Introducing the Sotomayor Buzzword Watch

In their endless dissection of the Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and her so-called "identity politics," conservatives are inventing a new vocabulary of insults. Some are creative, some bumbling, and some just plain insulting. Today's favorite is "reverse racist," meant to convey her belief in the innate superiority of Latina women over white men.

To keep up with the growing lexicon, Double X is launching a Sotomayor Buzzword Watch. We'll be keeping track of what epithets they throw at her, from "Maria" to "racist," and measuring them on a scale from mild to mean.

"Maria": Mike Huckabee mistakenly referred to Sotomayor as "Maria [2]" on his website. Honest mistake, or does Huck think every Latina is named Maria? Unclear, and so this insult ranks a 4 on the mild to mean scale.

"Racist": Rush Limbaugh calls Sotomayor an updated racist, or reverse racist, and Obama [3]the father of all reverse racists. This is based on a highly selective reading of Sotomayor's 1991 comment about the wisdom of Latina women: “Here you have a racist—you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist ... of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism ... Well, those days are gone, because reverse racists certainly do have the power ... Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he's appointed one.” Newt Gingrich went even further [4], and Tweeted today: "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw. [5]" Ouch! And in under 140 characters! Such concise cruelty ranks a 7, closer to naughty than nice.

Photo illustration by Vivian Selbo. Photograph of Sonia Sotomayor by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.