What Sotomayor has that Palin doesn’t … so far
I want to pick up a thread in one of the posts below, in which a commenter noted that among many on the left, “Palin isn’t a serious candidate because many feel she’s intellectually challenged, but those same critics support a Supreme Court Nominee who had to read children’s books in college.”
The reference was to Sonia Sotomayor, the appeals court judge of Puerto Rican heritage nominated by President Obama to the Supreme Court. While at Princeton, she was apparently advised that her English-language skills were inadequate and that one way to improve those skills was to read books that she had missed being raised in a largely Spanish-speaking household.
Pat Buchanan and others on the right have used that to belittle Sotomayor, noting that “How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of “Chicken Little” and “The Troll Under the Bridge”? As other commenters noted, that’s not exactly accurate. Sotomayor recalled in a 1996 speech that “I spent my summers at Princeton doing things most of my other classmates took for granted. I spent one summer vacation reading children’s classics that I had missed in my prior education — books like Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and Pride and Prejudice. My parents spoke Spanish, they didn’t know about these books.”
I think that tells us something important about Sotomayor, something that even the Pat Buchanan’s of the world should celebrate rather than condemn. She arrived at Princeton, recognized that her background had left a weakness in her preparation and in her ability to compete in the mainstream, and she resolutely set out to fix it.
If she were the Latina separatist that her opponents hope to paint her as, she would have rejected the classics as stories written by white people for white people. and she set out to fix it. She did the exact opposite. It is a classic example of the second-generation immigrant experience, striving to earn a place in mainstream America. (What may anger the Buchanans of the world is that she did not feel the need to reject her Puerto Rican upbringing in the process; she merely added the mainstream cultural experience to it.)
I think there’s a lesson there for Palin as well. Sotomayor recognized her shortcomings and worked hard to correct them. She had high goals and she knew she had better prepare herself to achieve them, and she was willing to pay the price.
That was not true of the Sarah Palin we saw in the 2008 presidential campaign. She is clearly an intelligent person, but she tried to hide her pitiful lack of preparation by charming, winking and wooing her way into national office. It didn’t work. A great backstory, an appealing image and values that resonate with a lot of the country are not sufficient credentials for the presidency.
If Palin is doing what Sotomayor did — if she has now recognized that her background as a small-town mayor and governor of an isolated state with fewer citizens than DeKalb County prepared her poorly for the major national and international issues of the day — she can be a real player. But if she doesn’t do the remedial work, if the Palin of 2012 isn’t notably more engaged and educated on the issues of the day than the Palin of 2008, she’ll fail miserably.
You see it all the time in sports — the player of immense natural talent who believes that talent alone will get them there. Life rarely works that way.
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304 comments Add your comment
I Report :-) You Whine :-(
June 25th, 2009
8:16 am
Sotomayor’s a racist!
~~~~~
The report warned that TARP leaves taxpayers far more vulnerable to big losses than the private companies Geithner is recruiting to buy up toxic mortgage assets. Losses through fraud alone could be “staggering,” according to the report. Barofsky said he knew of 20 separate criminal investigations involving the program and is himself directing six audits into TARP outlays, but did not reveal who is under scrutiny.
Yeah, let’s talk about something trivial, let’s change the subject, the largest undertaking of fraud in US history is no big deal, let’s MoveOn.
eewwww
ty webb
June 25th, 2009
8:22 am
Can we just copy and paste all the comments from yesterday’s blog? The comments are just going to be more of the same(daughter knocked up, GOP will lose again, she’s dumb, etc.). I’ll check back in later. Everyone have a good day!
Normal
June 25th, 2009
8:25 am
I wonder if Pat Buchanan has ever read children classics? But since he said it, it must be true…NOT!!
Normal
June 25th, 2009
8:26 am
Is Sarah Palin Pat Buchanan’s love child?
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
8:26 am
wow, whiner … quoting from an article dated 2 months ago … did you need the extra time to look up all the big words???
(oh, and by the way … 10 banks have paid back the TARP loans – the Fed and Treasury is already ahead of their projections)
booga! booga!!
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
8:28 am
you now, the right always condemns immigrants (both legal and non) for not learning the language, for not trying to assimilate.
Sotomayer does and what do they do?? belittle her as stupid.
now, tell me again, why are they the party of the elephant and not the ass???
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
8:29 am
oh, and for you GOPpers out there – it’s called intellectual curiosity … something that was sadly lacking for the last 8 years, but is back in vogue now …
ByteMe
June 25th, 2009
8:30 am
I find it ironic that conservatives — who are ok voting for Republican presidents who are intellectually disengaged — would try to attack the intelligence of people who have graduated “cum laude” from Ivy League colleges.
