEA how badly these kids are kicking our asses in school. These idiot, racist people are why Americans are falling behind in school - its like they have no idea what education is.
He - and others of his ilk - are right to be paranoid. What will happen when rich white men and women have to work as hard as everyone else? The boss that isn't smart, the politician that isn't charismatic, the student who isn't well-read... they should be watching their back. They are worried about a level playing field because they will lose the game. Many folks have built their entire lives around the hope that nepotism and racism will work for their children and children's children. They are justly terrified at the concept of having to do the hard work - what the hell is the point of being rich and well-connected then? [/smirk]
yes.
Oh, honey. Rich white women don't work.
roffle!
Hmmmm ... yes, but I think it's really the working class white male he is talking to and appealing to. They're the ones who feel threatened by the change in the world. Rich people will never have to worry about losing the game - they always have home court advantage.
You know... I agree that he was speaking to that person. That's clearly who's most receptive to his message... but it's not who's he's speaking *for*.
What is the matter with these people?
check out this post by the great wise sage chuck norris on why Obama scares him: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32310
my favorite is "You scare me because your actions don't reflect the federal governmental constraints and fiscally prudent principles of our Founding Fathers and Constitution." Hello, W.?
What world are these nut jobs living in?
Like, we expect this from uncle Pat, but, WTF chuck norris? Like, this has NOTHING to do with racism.
A scary world call "bizarro" reality, where Obama wasn't elected, and the republicans are still relevant.
Apologies in advance for language and overall nastiness:
Bruce Lee shit out Chuck Norris and forgot to flush.
I think she said she read Huckleberry Finn, not the "The Troll Under the Bridge" which I suppose is a reference to "The Three Billy Goats Gruff."
At any rate, Huckleberry Finn is not a children's book (Nor, really, is Pride and Prejudice or even Alice and Wonderland, well maybe Alice). The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a children's book. Huckleberry Finn is not a terribly easy read, it's got a lot of weird dialects that can be difficult for some kids to grasp. It's certainly not the book I would point somebody to who was trying to brush up on the proper use of English. I think she read them more as a recognition of the fact that these were classics. That she was supposed to have had the experience of reading them but had not, so she dove in.
At any rate. Poor Pat. It's like he's the only white man who knows that all you colored folks are out to get us white men folk.
Alice is a children's book that also works, but on a completely different level, if you're an adult.
Alice may be readable for children, but it is a work of marvelous intellectual sophistication.
Pat's reasoning is definitely retarded in a frightening way. Even scarier are the 700+ comments posted to Pat's piece on humanevents.com.
Lots of weird out and scary people out there. The Obama presidency seems to have touch a big nerve.
You can see how he and Bay Buchanon are related.
"One prefers the old bigotry." yeah NO KIDDING ASSHOLE. Get a grip.
here's what she actually read: Huck Finn (I read that in AP English Lit senior year and it's still one of my favorites and no easy read), Pride and Prejudice (another American classic though not quite my cup of tea, and another nineteenth century novel that isn't so automatic for modern ears to follow), Alice In Wonderland (a children's classic but again, this C.S. Lewis book was seriously poetic and to compare it to 'the little engine that could' or 'see spot run' is incredibly condescending to both Judge Sotomayor and Mr. Lewis). Like i said, GET A GRIP. She has to be publicly confirmed by Congress so, wait until the hearings and let her have a fair one, ask away. Don't be surprised, Buchanan and company, when you try to make her look dumb and you get PWNED. Fools didn't learn a thing from the Obama campaign.
Oh, and by the way, i know some very smart people who have gone on to extremely successful in their every endeavor (WITHOUT any 'affirmative action') who needed help on their writing skills - one who took an extra year at a prep school - before or at the beginning of college. I'm talking about people who were admitted on merit, full-scholarship, to Cooper Union (maximum admission rate
FYI, Alice in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll, not C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis was the guy who wrote the Narnia books (as well as a lot of other things pertaining to Christianity).
Why do I get the feeling that if Sotomayor had read the Narnia books, Pat wouldn't be complaining?
She's a Democratic nominee. He'd complain. If she was a white guy he'd complain, but he might feel an obligation to come up with something less transparently absurd.
My point is he wouldn't make fun of Narnia as children's books, because he'd see them as religious literature.
oh, right, sorry - that's who i was thinking of. thanks.
Just pointing out here that Alice in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll, not C.S. Lewis. It's funnier to think of it that way, though.
Sorry to pile on, but it's a bit odd to refer to Pride and Prejudice as an American classic, unless we've annexed Hertfordshire.
