� Blackprof & Residential Integration | Main | More Death! �
October 15, 2005
Harriet Miers and the Triumph of Identity Politics
Are you a Christian? Are you doing what Christ wants you to do? Are you going to do that in the Supreme Court? Are you a woman? Are you going to act in the best interests of women?
This is the line of idiotic questioning that seems to be driving the entire controversy over Harriet Miers. We seem to have lost the ability to understand or recognize that people are anything but fixed vessels capable of adaptation. The fixedness of litmus tests and identity tests is the problem, and unless and until we can nail a character to a type, we're unable to make any clear decisions.
What is lacking here, of course, is a clear understanding of what is required of a candidate for the job. It's entirely a matter of political horse-trading, and therefore anything at all can become an 'issue'. To evade that problem, the White House or the Congress or the Press will have to dig deep and get beneath the surface characteristics of judicial nominations. But it's not in their interests to do so? You lose numbers, eyes glaze over.
Posted by mbowen at October 15, 2005 10:12 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4498