The usual anti-intellectualism from the movement that no longer has a brain.
TnGelding
June 25th, 2009
8:33 am
Excellent article, Jay. Thanks for further clearing up Sotomayor’s reading material in college, while the lovely Sarah wasn’t willing to reveal hers last year. I think that hurt her credibility. I doubt that the governor has the time to thoroughly prepare herself on all the major issues. Anyway, they’ll change between now and the election. Obama is going to fix everything.
I Report
You Whine 
June 25th, 2009
8:16 am
Protecting big business? I’d think you’d support that 100%. Let’s see how everything plays out before jumping to conclusions.
clyde
June 25th, 2009
8:33 am
Somewhere along the line we all learned English in our own way.There are more important reasons why Sotomayer should not be a Supreme Court Judge than her reading of children’s literature.
HDB
June 25th, 2009
8:34 am
Thank you, Jay; this was DEFINITELY on point!!
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
8:35 am
hahahaha … best line I’ve read about the Ensign/Sanford debacles:
Said Todd Harris, a Republican operative, “If this was supposed to be our farm team, we’d better start looking for a new farm.”
(chuckling)
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
8:36 am
um. excuse me … but since when is Pride and Prejudice “children’s literature” … ???
Mrs. Godzilla
June 25th, 2009
8:39 am
I see that the Lovely Guv has yet to commit to the Alaska 2010 election.
Seems she may be planning to go national.
If she could spend the next year getting up to speed on the issues
she MIGHT be able to keep her foot out of her mouth.
Pride and Prejudice a childrens book????
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”
Not kid stuff. Buchanan is an idiot.
Normal
June 25th, 2009
8:41 am
Sarah’s College reading list contained “Huey, Duey, and Louie go On Vacation”, “Goofy Goes To Skool”, and “Micky and Minnie Lived in Sin”…Just sayin’
I Report :-) You Whine :-(
June 25th, 2009
8:41 am
~~~~~~~~~~~~~Congress Must Pay~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ for What It Spends
Democrats won’t be the party of deficits. By STENY HOYER and GEORGE MILLER
Huh, out of their paychecks?
Hahahahaha, yeah, ok.
The democrat rulers don’t even acknowledge We The People.
It’s all play money to them.
GOP for Thee
June 25th, 2009
8:42 am
Pat Buchanan must have been a Hahvard man to come down so hard on a Princeton graduate.
reebok
June 25th, 2009
8:44 am
Pat Buchana couldn’t get through ‘Pride and Prejudice’ if you gave him the Classics Illustarted comic-book version.
reebok
June 25th, 2009
8:44 am
sorry, ‘Buchanan.’
RB from Gwinnett
June 25th, 2009
8:46 am
Soto has something else Palin doesn’t have, Jay. A slobering media willing to overlook anything and everything because she’s the choice of their messiah. On the other hand, Palin gets no credit for having successfully led a town and state government, has her family trashed as if there are no limits to decency in the public forum, and must constantly defend herself from false accusations aimed at discrediting her simply because she’s conservative.
Quite frankly, Jay, I’m sick of Ivy League educated people being held up as being somehow superior to the rest of us. They’re not. Get over it.
GOP for Thee
June 25th, 2009
8:47 am
The GOP had better pray that Sarah does not get caught up in a love triangle. After all, we all saw the way Putin looked at her and she knows where Russia is. I mean, if the GOP loses her to a long-distance lover, who will they have left.
S GA dem
June 25th, 2009
8:48 am
But if Palin were to read and educate herself, she would be excluded from Republican politics because she would then be one of those ‘elitists’ she’s always complaining about. Besides that, doesn’t she want to ban a lot of the books she should have already read from her local library??
rcs
June 25th, 2009
8:48 am
Jay, that commenter was me. I tried to make a point that had the shoe been on the other foot, Palin would have been ridiculed for reading those books in her college years. My attempt failed. Paul, josef nix and others did a fine job pointing that out. Why the need to rehash it all again?
Mrs. Godzilla
June 25th, 2009
8:49 am
To bad there’s not some kind of doctrine that would require fairness
from that slobbering media, eh RB from Gwinnett.
What a shame!
Turd Ferguson
June 25th, 2009
8:49 am
Agreed…If Palin doesnt do the work then she will yet again fall flat.
Soto is just a bad idea.
Turd Ferguson
June 25th, 2009
8:50 am
Fair…that word has been so used/abused it is no longer a relevant.
I Report :-) You Whine :-(
June 25th, 2009
8:51 am
Calzada says Spain’s torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources — on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada’s report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies — wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital. (European media regularly report “eco-corruption” leaving a “footprint of sleaze” — gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain’s economy.
