Unprofessionalism at the Boston Herald: White Men Attacked

Margery Eagan of the Boston Herald has done it again. She's unleashed her deathless prose filled with soaring rhetoric and high concepts all revealing her infinite sagacity. OK, that was just sarcasm. In truth, Eagan has given us another example of the sort of low-end, guttural, sputterings that we have become so used to seeing drip like sour milk from her pen. Her latest Boston Herald piece is a prime example of the unprofessionalism that pervades her work.

In a posting titled "Men in throes of Supreme panic," Eagan gets into her best name calling mode against all those eeeevil "white men" out there that might find reason to oppose President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a woman well known for positing that female Hispanics are inherently better judges than white men -- a sentiment that if reversed would be considered a racist statement.

Like a 12-year-old brawling on the playground, Eagan casts as much aspersion as she can in the space of one sparse column. Unfortunately, with every "point" she makes, she seems to indulge in the precise behavior she seems to be condemning.

Of course, her main goal is to paint any opposition to Sotomayor as racist at its heart. Her first lines set up that hollow claim at the outset.

It’s been such fun watching the right-wing white boys sputtering over the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a Hispanic woman nominated by a black man!

"Our world domination's slip, slip, slipping away," you can almost hear them whimper. "What to do?"

What a childish attempt to obscure Sotomayor's record and shift the debate to nonsense.

Now, does Eagan have any proof that any right leaning pundit, politician, or leader is objecting to Sotomayor because she's Hispanic or because Obama's black? Not a single shred is presented. But she knows that by painting any opposition as based in racism she can shift the debate from Sotomayor's actual record to something less logical or legitimate. By obscuring facts Eagan knows that this is the best way to argue in Sotomayor's favor, her record is so indefensible.

What Eagan does instead of proving that conservatives are acting themselves as racists against Sotomayor, she shifts the debate to conservatives talking about racist statements by Sotomayor and presenting the discussion as if that is itself automatically an act of racism. It is the sort of double thinking that the left is famous for.

Extreme leftists like Eagan used to use this sort of double talk to say that talking about communist infiltration was "irrational." When conservatives used to talk of communist infiltration of the U.S., instead of addressing the substance of the charge the left's double talk reply was always something like "well, you are just irrationally afraid of communism." Of course, after the fall of the U.S.S.R. it was discovered that communist infiltration was even more extensive than previously thought and conservatives were right about it all along. Naturally, the left still pretends reality doesn't exist. In any case, it was a double talk reply that relegated the actual discussion to a non-sequitur that they could more easily win.

This is a similar case. Talk of Sotomayor's inherently racist statements is, in leftist double talk, itself an act of racism. But Eagan has an excuse for Sotomayor's racist styled presumptions that latinas are inherently better judges. It's because there used to be discrimination, see. So, reverse discrimination is a'ok in her book.

Note to those arguing that if a white man said about caucasians what Sotomayor did about Latina women judging better, he’d be finished: That’s true. But it’s a ridiculous analogy. White men - unlike women and minorities - have never endured government-sanctioned racism. Not yet, anyway.

This is nothing if not an admission by Eagan that she has no interest in "fairness" or "egalitarianism." She wants permanent revenge and punishment. There was a famous civil rights leader that once asked America to judge people on their merit, their achievements, and their individual talents. Eagan rejects King's vision and wants to continue discrimination and government oppression... as long as it is against white men.

Eagan again drifts into her rote attack on principled conservatism: it's all racism.

Why, when a white man wins a political seat or a court appointment, it’s all about merit? But when a nonwhite wins (Obama) or gets appointed (Sotomayor), it’s all about “identity politics” and tokenism?

An obviously untrue statement. When Condi Rice was first offered as Secretary of State under Bush, conservatives were head-over-heels about the idea. No one on the right was saying it was "tokenism." No conservatives were against Colin Powell until he rejected the Republican Party as he has recently. Conservatives were thrilled by the nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. No one on the right objected to Elaine Chao as Secretary of Labor based on her being an Asian female. And again, when Sarah Palin was chosen as McCain's vice presidential candidate, no conservatives lambasted her as a candidate of simple "identity politics."

Why is the above so? Because those candidates were on the right side of the issues as far as conservatives were concerned. The right supports or doesn't support candidates based on that candidate's beliefs and policy proscriptions, not because they are female or because of their ethnic origin.

On the other hand, the left offers candidate precisely based on their racial or gender origin. Let's take Obama's former Senate seat, for instance. The talk throughout Illinois when Obama vacated his seat to take the White House was that of how Illinois Governor Blagojevich was going to fill the "black seat." You see, it was determined that Obama's Senate seat was now a "black" Senate seat since Obama had taken it and any candidate that was going to fill the unused term had to be a black person to keep the seat black. No talk of qualifications ever entered into the subject. Only racial qualifications were discussed. (Well, that and how much money said candidate could slide Blagojevich's way, but that is another subject.)

Eagan ends her playground taunts with this absurd line:

Well take heart, fellas. No one’s pushing an all-girl court lineup: white, black, Hispanic and lesbian.

Well take heart, Margery. No one on the right has any interest if a candidate IS white, black, Hispanic or a lesbian. They only care if they are conservative. But you go ahead and act the hack like all of your ilk trying to make this argument against Sotomayor seem based only in racism. Meanwhile, we will continue to show that Sonia Sotomayor is an anti-Second Amendment activist, a judge that thinks in political terms instead of terms of law, and a woman that says her race and gender are superior to all others.