White Male Entitlement and Sonia Sotomayor: The Hypocrisy is So Blatant, It is Blinding

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

The white male entitlement pushback on the Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination is so brazenly hypocritical it is blinding.

Certainly, the corporate mainstream media is taken in by it, because the likes of the New York Times can't stop printing "truthiness" stories that are just toned down, right-wing "attack" message points on Sotomayor (we counted 5 in one day just a short time ago).

When you distill the ferocity of the GOP assault on Sotomayor, it comes down to one furious objection: she's not a white male.

Over the years, BuzzFlash has repeated that the most basic emotional driving force of the Limbaugh/Rove/O'Reilly/Hannity wing of the culture wars is the desire of the white male to return to the throne of power that existed prior to the civil rights and feminist empowerment movements of the '60 and '70s -- and the GLBT equal rights campaigns that emerged full force in the '80s.

Fundamentally, white males are still mad as Hell that they were forced to share power in the name of equality guaranteed under the Constitution -- otherwise known as the law.  They don't like it, not one bit, and any male worth his AK-47 knows that a John Wayne American male doesn't give up power without a fight. So, it has been, ironically, their wet dream to pack the federal courts with partisan "activist" judges who will remake the laws -- in essence rewrite the Constitution -- to favor white males.

Despite hardened cynicism developed under 8 years of Bush, BuzzFlash has watched aghast as the mainstream media has given voice to groundless accusations against Sotomayor and even egged them on, providing completely irrelevant or misleading "leads" to the right-wing echo chamber.

From guns to abortion doctors gunned down, from draconian anti-immigration proposals to bills that limit voting rights, from xenophobic hate of non-white, non-Christian religions to the opposition to Sotomayor, it is all fueled by the white male RE-empowerment movement.

Not that having 8 of 9 male members on the Supreme Court should be considered anything but a white male juggernaut of high court control (we count Clarence Thomas as white, since he is pretty much the hand puppet of Scalia when it comes to voting), but clearly 7 of 9 (once Sotomayor is seated) is the straw that will break the camel's back to the mindset of the Neo-Confederates who yearn for the days when the male plantation owner could piously attend church, go rape one of his slaves, and then eat dinner seated at the head of the table as his wife and children obediently listened to him opine on the abolitionist heretics of the North.

The middle and working class white male, even in the North, became heirs to this mindset as they saw their wives go off to work, become sexually emancipated, divorce them -- and worse yet found themselves working with and for women and people of color and different ethnic backgrounds. And there was all that homophobic fear rising in up in them as gays threatened their sexual and psychological mindset.

Pity the white male: he no longer could rely on his gender and color to automatically be entitled to obtain power; he now had to compete for it based on merit.

That is why so many white males and Christian females who accept the patriarchal system were thrilled with Bush.  Unless Obama utterly fails -- which the Limbaugh-led winger white males are hoping and working for -- Bush may be the last white male president (albeit illegitimately and revealing selected -- not elected -- by the Supreme Court Sotomayor will sit on) who achieved his position in life almost 100% on white male entitlement, because it certainly wasn't on merit.  If George W. Bush had to compete in the world on his capabilities, he would have been lucky to hold down a job as a Wal-Mart greeter.

So, as the ceaseless chatter about Sotomayor crowds our current mass media (who are further proving their lack of contemporary value by wasting time chasing down and regurgitating stories such as the nuances between Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a "racist" or a "racialist") and continues unabated, while the U.S. confronts serious, real challenges on all fronts, let's remember the most basic driving force behind this: right-wing white males are mad as Hell and aren't going take power sharing anymore.

That also explains, in large part, all the attention given to Dick Cheney's ongoing Torture Pushback Tour, as if he were currently running against Barack Obama for President.  Cheney's media blitz emergence from his bat cave after he left office as Vice-President (but President in charge of foreign policy) could, to a great degree, be called: "The White Man Fights Back Against the First Black President: It's my Country, and I'll Torture Those Dark Skinned Men if I Want to."

Dear me, how it reminds one of the old days on the Southern Plantation, when slaves could be whipped, tortured and hung up like dried fruit at will.

Those were the glory days of white male entitlement -- when they didn't have to share power with another living soul -- weren't they?

It's 2009, and it's baffling as to why this nation is still fighting a Civil War (AKA culture wars) that was resolved in favor of equality, justice, and Constitutional rights more than 140 years ago.

Apparently, the very powerful white males who run the GOP, our corporate press, and our elite financial markets haven't gotten the message yet that they lost the war -- or maybe they've just never accepted the terms of surrender after all.

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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