There’s that word again, fraud.
eewwwwww
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
8:52 am
RB –
“Palin gets no credit for having successfully led a town and state government”
you didn’t complete the sentence … “successfully led a town FURTHER INTO DEBT and a state government FURTHER INTO CRONYISM”
there. now the thought is complete.
GOP for Thee
June 25th, 2009
8:52 am
Palin would have been ridiculed
What! By her peers — the Pat Buchanans of the world! Ouch! Excessive laughter hurts, in a good way though.
I'm ruled by Andy
June 25th, 2009
8:54 am
My favorite children’s books are Johny Has Two Things and Sex Change For Dummies.
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
GOP for Thee
June 25th, 2009
8:55 am
Whiner — fraud. I concur.
Huckabee The Next POTUS
June 25th, 2009
8:55 am
Now, if the old hag would read The Constitution and The Bill Of Rights and quit using them for toilet paper she might be qualified for a traffic court judge position. I would imagine had it not been for Affirminate Action this clown would have failed to get into a Community College. Jan. 20, 2013 can’t get here soon enough, I can only pray that we make it that far with Obambam and his merry band of czars in control. I never thought anyone could make Jimmy Carter look good but this socialist POS has done just that.
Dave R.
June 25th, 2009
8:56 am
What Sotomayor has that Palin does not is a fawning media that will do everything it can to elevate her to a position she isn’t qualified for. That same media was simply out to destroy anyone who was named as McCain’s running mate.
It doesn’t take intelligence or glibness to be a President (see our current one or the former one); it takes the ability to govern by a core set of principles and the ability to listen to your advisors and make decisions based on their input. No one knows whether Palin has that ability because she was villified by the left from day one for not answering their questions they way they wanted her to answer them.
Harry Truman was no genius, but was loaded with common sense; same for Eisenhower. Both turned out to be pretty good Presidents. We could use a lot less flash from Hope & Change and a lot more substance right now. I didn’t vote for McCain, but he’d be a major improvement over the American Idol President. And Palin would have been head and shoulders above bumble-speak Biden.
GayGrayGeek
June 25th, 2009
8:56 am
Turd @ 8:50 – Yep, you’re right. As I’ve said previously – Faux Noise has proved that it’s as “Fair” as Simon Legree and as “Balanced” as Blance DuBois…
Bosch
June 25th, 2009
8:57 am
RB,
You’re just jealous of smart people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you look in any college’s catalog, there will most likely be a course in Children’s/Adolescent Literature. It’s fairly common, I took the class myself in college and it was fun! I read the Bridge to Terabitha and yes, I got a lump in my throat.
We had this conversation last night, children’s books are an excellent tool for children or anyone who does not use English as their first language – any educator will tell you that. One trick to getting kids to read on level is to have an array of books of different reading levels in the classroom and let them choose. Of course, they’ll pick the one that they think the teacher wants them to read, but eventually, they’ll pick the one they CAN read and go from there.
As far as Palin v. Sotomayer in an intellectual discussion? Um, that’s almost hilarious just to think about.
Jay’s article is spot on. Many women like Palin rely on their looks to get them through life – and alot of times it works, until you are faced, like she was, answering some tough questions by people who are above looking at someone’s looks. To alot of people, being smart is much more of a turn on.
Mrs. Godzilla
June 25th, 2009
8:58 am
To bad there’s no doctrine requiring fairness from that fawning media!
If the media was doctrinally required to be fair…..McCain Palin
would be in the White House right now!
ByteMe
June 25th, 2009
8:59 am
RB amply demonstrates the anti-intellectualism I mentioned earlier. Thanks!
DB, Gwinnettian
June 25th, 2009
8:59 am
Whoa.
Thanks for picking up that ball and running with it, Jay.
Nice work, going beyond an easy-peasy smackdown of the sort I’d probably administer (concluding with something tasteful like “Pat Buchanan pleasures farm animals for nickles and gives change”) were I trying to do what you do, and making it instead about genuine leadership character issues that people really do, and should, care about.
