They Beseech The Wise Latina…

…TO SOOTHE THEIR TREMBLING AND WOUNDED EGOS. Like petulant babies they repeatedly, almost to the point of absurdity, demand she confess her irrational temperament. And throughout it all cannot see the irony. But how could the very powdered and privileged and paternalistic and patriarchal? How could poor souls like Lindsay Graham, and Jeff Sessions peer into the soupy dawn of this era’s changing landscape and see through the ironical miasmatik haze clouding their aging gaze? The room is so thick with it, it has curdled into Clown Show Custard.

I’m not nailed to the nomination grilling kabuki because I get too angry when I try to plant myself in front of a façade that tries to pretend it is important and real, and yet lacks a sense of humor or any salacious product placement. Anyway, I’ve seen enough to see what’s up.

I read an article yesterday that took a different angle than most of those out there now and offered the idea that this idiot show (the ridiculously unsubstantial and redundant and at times racist and sexist) grilling of Judge Sonia Sotomayor in this nominations process) was a message for “the rest of us.” That being, The Left, I guess? The article mused that this “tuff” show the Senators are giving is a way for the old guard to say “we will nail you if you try to move the agenda left,” etc. Which is an interesting idea. Except for two things.

One, this is not a very effective threat. They are making asses of themselves out there! To anyone with a grain of intelligence.

Two, appointing an intelligent, accomplished woman to the Supreme Court is not “moving the agenda left” any more than a President being dark skinned makes him “radical.” How silly. How these evaluations and associations are born of a mind that cannot see itself as anything other than the absolute center standard comparison for all other reference points, and all of them deviant. Oh, the veil of Witeness that falls over the eyes and makes one so very sure, so very loud, so very wrong, so very dangerous.

This article breaks its back in its attempt to paint her as hard-edged, intolerant, aggressive…but you don’t even need to strain to read between the lines. Despite the writer’s passage-wrangling, the truth seems evident even in that piece. She is but a thoughtful, smart, assertive, intelligent person. She has energy. She takes her job seriously. She takes her role passionately. This is a lot that we would celebrate to find in a person, be it on a bench or painting a bench. Period. Most of the charade feels like a pilot episode of a new terrible series called SEXISM GONE WILD!!!

I empathize a tiny bit with the old men. Just for a sec. I do. It’s not easy aging and seeing talkies go digital and show up on watches and phones. It stings to realize the world you once thought so majestic and unshakeable was but a pit stop on the way to a higher level of success, a level you will not live to see, if you follow the philosophical arc beyond your lifetime. Easy to do. And hard to ingest. This end of our world is manifested in many ways, in signs large and small. In technologies you have not the name for, in fashions that offend, in the maids becoming kings.

I mean, if you were to talk about her past or record, and switch out some adjectives or descriptors and sell the story as the tale of a relentless, smart, intense, intelligent white male who sweated his way to the top from the projects of the South Bronx, they would be getting boners. They would beg you to make it a movie so they could go watch it and smile in the dusky light, imagining it was their own heroic American Story.

But these traits in a woman? And a LATINA WOOOO WOOOO WOOO whatever this means to them (see first image in post), it is threatening as hell. No big story. They are threatened. And they are scared. And so they are making a big noise.

Like these decrepit worldviews which will, by necessity, erode—that noise will soon be over.