You're right, Hanna. The White House, and Sotomayor, too, by agreeing to the walk back, are giving the "wise Latina" mini-fracas more air, not less. Her speech sparked an interesting and even vital discussion this week about the value of having judges with different life experiences on the bench. Now we move to hedging and hemming and hawing? I'll ask the next question they'd all be better off not spending the weekend fielding: OK, so if her word choice was poor, does she still believe in the idea she was expressing?

Tags: Sonia Sotomayor; Supreme Court; judges; diversity, Supreme Court

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today that the president would say that Sotomayor's word choice in her suddenly-infamous Berkeley speech was "poor." It's maddening that the White House is now taking this line. Maybe they mean to take the air out of it, but I bet it will accomplish the opposite, and give everyone license to talk about it again all weekend. This was a published speech, after all, not an off-the-cuff remark, and presumably the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal allows authors to edit copy, like everyone else.

It wasn't the best choice of words, but I would downgrade that to "poor" only because it is likely to be taken out of context when, eight years later, she is nominated for the Supreme Court. As we have hashed out here and here, Sotomayor was talking about sex discrimination cases, in which there is actual evidence that having a woman on a panel of judges actually does make a difference. Her speech was actually much more nuanced than the right made it out to be, which Gibbs got to in the second half of his speech:

She was simply making the point that experiences are relevant to the process of judging. Your personal experiences have a tendency to make you more aware of certain facts and certain cases, that your experiences impact your understanding.

But I'm betting all we're going to hear from that speech is that word "poor."

Tags: robert gobbs backtrack, white house on sonia sotomayor

Anyone notice that the New York Times story by Jo Becker and Adam Liptak about Sotomayor raising "questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen" was subject to a headline makeover this morning? The headline this morning? "Sotomayor's Sharp Tongue Raises Issue of Temperament." The headline now? "Sotomayor's Blunt Style Raises Issue of Temperament." Dana Goldstein at Tapped caught the original headline it for what it was. Jess pointed out a while back that the Times swapped its obit from "Bea Arthur, TV Battle-ax, Dies at 86" to "Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86." Any bets on what the headline writers there are teeing up for the confirmation itself? "Harridan's Harrowing Ride?" "Shrill Shrew Shatters Senate?" "Vetting the Virago?" Good times.

Tags: sonia sotomayor; gender; New York Times

If the Daily Telegraph is right that the unreleased detainee-abuse photos include graphic images of rape, Obama must have been lying when he said the photos are “not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.” For all the pain of those earlier images, what they depicted were not generally criminal acts in the same way that rape is. They showed violation, humiliation, the horrific power differential between prisoners and their jailors—war crimes, to be sure—but they tended to document the effects and aftermath of violence more than its actual commission. Gourevitch, who writes that he has seen “many—if not most” of the unreleased photos, also gives no indication that they depict sex crimes.

I wouldn’t put it past Obama—or any president—to lie about the content of images that he thinks the public will never see. But what about these photos, which may well be released soon if judges continue to rule as they have recently in favor of the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request? Wouldn’t that be a big risk for the president to undertake? Is it possible that he hasn’t seen the photos of rape, but is referring only to the 40-some images that are part of this particular lawsuit? (Activists say there are as many as 2,000 others that we haven’t yet seen—maybe those are the ones depicting sexual violence.) And does Gourevitch think that if indeed these pictures document rape, that doesn’t even merit a mention in an article arguing against their release? Maybe this would make no difference to his larger point, but it makes a difference to me as a reader to at least acknowledge this content, which as Susannah points out, may complicate matters for some.

Yet even if these unreleased images do depict rape, I still agree with Major General Antonio Taguba's position in the Telegraph piece that they shouldn’t be published. If we have in written form the evidence needed to frame a criminal prosecution, why do we need, as a society, to look at photographs that would further violate the victims by their release? Article 13 of the Geneva Convention notes that prisoners of war must be protected not just against violence and intimidation, but “public curiosity.” When does our need to see the vivid imaes of abuse trump our effort to enforce the very codes whose violation the photos document? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag rightly notes that “most depictions of tormented, mutilated bodies do arouse a prurient interest” and “all images that display the violation of an attractive body are, to a certain degree, pornographic.” We have already seen the pornography of this war. If we don’t know by now that detainee abuse in all its forms is real and appalling and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, more pictures won’t convince us.

