Quote:
Originally Posted by KSigkid
One thing that bugs me about this; I think President Obama is making things slightly harder for her in that he keeps harping on her background and upbringing. I know it makes for good press with the public, but he should just stick to the fact that she's very smart and thinks well on her feet, has an excellent academic background, and has been a successful federal district and appeals judge. At the end of the day, those are the things that will be most important when she sits on the SCOTUS bench, and he's just setting her up for a ton of questions from Republicans about whether she'll let her personal experiences outweigh her respect for the law.
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I agree: I think I'm beyond bugged and it gets to be offensive. The person just ends up becoming a token.
I think well-intentioned liberals, egged on by the mainstream media, can't be faced with a liberal Black or Latino overachiever without putting the "up from the ghetto/barrio/sharecropper" story on them, whether or not it's true. When it's true, as seems to be the case with Sotomayor, I feel like it almost diminishes her accomplishments because her whole life story is condensed to that sound bite. When it's only slightly true, in the case of our President, it seems as if liberals and the mainstream media can't stomach the idea of a successful black or Hispanic person who came from an educated middle-class background. When it can't be applied at all, or if the politics of the person in general don't fit in with the mainstream media (case in point: Condolleezza Rice), it's not seen as an accomplishment at all. It's been annoying me for a little while now, and maybe the conservative press does it as well, so I'm just sensitive to it.