Rosen's Redemption

Remember that lady nominated to join the Supreme Court? Sonia something-or-other? Funny, it doesn't seem like the GOP wants to talk about her much anymore. They're on to Democracy, Whisky, Sexy in Iran, and even the wingnut welfare machine of groups making money off of the Sotomayor nomination have started to lay low.

I would guess that somebody read a poll, particularly one including Hispanic voters. And they recognized that going to the mats against her would be completely counter-productive. And now everyone's zipped their lips. Hell, Kenneth Starr endorsed her yesterday.

That doesn't let off the hook those who charged her as a racist and tried to leverage the "white man's burden" theory of politics to make her toxic. It doesn't let off the hook people like Jeffrey Rosen, who lent credence to a bunch of anonymous smears designed to damage her reputation. Rosen is trying to rehabilitate himself with a more measured piece, explaining that you can find bold language and hints to her style in her dissents, not the technical decisions where she upholds settled law. He tries to roll back this charge that she isn't a big thinker by pointing out certain flourishes.

One would hope that everyone has a long memory about Rosen.

...I'm not at all sanguine about whether Sotomayor's presence on the Court can change this dynamic at all, but the current Court really sucks rocks.

Here’s a beaut of a decision from the increasingly brutal and inhumane conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Not content with gutting anti-discrimination legislation, a 5-4 majority has decided that if people are wrongfully convicted they should be punished anyway because, hey, tough on crime!

Ugh.

Taking His Ball Blog And Going Home

I actually ran across the NPR report about Jeffrey Rosen's gossip piece and the impact of it on the debate over Sonia Sotomayor on Sunday morning, and when I heard this I nearly broke my radio:

But its author, the noted legal writer Jeffrey Rosen, says he's been burned by the episode, too — enough that he's swearing off blogging for good.

"It was a short Web piece," Rosen says now, sounding a little shell-shocked. "I basically thought of it as a blog entry". . . .

Above all, Rosen says he's drawn a lesson from how his initial essay was treated by people of both ideological stripes. He won't be blogging any more. He wants to spend more time with the material before hitting "send."

Yes, the medium of blogging made him use anonymous sources to smear a qualified Supreme Court nominee. The darn macros in the publishing tool just cross out all of the named sources, at least on Blogger and Wordpress. It's just like my friend Steve an associate of mine once said: "Jeffrey Rosen wants to slander people after thoughtful consideration, but the publishing tools he uses just force him into rash decision-making!"

Everyone knows the difference between Jeffrey Rosen the lowly blogger and Jeffrey Rosen the self-evidently esteemed writer on legal issues. The former engages in character assassination; the latter, in very deliberate and keen-eyed character assassination. Good to be rid of the former.

As Glenn points out, Rosen actually published the hit piece on Sotomayor not as a blog, but as a stand-alone article, much like writers do on the websites of major publications every single day. Maybe if we're lucky, Rosen will vow not to write on the Internet ever again! Or write, period!

...Meanwhile, Jon Chait's defense of his colleague Rosen is pathetic.

The Early Winner In The Sotomayor Battle

As I said before, despite the bluster, Republican Senators are considering it unlikely to mount a filibuster against Sonia Sotomayor. But there's an entire architecture of movement conservative organizations designed to push a filibuster fight, and they will be hard to ignore. After all, this is how they make their bacon:

Organizations that have been preparing for a major confirmation battle — and that depend on such fights to raise money, motivate supporters and galvanize enthusiasm for their agendas — made it clear they don't intend to sit out the debate, filibuster or no. The debate over Sotomayor could also lay groundwork for fights over later high court nominations the president might make.

Never mind the longer game of making Sotomayor illegitimate, calling into question all her future opinions, and rousing the base even more now that such a woman sits on the nation's highest court ready to persecute them.

TPMDC profiles these movement actors, the same few people you'll see quoted in every paper and appearing on every cable show in the next couple months. There's Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice (who used Sotomayor's taste in Puerto Rican cuisine to call into question her judicial philosophy - really, he did), Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who I heard on NPR criticize Sotomayor for her "silence" in an opinion she participated in but didn't write, and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. There are more groups, like Judicial Watch, The Federalist Society, plus the usual think tanks, et al. Why you need this many overlapping judicial organizations is beyond me, but I guess the goal is to employ as many movement conservatives as possible, plus you can mix and match them in the media to give the illusion of a broad perspective. And filibuster or not, they have to be out there raising hell and raising money. A Supreme Court fight without storefront conservative judicial organizations would be like tax season without accountants.

