Republican DisSonyance

Huckabee called her Maria! Limbaugh thinks she's stupid! Gingrich says she's a racist! She's Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's first supreme court nominee, and she's warming the hearts of Hispanics and Democrats everywhere. Hispanics because they are justifiably proud of a girl from the projects who made good, and Democrats, because they think all that right wing bluster will alienate Hispanics from the Republican party.

So what does it all mean? Well, Ms. Sotomayor birth certificate says Sonya, not Maria, so Huckabee can stop worrying that his cleaning lady's about to quit. And while Rush Limbaugh calling anybody stupid is the ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black, one does have to set the record straight. The lady was high school valedictorian, graduated magna cum laude and phi beta kappa from Princeton, winning their top academic prize, and went on to Yale law school, where she was editor of the law review. If that's stupid, then Rush Limbaugh must be a brainless invertebrate (no, wait, bad analogy... he IS a brainless invertebrate).

Still, it's fair to take a closer look at the quote, taken out of context from a 2001 Speech at (CONSERVATIVE RED FLAG!)...UC Berkeley. " I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Here's where the right wingers have a point. For a person whose job it is to weigh and measure and parse words, the quote is unfortunate. It lacks eloquence and clarity, and is too open to interpretation. Sotomayor does appear to claim that a Latina can make a better judgement than a white male, which is uncomfortably close to the notion that a white male can do a better job than a black one, or a Christian can be more effective than a Muslim, and yes, that is the kind of thinking affirmative action was established to debunk.

Now here's where Newt and friends are, depending on your tolerance for their world view, either misguided or full of shit. When Sotomayor talks about having "lived that life", she's not talking about race (and you can invoke la raza all you want, Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race). She's referring to that great American taboo, class. We don't talk about class in America. It interferes with our mythology about upward mobility and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.

A judge who was a fourth generation legacy at Yale can't know what it's like living pay check to pay check, or getting evicted, or having a sick child and no health insurance. A judge from an underprivileged white or black background would share Sotomayor's perspective on how the law affects the working poor and the opportunities available to them. This is what Obama calls empathy.

Wolf-Boy

I hear the gray wolf has been reintroduced to the wilds of Wyoming. This could work out well for us, because my son is maybe one D and a misdemeanor short of a wilderness program and I'm thinking the wolves would make more effective parents than we seem to be. The kid should adapt well: he already acts like he was raised by wolves. He can't be domesticated.The heavy metal music he listens to consists of mostly howls. He's largely nocturnal, preferring to hide out in his den during the day. He travels in a pack and wolfs down his food. Perhaps, after his stint with the wolves, he might come back more respectful: Wikipedia says the cubs are very deferential to their parents. If his surrogate wolf-mom starts to give him constructive criticism and he accuses her of biting his head off, she might get mad and actually do it - unlike his real mom who mostly bites her own tongue. And just think how well vulpine parenting worked out for Romulus and Remus: They grew up to found Rome. Which beats the hell out of working at the Burger King.

A dish best served cold.

We ladies may live longer, but men age better. We get saggy, they get craggy. As usual, our culture sends out mixed messages. While Oprah and More Magazine celebrate femmes who are "forty and fantastic" or "fifty and fabulous," Hollywood continues to team up George Clooney, Harrison Ford and Jim Carrey with costars young enough to be their daughters.

One of the reasons Paul Newman was so beloved, besides his charitable endeavors, acting skills and legendary blue eyes, is the fact that he remained happily married to Joanne Woodward. Women of a certain age take comfort in his famous quote "Why should I go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?" The Paul Newman phenomenon had a lot to do with why so many women liked Elizabeth Edwards. The dumpy, frumpy cancer victim married to the perfectly coiffed, eternally cute man. The tragedies they endured together! The family values! The love!

Of course, all that went out the window when the world found out dear John had an affair, and probably a love-child, with Rielle Hunter, a skanky Lucinda Williams lookalike with overly processed hair. Even worse, the dalliance occurred while his wife was recovering from cancer and during what might have been a viable presidential bid. Had Edwards' candidacy taken off, the scandal could have cost him, and the Democratic party, the election, thrusting us into an alternate reality too horrible to contemplate.

Time passes. Tabloids move on. Cancer metastasizes. Poor Mrs. Edwards is terminally ill. She has three children and a husband she claims she's still - oh please! - "in love with". Her days with her beloved family are cruelly limited by her disease. And instead of making the most of the rest of her life, she's away on a book tour for her tell-all tome, narcissistically titled "Resilience". It's like Stephen Hawking calling his memoirs "Genius" or Giselle naming hers "Perfection".

How can Mrs. Edwards put her children, now all old enough to understand and be humiliated by their father's infidelities, through another media assault? Why would she leave behind a book that casts their only remaining parent in a negative light? In three consecutive interviews, Elizabeth informed us that "All she ever asked from John was that he be faithful." Repeatedly pointing out that she's an army brat, she describes her humble origins. They "never had a lot, but they had enough". Consequently, she "doesn't care about diamonds"- she just wanted her man to be true. Well, diamonds may not do it for her, but square footage is the girl's best friend. Elizabeth, the twins and John, self-styled champion of the underclass, live lavishly in a 28,200 square foot home, which includes a high school sized gymnasium where John can play basketball if Obama ever visits (highly doubtful).

So it's not like they need the money. The book puts John and his bad behavior right back in the spotlight, and Elizabeth's impending death will be the coup de grace to his career in public life. Apparently, revenge is sweeter than the eight year old twins. And John isn't the only partner in the Edwards marriage with character flaws.





Personally, I always thought John Edwards looked like a slimmed-down Bob's Big Boy. And unlike Paul Newman, he DID go out for hamburger...