Obama says he’s “sure Sotomayor would have restated” 2001 race comment

The controversy over the nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court of a Hispanic racialist judge with a Hispanic racialist judicial philosophy has not gone away. According to the AP, Obama, after three days of dismissing the problem as “nonsense” (he calls all criticisms of himself nonsense), has now shifted to spinning it:

President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. “I’m sure she would have restated it,” Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that….

Obama’s top spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters about Sotomayor: “I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor.”

Gibbs, however, said he did not hear that from Sotomayor directly.

Here is what Sotomayor said in 2001:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Now, if what was objectionable about this statement was simply poor word choice and not its substance, how might she change the word choice now?

How about,

“I would hope that as a smart Hispanic woman, having had so many Hispanic experiences in my life, I would understand the law and Constitution better than any white male judge.”

Or,

“As a Puerto Rican female, I believe that a street smart Puerto Rican female, like me, is simply a better human being than some fuddy duddy white guy.”

Or,

“It has been shown from studies that whites, also known as ice people, view reality in terms of cold, objective truth, while brown people, like me, view reality in terms of warm human relationship and feelings. The time of the ice people is passing. The future belongs to us. Viva la Raza!”

See, if Sotomayor had just changed the words she used in her remark, while leaving its substance intact, this whole “nonsensical” issue would never have arisen.

- end of initial entry -

June 1

Bill Carpenter writes:

Very amusing revisions of the Sotomayor remarks. Sometimes liberals are caught saying what they actually believe. How many times has it happened to Obama? The rest of us have to make them pay the price for seeking to harm us, though we may be grateful for their occasional candor.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 30, 2009 06:17 PM | Send