Free Speech Isn't a License to Inflame Extremists

Something very unpleasant is happening in this country.  Many of us were lulled into believing that race and gender were no longer subjects for political vitriol.  But the Sotomayor hearings and a black family in the White House have shown that was an overly optimistic assessment. People with loud voices and daily access to microphones, cameras and blogs have made ugly forms of expression seemingly acceptable.

Pundits of dubious intellect regale listeners with lame attempts at humor, and a host of anchors and political hacks try to convince us their observations are based on a careful distillation of facts. Pat Buchanan, still drooling over Sarah Palin, sent colleagues at MSNBC into fits of laughter when he suggested that "first dude" Todd Palin should take Levi Johnston (father of daughter Bristol's child) down to a creek and hold his head under water "until the thrashing stops." That's funny? And in a telling moment Senator Grassley on Wednesday's Morning Joe said his side was more interested in Sotomayor's speeches than her actual record. These are very troubled people.

Republicans spend their time accusing Sotomayor of racism and activism rather than focusing on her established body of work as a prosecutor and judge. Clearly the minority on the Senate Judiciary Committee planned to slow if not derail any candidate the president proposed. And they overlook the fact that racial bias often dictated the course of governmental conduct and Supreme Court decisions. It was neither noble nor just for the Court to rule that a black slave was someone's property or that "separate" was "equal." The eventual reversal of those opinions proved that court renderings are not incontrovertible but are defined according to the way justices interpret the Constitution.

As one observer declared recently, people in this country seem to engage in "collective amnesia" about injustices in our not-so-distant past. Of course a woman's presence on the bench brings another perspective to cases beyond that of an all-male panel, just as racially-balanced juries began to reach different conclusions than those of previously all-white juries in the Deep South.  For Senator Sessions to accuse Judge Sotomayor of intolerance was a tortured bit of nonsense, especially in light of a well documented, racial animus that kept him from the federal bench some years back.

Contending that people are trying to "smear" firefighter Ricci, Senator Hatch got Judge Sotomayor to declare this unseemly. That might be a valid response if Ricci were actually being smeared rather than simply questioned about his history. In fact Ricci seems to be something of a serial plaintiff. Arguing that he was excluded from the department (one of some 700 applicants for 40 openings) because he was dyslexic he withdrew his lawsuit when he was eventually hired. If anything, that was an indication of New Haven's aversion to protracted litigation. Ricci later filed suit against another Fire Department over a different issue. Surely his litigious habits invite questions.

For his part Lindsey Graham shuffled through comments from lawyers, some of whom claimed that Sotomayor is a bully, and asked if she thought she had a "temperament problem." He also regurgitated her "wise Latina" remark - - asked and answered about a dozen times, Senator. Graham's insistence that his career would have ended had he touted the superiority of white man's wisdom fails to acknowledge that white men made most of the decisions for a very long time. That fact didn't need to be verbalized because, as we all know, actions speak louder than words.

The minority might do well to initiate some self examination of its own to determine if its combative approach serves a useful purpose other than to titillate the base. Everyone in the public arena should take care not to facilitate the uptick in hate speech that has surfaced recently in the media and on the web. Newscasters, as well as politicians, share responsibility for the coarsening, accusatory nature of our national discourse and should undertake to stem the surge of hateful demons unleashed by their steamy rhetoric.

There are some outrageous screeds on a number of conservative blogs and even more disturbing comments from readers - - appalling attacks on the president and his family that should be disavowed by anyone in the conservative wing of the Republican Party who hopes to preserve some measure of respect and credibility from the public at large.