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
9:02 am
(posted downstairs, but worth repeating)
Hey Bosch!!! I see your sacrifice to the gods of soccer pleased them:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/sports/soccer/25vecsey1.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
(what’s the American version of oleeeee-ole-ole-oleeeeeee … oleeeeee … oleeeee)
Wide stance Andy
June 25th, 2009
9:05 am
I’d like to comment, but I can’t read and my Mom won’t type in all the dirty words I asked her to type here… Guess I’ll just go back to the airport bathrooms or the truckstop at Wade Green rd and see if I can score some luvin’
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
GOP for Thee
June 25th, 2009
9:05 am
I can almost picture it now. If Sarah had been elected to the executive level, in no time at all the pictures would have started showing up on youtube and the talk about her “behavior” would have started and the word about who paid for what in order to make her more picturesque and then McCain would have had no choice but to pull the Trump card and admit that she was nothing but a “hail Mary” attempt and we all know how that fifteen minutes of fame worked out. Well, that’s almost the way it played out, except for the getting elected part.
Paul
June 25th, 2009
9:07 am
[[children’s classics... Huckleberry Finn, and Pride and Prejudice...]]
“Children’s” classics? I know more than a few adults who would have difficulty getting through those, let alone being able to discuss the themes and present-day implications.
I’d wondered if Gov Palin would use the time to immerse herself in foreign/national policy issues so she could come back for another Katie Couric interview and blow her socks off. Wouldn’t be difficult – “why would you phrase the question like that, Katie? Surely the researchers at CBS know…”
g’morning, getalife
Congratulations! That was painful to watch (at least for some of us). You on good terms with Gov Jindal? He’s about to get a 4X4 F350 load of barbecue for winning the bet – maybe he’ll share in the interest of bipartisanship.
Two good teams but only one can claim the title. Congrats, LSU.
Hey, didja see Rep Barney Frank on Bill O Reilly last night? They were agreeing on stuff – BF said cut Defense and Agricultural subsidies to pay for health care. BOR said “I’m with you on that.” At one point BOR said they were agreeing on so much, pretty soon they’d go camping together….
Does BF ever smile? Or was it because he was having a tough time cleaning his fingernails during the interview? BOR asked him at the end if he was happy… BF said he’s never happy… is that a liberal condition?
Jay, you’ve got another thread waiting in the wings, right? Please? Pleeeease?
Bosch
June 25th, 2009
9:08 am
USinUK,
Yeah, I worked hard to arrange that sacrifice – and of course, I can’t tell anyone what it was – the soccer god wouldn’t be pleased, if ya’ know what I mean.
Oh, it truly was a “Miracle on the Grass”
Copyleft
June 25th, 2009
9:08 am
Renowned conservative racist Pat Buchanan sees a Latina judge and makes an ignorant, racist remark.
In other breaking news, the Pacific Ocean contains some water. A-DUH. That’s how the GOP appeals to their “base”–with simpleminded race hatred to keep the outrage engines stoked and running hot.
Dave R.
June 25th, 2009
9:10 am
Or better yet, Mrs. G., if the media were to actually have a set of journalistic principles that they would follow, there would never be another liberal elected to national office.
But principles, media and liberalism are three words rarely used in the same sentence.
GOP for Thee
June 25th, 2009
9:11 am
And, Huck Finn is an absolute must read ifin you is plannin’ on efficiently communin’ with us sutherners.
I Report :-) You Whine :-(
June 25th, 2009
9:11 am
Even the moonbats are against “Cap and Tax-”
Last week HR2454 was 946 pages long. As of Wednesday morning it had burgeoned to 1,201 pages, as various constituencies made backroom deals with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and his cohorts. That blatant vote-buying and sweetheart deal-making is why environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, and the open-government organization the Sunlight Foundation have come out against the bill.-OCRegister
Now we have to bribe them, eewwww.
USinUK
June 25th, 2009
9:12 am
Paul -
don’t confuse happy with satisfied.
I’m generally a happy person, but I’m not satisfied with where our country is vs. where it needs to be. (but I’m satisfied with our leader and our congress and that we’re kinda-sorta moving in the right direction)
however, I could have done without this mental picture: At one point BOR said they were agreeing on so much, pretty soon they’d go camping together….
some of us just had lunch, ya know …
Bosch
June 25th, 2009
9:17 am
Paul,
Yeah I agree with USinUK – some of us just had breakfast. EWwww.
RW-(the original)
June 25th, 2009
9:19 am
As other commenters noted, that’s not exactly accurate. Sotomayor recalled in a 1996 speech that “I spent my summers at Princeton doing things most of my other classmates took for granted. I spent one summer vacation reading children’s classics that I had missed in my prior education — books like Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and Pride and Prejudice. My parents spoke Spanish, they didn’t know about these books.”
Maybe you people calling Buchanan an idiot for supposedly calling Pride and Prejudice a children’s book should reread that excerpt and see who it is you’re really calling an idiot.
Jay B,
How many summers did Sarah Palin have to work on her “weaknesses” between the time McCain asked her to join the ticket and the time she had to hit the campaign trail?