All right, who’s been hitting my legs with a tire iron? OK, I’m being facetious, but that’s what they felt like this morning. They were sore and tight and unresponsive as I ran what was maybe the slowest three-miler in my life (I don’t have a stop watch, but I could tell my pace was slower than usual).
I guess I should take it as a positive that I finished the three, but I need to get back to when running was fun.
iPod: Rachel Maddow’s audio podcast.
The hearings concerning Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, are a bit anticlimactic — as Sen. Lindsay Graham pointed out the other day — but that hasn’t stopped the Republican Party from descending into the pit of racial and ethnic bigotry.
In their attempt to hobble the nominee, painting a comment she made about how our personal histories affect our ability to respond to information, they have betrayed their own biases and the party’s retrenchment into an apartheid of irrelevance.
Consider the repeated references to other Hispanic judges and nominees, especially the failed Bush appointee Miguel Estrada — as if all Hispanic nominees are judged to be the same and support for one automatically insulates a senator from charges of racism.
The most salient commentary on the first two days of hearings came from Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post in his Tuesday column — written before yesterday’s Estrada-fest:
Republicans’ outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor’s musings about how her identity as a “wise Latina” might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any “identity” — black, brown, female, gay, whatever — has to be judged against this supposedly “objective” standard.
Thus it is irrelevant if Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. talks about the impact of his background as the son of Italian immigrants on his rulings — as he did at his confirmation hearings — but unforgivable for Sotomayor to mention that her Puerto Rican family history might be relevant to her work. Thus it is possible for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to say with a straight face that heritage and experience can have no bearing on a judge’s work, as he posited in his opening remarks yesterday, apparently believing that the white male justices he has voted to confirm were somehow devoid of heritage and bereft of experience.
The whole point of Sotomayor’s much-maligned “wise Latina” speech was that everyone has a unique personal history — and that this history has to be acknowledged before it can be overcome. Denying the fact of identity makes us vulnerable to its most pernicious effects. This seems self-evident. I don’t see how a political party that refuses to accept this basic principle of diversity can hope to prosper, given that soon there will be no racial or ethnic majority in this country.
We are one people, but we have different vantage points. That the GOP refuses to acknowledge this is something destined to condemn them to historical irrelevance.
The 80th Major League Baseball All-Star game is in progress with the American League leading 2-0 in the top of the second and I’m watching the Rachel Maddow Show because I just can’t stomach these overhyped exhibitions.
I lost interest in the game years ago, for a number of reasons and for no reason at all.
The current attempts to re-energize it and make it seem relevant have done little to change my mind. I’ll probably check in with the game from time to time, but the fact remains that my baseball season is on hold until Thursday.
Memo to President Barack Obama: If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is taking this position, there is no reason for you not to. You campaigned against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” call yourself an advocate for gay rights, and yet you’ve placed repeal on the backburner.
Reid, a somewhat cautious centrist, has now come out in favor of an immediate and permanent repeal of DADT. That should be your cue to force the issue sooner, rather than later.
As for former President Bill Clinton’s new-found support for same-sex marriage — professed last week and reported today in The Nation — I have only this to say: Fantastic, but where were you when the Defense of Marriage Act passed? You remember DOMA? You signed it into law.
Maybe, now that you’ve had a change of heart, you can begin agitating on the issue and convince President Obama to push legislation repealing DOMA.
It is a beautiful morning — big, open sky, with a warm breeze and bright sun, just a perfect morning for a run.
So, I took advantage, chugging out three miles while listening to the wonderful new album by Son Volt, American Central Dust.
My only regret this morning is that I'm not up to the kind of distance this kind of morning deserves, that seven- or eight-mile run that allows you to fall into an almost trance-like zone, that leaves you feeling one with all around you.
That's something to shoot for, to get back there. Yes, a goal worth pursuing.
This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.
Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required.