Would scones with clotted cream be involved? I would be on board with that.
sigh. i shoulda kept my big mouth shut.... that's what happens when you talk first and think second, these gratuitous racist insults just made me too mad (+ i was at work). thanks for the corrections though.
max admission rate less than 1/3 for eng'g and as low as 1/20 for arch). these sorts of egregious racist insults just make me so mad.
How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of "Chicken Little" and "The Troll Under the Bridge"?...
By working harder than everyone else in your class? She had to play catch-up and was still able to beat out all the other students in her class. Most people would consider this overcoming adversity.
right; it's very horatio alger-like in its bootstraps-ness. this line of criticism on the judge is purely motivated by racism and paranoia.
There was a Foxtrot cartoon in which Jason had infiltrated alt.conspiracy.net with a virus. At a certain date and time all the users' computer screens would go black, then state "They Are Coming." Then the helicopter sound effects would kick in....
We need a good hacker.
"Paranoid" - Really good word for it. The comments after that article are truly frightening. Had to stop after a few page views.
Hell if she was a white dude who got straight C's at Yale she could be the damn president!
Me thinks some of you doth protest a little much re Sotomayor and affirmative action. Let's review some facts:
1) She admitted she was a beneficiary of AA.
2) She admitted that her test scores weren't as high as that of most of her classmates.
3) She and the Puerto Rican student group she joined sued Princeton when she was a student there, demanding that it hire more Hispanic faculty. Would it be paranoid to wonder whether the school might have graded her a little more generously after that, out of fear of more litigation?
4) Liberal commentators such as Rosen questioned Sotomayor's temperament and intellect before any rabble-rousers on the right did.
All that said, I still think Sotomayor should get confirmed (and will get confirmed). She's got the qualifications on paper (circuit court judgeship, etc.) and it's Obama's prerogative. But the reality of Affirmative Action is that the achievements of AA beneficiaries will always be questioned by those who wonder to what extent those achievements were due to AA. If you want some people to get a boost based on their gender and ethnicity, then you can't complain if people ask to what extent that boost got them where they are, and to what extent it was their own hard work and abilities. No question Sotomayor has worked hard, but it also seems doubtful that she would be where she is if she weren't a Latina female.
Dave - your ass is showing.
Huh? So you get an opportunity to compete with the big boys, you beat their ass, and somehow your achievements are questionable? Is Jackie Robinson's career now in doubt just because he was the first beneficiary of AA? Since when do test scores reflect an entire persons capability or value added to a school? Do you want the guy with the 1600 score who stays in his room all day and night or the girl with the 1350 score who volunteers, plays sports and starts up social activity clubs?
I highly doubt you'd be where you were if you were a black male born in the slums of the Bronx with a single mother and 5 brothers/sisters. Should I start questioning your status in life too?
You born on 3rd base types who swear yall hit triples wanna boo hoo when someone else winds up on 3rd too? Only in America!!!
Dave,
As always, I need you to specifically quote the portion of this post that you disagree with. I can respond a little better, if you do that.
Ta-Nehisi,
My comment wasn't in response to your post, but in response to the defensiveness I've seen among your commenters in previous threads on this subject when someone questions to what extent Judge Sotomayor's achievements have been due to Affirmative Action. My point in my comment above was that it's an inherent side-effect of Affirmative Action that such questions will get raised of any AA beneficiary. Perhaps I should have made this comment in your open thread instead.
Yes Dave, and that's why - as Shelby Steele pointed out - someone like Barack Obama could never get elected President. Oh...wait a minute.
But it's true that all of these questions about Sotomayor's fitness are cloaked in issues around affirmative action and "reverse racism." I liked the old bigotry better when a Pat Buchanan was open about the fact that he didn't like such folks simply because of their race.
Have you considered that such questions are an inherent side-effect of white racism, rather than affirmative action, and that may be the problem that should be addressed. Buchanan's comments certainly point my antennae in that direction.
I don't feel any defensiveness about Sotomayor, for what that's worth. Maybe your perception about defensiveness is a reflection that some of her "defenders" are being too polite or timid in calling out her critics for what they are.
Dave,
She never denied benefiting from AA. She like Colin Powell is a poster child for AA. They show how it is supposed to work. An obviously talented and very smart woman (valedictorian of her high school class) scores lower on the standardized tests than someone with her high school grades normally would be expected to. The admission people take her entire situation into account and assume that she will be able to make it. Turns out they were right and then some since she thrived. Yeah it would be great if we lived in a perfect world and admissions people could look at every student with as much detail and correctly identify which ones are likely to perform better than a standardized test says they will. But since we don't have that perfect world we'll just have to keep making due with the flawed one we have and use imperfect methods like AA for some things.
