Opinion

The 'borking' of Supreme Court justices hurts the nation

As I See It
Lenny Mirra
Published: July 22, 2009

A lot of Democrats are complaining about the Republican treatment of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, which is sort of like former members of the Bush administration complaining about exorbitant government spending. All parties are guilty, they differ only by degree.

These people need to remember the treatment of previous nominees, none more illustrative than that of Robert Bork. Nominated by President Reagan, Bork had impressive credentials and was more than qualified to serve on the bench. And yet, within 45 minutes of Bork's nomination to the court, our own Sen. Ted Kennedy said in a nationally televised speech, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."

So inflammatory and vitriolic was the attack on Bork that the word "bork" is now in dictionaries and is defined as an attack on a public official. It was used in a memorable quote by feminist Florynce Kennedy before a conference of the National Organization of Women while they were trying to torpedo the nomination of Clarence Thomas. She said, "We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically." Anyone who found this approach acceptable for Thomas should have no problem with the treatment of Sotomayor.

The "high-tech lynching" almost worked as the media led many to believe that Thomas' crude remarks to Anita Hill disqualified him from serving on the Supreme Court. And yet many of these same people had no issue with Bill Clinton becoming president. They may have had bumper stickers that said "I believe you, Anita," but apparently they did not believe Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broadderick or Monica Lewinski.

The bigger hypocrisy is how many people take issue with Thomas being selected by President Bush because of his skin color but have no issue with Sotomayor being chosen because of her ethnicity. Once again, both parties are wrong. In neither case were the nominees chosen because they were the best available people, only the most politically correct.

The Supreme Court is too important to be using affirmative action policies when choosing its members.

In the not-so-distant future, our grandchildren will look back on this and laugh at the very notion of choosing judges because of their color, gender or ethnicity. Presidents should be choosing the best available people to serve, period.

At the very least, one would hope that the media, forever claiming to be unbiased, would give equal treatment to nominees of both parties. If Republican nominees belonged to an all-white group called "The Race," then there never would have been a nomination process for them. Newspapers would have been filled every day with editorials about the implied racism, and yet these same writers have written off Sotomayor's membership with La Raza. Once again, all parties are wrong.

In the end it boils down to votes; presidents want to nominate people who will get certain groups to vote for them or their party. That's what the media should be reporting about as this works against the long-term good of the country.

¢¢¢

Lenny Mirra is a single dad who lives in West Newbury and enjoys arguing politics with his two sons. He can be reached at LMirra@comcast.net.