Anatomy of the wingnut whisper campaign against Judge Sonia Sotomayor

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Brian Beutler has a post at talkingpointsmemo.com entitled Anatomy Of The (Unsuccessful) Sotomayor Whisper Campaign explaining how:

[A]n unknown number of Second Circuit prosecutors and former clerks banded together and approached The New Republic's legal correspondent Jeffrey Rosen with attacks on the prospective nominee's fitness.

The sources told Rosen, among other things, that Sotomayor lacked the intellectual heft and good manners to serve on the court, and, in an article billed as the first in a series analyses of potential nominees, Rosen went with it.

From there, the attacks went viral.

Susie Madrak at crooksandliars.com adds some more detail in her post Obama Announces SCOTUS Pick: Sonia Sotomayor. Now Let The Games Begin!:

Media Matters did a roundup of the Sotomayor attacks a few weeks back, including the hit job done by a New Republic writer:

Despite the glaring flaws, Rosen's assessment of Sotomayor was widely adopted by other media figures.

Mark Halperin, Time's conventional-wisdom maven, announced "Jeff Rosen Raises Warning Flags on Sotomayor" and described "Jeff" Rosen as "the New Republic's legal eagle." (What of Rosen's thin sourcing and dishonest quoting? Who cares! It's Jeff! He's a legal eagle!) The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder touted Rosen's piece as a reflection of "the respectable intellectual center." (Ambinder's colleague, Ta-Nehisi Coates responded: "You don't get to be the 'respectable intellectual center' and then practice your craft in the gossip-laden, ignorant muck. Not for long anyway.")

If the "respectable intellectual center" approached the prospect of a Sotomayor nomination by doctoring quotes in order to trash her intelligence, you might wonder what the disreputable fringe did. Well, National Review's John Derbyshire and Mark Hemmingway described her as "dumb and obnoxious," but they weren't really moving the ball forward in the anti-Sotomayor campaign; they were just interpreting Rosen's work.

Fox News' Andrew Napolitano told listeners on his radio show that Sotomayor "has a reputation for not being a very hard worker" — like Rosen, citing anonymous law clerks to back up the claim.

Even David Letterman got in on the act. Here's Bob Somerby, describing Letterman's Sotomayor sketch:

Letterman's clip was openly racial/ethnic, a throwback to what once seemed to be an earlier day. With it, he gave viewers a throwback first impression of a sweaty, crazy, yelling jurist — of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in her real life, among other acts of distinction. But this astounding bad judgment by Big Humor Dave followed an act of grotesque judgment by the New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen authored a gruesome post built on anonymous sources which — let's be honest — openly trafficked in racial stereotypes.

Dumb. Lazy. Temperamental. It's enough to make you wonder how she made it from the South Bronx to Princeton, Yale, and a federal judgeship. And remember: She didn't get there the George W. Bush way. You know many lazy, stupid people who win Princeton's highest academic prize?

Worst of all, there's no reason to think that the treatment Sonia Sotomayor received from the media over the past week will stop with her. The coverage of Sotomayor has clearly been built at least in part on gender and racial stereotypes, so we can probably expect similar coverage of other women and minorities who are mentioned as possible nominees.

Of course, the real culprits here are the intellectually lazy media villagers and Beltway bloviators who want and need to characterize everything in terms of a confrontational battle (like last week's "dueling" foreign policy speeches between President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney) because it is good for their "infotainment" ratings. News outlets have people on retainer whom they pay to present the most polarizing positions on the right and left to create and promote the sense of a battle royale during their faux "analysis" segments designed to be a confrontational battle. It is how the media formats its "infotainment" programs for ratings – resembling a reality television game show.

Joe Sudbay at americablog.com correctly notes in his post Get ready for an onslaught of right wing attacks on Sotomayor — aided and abetted by the traditional media:

This is going to be a battle. The right wingers are geared up and well funded. And, they've got their friends in the traditional media already spewing their rhetoric. Keep in mind that cable news wants this to be a battle. It's good for ratings. (And, let's face it, most of the very high paid media types in D.C. have absolutely no capacity to understand Sotomayor's amazing life story.) Today, however, as much as CNN is trying to stir the pot, their Republican analyst, Ed Rollins, said this will turn out to be a "brilliant choice."

Conservatives have been laying the groundwork for a couple of weeks, even though we didn't even have a nominee — and, as noted, indoctrinating the talking heads. The attacks have already started:

Conservative groups reacted with sharp criticism on Tuesday morning. “Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

The Obama team already knew that Sotomayor would face right wing attacks, but the president picked her anyway. Good for him.

LATE UPDATE: The clown prince of the right, Rush Limbaugh, today accused Judge Sonia Sotomayor of being a "reverse racist." That's rich.

For Rush Limbaugh, who is a demonstrated racist and misogynist, to call someone else a racist is what is known in psychology as "projection," i.e., the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people.