Tags: abu ghraib, Obama, politics, torture, torture photos

I’ve been reading a lot of headlines to the effect that “Identity politics are condescending,” and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no idea what identity politics are. To me, the phrase has always referred to the dated assumption that the interests of any particular subgroup are best represented by other members of that subgroup. So the expectation is that Sotomayor will represent “Latina interests” or somesuch, an idea she explicitly rejects when she says “No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice.” But in today’s Seattle Times I am informed that identity politics involve “political payback for an ethnic group or gender.” And elsewhere it just seems to mean diversity for the sake of diversity, or perhaps for the sake of bleeding heart liberalism.

I don’t generally see members of minority groups as vehicles for the interests of some specific class. The reason I care about diversity is that I care about the “expansion of identity creation,” a phrase I think I stole from Reason’s Nick Gillespie. It’s not symbolism I care about; it’s the material way perceptions change when the word “judge” does not automatically call to mind a wrinkled white male, the way unconscious bias fades, stereotype threat loses its grip, and alternative lives become easier to contemplate. It's the obliteration of subtle, silent constraints on behavior, something any libertarian ought to care about.

Of course, when I make this argument publicly, I am accused of playing identity politics. So it’d be super helpful if people would spell out what they mean and what it is they are opposing.

There's a fascinating piece in The Star about a manuscript discovered by a Canadian researcher that appears to be ... a medieval women's magazine. It contains content about "cinnamon," an excerpt from Chaucer, recipes for making sealing wax, and more. As the Star puts it,

The anthology, dedicated to female readers, is known today as Biblioteca Nazionale. Written in Middle English, it predates by centuries many modern women's magazines such as Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan and Redbook. But just like modern women's magazines, it offers advice aplenty—everything from ways to ease childbirth to how to lure a rabbit out of its warren.

What's fascinating is the mental picture that emerges of a medieval woman sitting by the fire, reading Chaucer and recipes just as a 1960s American woman would have flipped in Ms. from fiction to fashion spread. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Tags: medieval ages, women's magazines

Last night's 10-round National Spelling Bee final was a nail-biter, and an awesome one at that. There were redonkulously hard, beautifully arcane words (schizaffin, palatschinken, Neufchâtel). There was heartbreak (heavily-favored Sidharth Chand, last year's runner-up, crumpled before our eyes in the second round, when he realized he spelled apodyterium with an ei). There were class clowns (Kennyi Aouad, a three-timer who famously got the giggles in 2007; not to mention the deadpan ninja Kyle Mou). There was even—awkwardly—former Olympian Shawn Johnson, who just won on Dancing with the Stars, and is apparently qualified to comment on all kinds of childhood competition.

The most compelling story of the night, though, took hold in the final rounds, when it was down to just three competitors, and we learned that two of them—Aishwarya Pastapur and Kavya Shivashankar—have been friends since nursery school. Aishwarya was easily one of the most composed, adult-like kids up there (hello, future Senator!), but when she misspelled menhir, she welled up and scurried off the stage. With her mother's arms wrapped around her, she watched her old friend carry away the trophy with Laodicean.

I was watching over the phone with my best friend—the one I mentioned in yesterday's post, the one I met at a spelling bee—and we both got choked up, for both girls. Now there's a follow-up story I'd like to read, once the dust settles a bit. Hey girls! My friend and I are still tight 17 years later; I have faith in you two.

(Unrelated side note: menhir? Doesn't anyone read Asterix comics anymore?)

Tags: friendship, Indian-Americans, kids, spelling, Television

Hanna and Dayo: I, too, was interested to read the lengthy profile of Bill Clinton in this weekend's New York Times Magazine, but I had a very different reaction to it. I found the profile fawning and thin, the reportage of an obedient dog happily following close on the heels of a once-powerful leader, and I felt like the story behind the story, which shadowed its every word, was left embarrassingly untouched. Aside from a short aside, which is vague to the point of hilarity, almost nothing is mentioned in regards to Clinton's sexual dalliances with Monica Lewinsky.

Apart from that one buried nod, we get: Bill playing second fiddle to Hillary! Bill flying all over the place on do-good missions! Bill, like, totally mellowed, man! But the concurrent story, that Obama's administration seems to be working hard to distance itself from Hillary's husband, seems to me very much tied to the fact that, in case anyone has forgotten, other than the article's author Peter Baker, the long and the short of it is that for the most part Bill Clinton is widely regarded as a fool, a policy wonk who let his penis get the best of him, a man who had the tenacity to rise to the highest office in the land, only to throw it all away with a splooge mark on a young woman's Gap dress. And then lied about it. And then got caught lying about it.

