Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions

I haven’t been watching much of the Sotomayor hearings, because (1) I possess a job, and (2) I lack the capacity to sit still for senatorial bloviating.

But I have nevertheless been charmed by certain snippets, such as Jeff Sessions badgering Sotomayor about the "wise Latina" line for 325 hours, apparently on the grounds that it proves she’s determined to outlaw apple pie and compel Heartland Americans to consume chimichangas at gunpoint — and then turning around and chastising her for not agreeing with a far more sensible Puerto Rican judge. Which sort of logically contradicted his whole line of attack, or would have, had Sessions ever actually been up to anything other than painfully transparent race-baiting, which he wasn’t, and that’s a thoroughly different sort of logic altogether.

I also quite admired Lindsey Graham talking down to Sotomayor like an extremely condescending, passive aggressive Mr. Rogers, dripping with sorrow, we learn, because he was very, very hurt by what she said on the grounds that he’s "an everyday white guy" and thus made mighty mopey by what he thunk was a Puerto Rican woman implying that she just might be smarter than he is.

The major trouble with the GOP harping on the "Wise Latina" line is not that it’s disingenuous, immensely tedious nitpicking, though it is, but rather that it comes across as embarrassing crybaby whining. Graham is especially grating on this score. "Judge Sotomayor, you need to ‘fess up to playing cheap racial identity politics, because, are you not aware how you’re making us white people, and my base voters most especially, so very, very sad and unhappy? Have you no shame, madam, or, I mean, como say parlez, senorita?"

I mean, damn this political correctness anyhow! Why couldn’t we get the really good Jeff Sessions questions, the ones he’d scratched out on his pad right before the hearings began:

"Judge Sotomayor, when you attempt to steal cheese, do you exclaim, ‘¡Andale! ¡Andale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!… (checks notes)… ¡Yii-hah?’"

"Judge Sotomayor, in regards to your judicial philosophy, would you say that you tend to ‘think outside the bun?’"

"Judge Sotomayor, could you be so kind as to explain to the committee precisely why we should vote for Pedro?"

"Judge Sotomayor, do you often dress up like a bumblebee and say ‘ay la policia?’"

"Judge Sotomayor, would you, in fact, eat a One-Ton Tomata?’"

And so forth.