You are making the classic conservative mistake here and assuming that because she got in with the help of AA that means she didn't deserve it. Who actually deserves to get into any college? It isn't like there is some absolute standard that says we can exactly rank all the high school seniors in the country every year and then give #1 their first choice of college, then the next most qualified gets to choose and so on and so on like some sports draft. After you go past the totally corrupt legacy stuff, the truth is for the rest of the students the whole process involves a lot of just pure random luck, being in the right place at the right time, knowing someone who knows someone and so on. Under the circumstances using AA as one of the factors is an imperfect solution but it is one of the few we have.
Dave, you're mixing up two types of AA, consideration in college admissions and grade and class rank.
No one is denying that AA had a role in her admission to Stanford. As many have pointed out taking the top graduates from any high school is a good way to do class/economic based affirmative action, and to identify students who will take whatever resources they're offered and then thrive. That is, she was not a random Latina, she was a Latina who took everything her high school could offer and kicked butt. An excellent choice.
The point where you and Buchanon lose all the sane people is claiming that all her achievements--valedictorian, grades at Stanford, professional achievements--are obviously due to AA. AA is usually applied to school admissions and to first jobs. Buchanon is claiming that her grades and positions held at Stanford and Yale are part of a massive conspiracy. Either address that, or quit pretending the topic is her admission to Stanford rather than what she accomplished while there.
And Eric is very right about being in the right place at the right time....one that stuck with me is a kid whose science project involved time on an accelerator. Now, it was an excellent project and the kid was very gifted. But there are physics professionals who can't get accelerator time, but because this kid's dad was friends with the people running the accelerator he got time for his project. Comparing his project to that of kids' whose parents can't get them accelerator time is apples and oranges.
Dave,
Methinks you're looking at higher education from the outside. Schools don't grade students. Individual professors do, and at places like Princeton, professors utterly, fiercely, tenaciously reject any attempt by the administration to adjust anything at all. This is the briar patch in which I was born and bred, and in which I still live and breathe. There is absolutely no way under the sun that anyone at Princeton other than an individual professor could decide to tilt a grade.
Beyond which, professors in those places don't, in general, give a damn about affirmative action. They don't go the extra mile for a student starting out without advantages. They don't go the extra yard. They don't check their own work for bias or for expecting background knowledge they shouldn't expect. One or two or three per school, out of 100 or more, maybe, decides to worry about whether non-white students are getting a fair shake. Maybe. That's true right here, right now. It was twice as true in the seventies.
And you're right that she wouldn't be where she is now if she weren't a Latina female. If she was a white guy with with a grandfather who went to Yale, she'd be general counsel to General Motors, worth $127 million dollars, and vice chair of the Republican National Committee.
That articule is so incredibly stupid it makes my head hurt. Its as if white people in general and white men in particular are under attack from all sides from all of these "unqualified" people of color!!!!!!! That garbage doesn't deserve the a logical counter argument.
I will say this, I feel like the right wing/conservatist extremist/racist/whatever you what to call them have the benefit of never having to defend their position, its assumed to be correct while those on the opposite side of the debate have to counter their incoherent and unreasonsed positions. Going forward, if "they" are not able to put together a well reasoned argument, I say we ignore them!
Pat is a scared old man. Ignore him. Sotomayor has heard worse. She knows what she achieved.
Eyes on the prize. Not enough black and Latino kids succeed in higher education. That's the problem. Pat and guys like him are not the problem. Pat is not the one keeping a kid from turning off the tv and doing his homework. Nor is he the guy distracting a child from paying attention in class, and strive for and gut out an honor roll. He is a loudmouth with a hateful prejudice, but he is not holding black and Latino kids back academically.
"Lay out the Sotomayor record -- SAT scores, LSAT scores..."
Yes, terrific idea Pat! Better yet, instead of using names, why don't we simply refer to the justices by their law schools and LSAT scores? That way, I'd know that Harvard 175 was way smarter than Stanford 172 and that Yale 169 was the SC equivalent of a dribbling goon. Sometimes the simplest solution really is the smartest.
"Anyway this notion that two Ivy League schools nefariously plotted to make Sonia Sotomayor number one in her class and then editor of the Yale Law Review, is not simply unserious, but paranoid. Really fucking paranoid."
You're just NOW figuring out that Pat Buchanan is an unstable racist? Where have you been the past 40 years??? This is par for the course and even tame for him, actually.
Byebye John