And what's his punishment? The real imprisonment? Playing second fiddle to his wife? Getting shunned by Obama? No. It's his inability to concede that he is little more than a national joke, a court jester who, contrary to tradition, doesn't speak the truth, and it is this image that he seems dedicated to pretending doesn't exist, the unspoken truth Baker ignores, too, in this act of journalistic adding and abetting.

Tags: bill clinton, Hillary Clinton, new york times magazine

A guest post from Cornell law professor Eduardo M. Peñalver, who clerked on the Second Circuit for Judge Guido Calabresi and on the Supreme Court for Justice John Paul Stevens:

As some of you have pointed out, considered in the context the rest of her speech, it is clear that Sotomayor merely meant that appointing “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences” to the bench would (on average) do more to improve judicial decision-making than appointing a(nother) comparably wise white male judge. Understood in this way, the comment is benign and, more importantly, almost certainly true.

Crucial to understanding Judge Sotomayor’s argument is the way in which decisions are made in appellate courts. Both the court on which she sits and the court to which she aspires decide cases collectively. This context is crucial because a large body of social science evidence confirms Judge Sotomayor’s contention that ensuring that a group includes people with a variety of viewpoints and life experiences increases the reliability of the group’s decision-making process. Diverse groups are more likely to reach the right conclusion because the different members of the group complement each other’s blind-spots and reduce the likelihood that commonly held, but incorrect, assumptions will carry the day.

In contrast, homogenous groups tend to feed on their own shortcomings because it is more often the case that no one in the group will challenge widely held biases and misperceptions. In one influential study by Samuel Sommers, a Tufts University psychologist, mixed-race mock juries were found to be more likely to discuss a broader range of case facts than their all-white counterparts. In contrast, members of all-white juries were found to be more likely to make erroneous statements, and those erroneous statements were more likely to go uncorrected. As the conservative legal scholar Adrian Vermeule put it in a 2007 article in the Stanford Law Review, “diversity dilutes groupthink and can thus improve both group deliberation and group decisionmaking.”

The cognitive benefits of diversity for collective decision-making point toward the other piece of information necessary to understand Judge Sotomayor’s argument: the demographic make-up of the federal judiciary. The federal bench as a whole is both significantly whiter (81 percent) and more male (75 percent) than the population in general (75 percent and 49 percent, respectively), and this is especially true of the Court of Appeals. Latinos are particularly underrepresented, constituting just 7 percent of all federal judges but over 12 percent of the population of the United States. Do Judge Sotomayor’s conservative critics really want to contend that a greater diversity of life experiences and viewpoints on the federal bench will not make a difference for the better?

Judge Sotomayor could obviously have been a little more precise in choosing her words. Considered in its full context, however, her point was clear enough. Not only was her comment not racist, it should be utterly uncontroversial.

Tags: Sonia Sotomayor; Supreme Court; judges; diversity

Guest post from The Big Money reporter Chadwick Matlin:

Sarah, your clarion warning to men everywhere is too late. The cougar invasion has already begun. I found myself mingling amongst the mythical women a month ago, when, in the interest of journalism, I served as cub bait for a Slate piece on the cougar phenomenon. That piece, written by the estimable Troy Patterson, has already recounted most of the evening we spent with the cougars. But it didn't discuss the cub-cougar dynamic, one that felt very different from that of the typical night-club courtship. (Admittedly, I, as a slightly neurotic homebody, am not especially familiar with said dynamic. But I digress ...)

The party was part-PR stunt, part-meetup group, designed to host "confident, successful women 40+ and the younger gentlemen (21-35) who adore them!" Upon walking in, it was clear that the evening was about the women. They were the ones with wisdom, savvy, and game. I was the one (ostensibly) looking for a mature woman different than the normal Manhattan dating scene. The advantage was theirs.

The cub-cougar dynamic appears to run on power. Cougardom seems most attractive because of the spin it puts on the normal male-female dynamic. It is the men who are objectified; who are referred to as "boy toys" because of their youth; who are often treated as flings to make the women feel young again. When speaking with Shalah, a 40-year-old Pakistani woman, she told me that she once dated an NYU student more than 10 years her junior. She liked that she was his sugar mama, his caretaker, his overseer. She was the one in control; she was the one with the power. He was the one along for the ride, waiting for her to tire and move on.

Of course, it's difficult to maintain any relationship that features a power imbalance as its defining characteristic. Which is why of the three cougars I interacted with at the party (there weren't many more than that; the club was sparsely populated) all of them were still looking for a long-term relationship. It was clear they weren't going to find one that evening.

Tags: older women, sarah haskins, the cougar, younger men