"Let them eat brioche..."
When Marie Antoinette heard that the peasants of France had no bread to eat, she is quoted as saying "qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Brioche being a very rich bread made with egg and butter, certainly something that a peasant in the field could not afford. But as most of us don’t know what brioche is, other than Julia Childe and a whole country of Frenchmen, someone misquoted her as saying “let them eat cake”. It doesn’t really matter, it became a banner that helped spawn the French revolution and that poor little Marie paid with her head for saying it.
It’s amazing how a single phrase or quote denotes a political figure. Think of George Washington and we get “I can never tell a lie”. Think of Harry Truman and you recall “The buck stops here”. Richard Nixon had a couple, he was a regular word smith, but my personal favorite is “I am not a crook!”
Our mass media is obsessed with finding the perfect sound bite. Every time a new person enters the lime light of the political arena they are open game for the hungry mud slingers, either from the republican or the democratic side of the fence to start digging into someone’s past, searching for some forgotten nugget from some erstwhile speech, interview or article published in some obscure newsletter bythe local PTA.
Taken out of context, edited without regard for what the true meaning was, and blown out of proportion to the extent that the fallout stays in the news for days, even weeks. And the Rush Limbauch’s of the world dance in merry circles rejoicing that they have another day’s fodder for the uninformed masses that hang on their every word.
Last week President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to fill the soon to be vacant seat on the Supreme Court. No sooner than her name hit the wires than the conservative press unleashed its gaggle of fact finders like the wicked witch of the west sending out her flying monkeys to capture some gem of unspeakable dirt on the Justice to be.
And this is what they dug up: During a speech at the University of California at Berkeley, in 2001 Sotomayor said, "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."
That’s it? That’s their best shot??? How many hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes did they have to screen to find that? How many of thousands of pages of legal opinions did they have to comb. In her entire career as a federal judge, that’s all they could come up with?
And guess what, she’s right. The Supreme Court is filled with white men (and one woman) who have lived lives of privilege, likely never having seen the inside of a thee bedroom apartment in the lower east side of the Bronx, yet alone lived in one.
When Marie Antoinette heard that the peasants of France had no bread to eat, she is quoted as saying "qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Brioche being a very rich bread made with egg and butter, certainly something that a peasant in the field could not afford. But as most of us don’t know what brioche is, other than Julia Childe and a whole country of Frenchmen, someone misquoted her as saying “let them eat cake”. It doesn’t really matter, it became a banner that helped spawn the French revolution and that poor little Marie paid with her head for saying it.
It’s amazing how a single phrase or quote denotes a political figure. Think of George Washington and we get “I can never tell a lie”. Think of Harry Truman and you recall “The buck stops here”. Richard Nixon had a couple, he was a regular word smith, but my personal favorite is “I am not a crook!”
Our mass media is obsessed with finding the perfect sound bite. Every time a new person enters the lime light of the political arena they are open game for the hungry mud slingers, either from the republican or the democratic side of the fence to start digging into someone’s past, searching for some forgotten nugget from some erstwhile speech, interview or article published in some obscure newsletter bythe local PTA.
Taken out of context, edited without regard for what the true meaning was, and blown out of proportion to the extent that the fallout stays in the news for days, even weeks. And the Rush Limbauch’s of the world dance in merry circles rejoicing that they have another day’s fodder for the uninformed masses that hang on their every word.
Last week President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to fill the soon to be vacant seat on the Supreme Court. No sooner than her name hit the wires than the conservative press unleashed its gaggle of fact finders like the wicked witch of the west sending out her flying monkeys to capture some gem of unspeakable dirt on the Justice to be.
And this is what they dug up: During a speech at the University of California at Berkeley, in 2001 Sotomayor said, "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."
That’s it? That’s their best shot??? How many hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes did they have to screen to find that? How many of thousands of pages of legal opinions did they have to comb. In her entire career as a federal judge, that’s all they could come up with?
And guess what, she’s right. The Supreme Court is filled with white men (and one woman) who have lived lives of privilege, likely never having seen the inside of a thee bedroom apartment in the lower east side of the Bronx, yet alone lived in one.
Here is a woman, born in a lower middle class neighborhood in the Bronx raised by a single parent, who by all accounts had absolutely no chance to do anything with her life other than get married, raise children and go to church. But somehow she didn’t know that. She believed in the American Dream where all people are created equal and have an equal chance to succeed. And guess what, in 1972, she made a huge leap toPrinceton University, an Ivy League school that had only started accepting women undergraduates in 1969.
She aced the place, graduating summa cum laude and went on to go to Yale Law School, where she was an editor of a law journal. She moved on from there to work as a trial lawyer in the Manhattan district attorney's office, as an attorney in private practice and then as a federal judge.
Never mind that she is Latina, anyone, white, black, purple or green who accomplished that is enough to make your eyes tear over and weep in sheer joy that the system actually worked!
Her record is stellar, her judgments remarkable and her impartial standings are not only well documented but well known.
Her record is stellar, her judgments remarkable and her impartial standings are not only well documented but well known.
And to all those conservative white pundits who are in a thither that a Latina woman should speak her mind, I say this:
"qu'ils mangent de la corbeau” – roughly translated “Let them eat crow!”
Au reuoir!
Au reuoir!
I love your rants and we miss you! We're all working so hard we hardly see each other! The birdie leaves for London in 2 weeks from today. We can hardly believe it! MISS YOU!!
ReplyDelete