But TPMDC missed the one individual who has certainly gained the most in the early going of this nomination - New Republic writer Jeffrey Rosen. After all, his use of gossipy talking points has driven the entire discussion in the media, and made him ubiquitous even if he hasn't graced the camera with his presence. And though his reputation ought to be in tatters for pushing such demeaning talking points into the mainstream, as it turns out, he has the lead story in this week's New York Times magazine.

The article sidesteps the Sotomayor controversy, preferring instead to define liberalism on the Court in the 21st century, and the term "democratic constitutionalist." But the meta question of "why the hell is the NYT allowing Jeffrey Rosen a platform?" can never be far from the informed reader. Far from being punished or blackballed for his role in trying to destroy the reputation of a soon-to-be sitting Supreme Court Justice, Rosen has been celebrated and promoted. Of course, in the Village, Rosen is "one of us," and Sotomayor is "one of them."

Even The Liberal...

Jeffrey Rosen expressed shock today that conservatives have glommed on to his gossip piece calling into question the intelligence of Judge Sotomayor. Surely he was blindsided by such a turn of events. Why, Rosen was just allowing anonymous clerks to smear the nominee for the benefit of his friends in Washington. He could never have anticipated in a million years that anyone would use such materail against her.

Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. This willfully misreads both my piece and the follow-up response. My concern was that she might not make the most effective liberal voice on the Court--not that she didn't have the potential to be a fine justice. Questions of temperament are often overlooked, but history suggests that they are the most relevant in predicting judicial success.

See, Rosen was making a narrow point, as exemplified by referring to Sotomayor as "not that smart," "domineering during oral arguments," and "her questions aren't penetrating." How anyone could have characterized from such a collection of quotes that she wasn't qualified for the Court is just beyond him.

Indeed, every single conservative I've seen talking about this pick today, all of them, not only cited Rosen's article, but when challenged on it as composed of a collection of unsourced quotes, screamed "But Jeff Rosen is a liberal and he's writing for The New Republic and he said all this!" Which is how this ALWAYS works. Rosen is playing dumb here; surely he knew this would be the outcome. To his credit, the President ignored this character assassination. But it's patently ridiculous for Rosen to suggest that everyone else would.

More here.

The Village In A Nutshell

Bob Schieffer does us all a great service in his commentary on Face The Nation yesterday by defining the Village's version of a meritocracy - where people elevate in the DC community, not on the strength of their talent or brilliance, but whether or not they go to the right cocktail parties:

I had no problem with the Justice's legal work. But as one who has lived 40 years in Washington, I'll be honest: I didn't care for his attitude.

He made it no secret that he hated the city, once describing his work as the best job in the world in the worst city in the world.

Another time he called life here "akin to an intellectual lobotomy."

Really? Our nation's capital? One of the most beautiful cities in the world?

Call me corny, but I have to confess, I've run into some pretty smart people here over the years, but then again I tried to get to know the city and its inhabitants. Who wouldn't if you were going to live in a place? Justice Souter, obviously.

I've never known anyone who ever saw him outside the court. But now he's leaving. I take it he won't miss Washington - but my guess is Washington will hardly miss him.

Apparently we're supposed to care that David Souter preferred hiking in New Hampshire to schmoozing with Bob Schieffer. It's certainly colored the coverage of him. I remember multi-page spreads when Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist left the Court. Here, Souter gets the "if you didn't like us then we didn't like you" send-off.

In a certain sense, I relate this to the rapidly accepted conventional wisdom around Sonia Sotomayor as a dumb tokenist candidate for the Court, and the pervasive sexism that implies. To me, Jeffrey Rosen's conflation of diversity with mediocrity just jibes with the Village's conflation of chumminess with aptitude. Or even the conflation of pragmatism with wisdom. What matters to them are the relationships people make with them. Once you become a member in good standing you can do no wrong. And until you become one you can do no right.

Character Assassination, Village-Style

The Swift-Boating of Sonia Sotomayor has really been an object lesson for how the Village treats people it decides not to like for whatever reason. Jeffrey Rosen at The New Republic decided to write a gossipy hit piece based on anonymous sources that was immediately taken up by conservatives looking to torpedo a top Obama Supreme Court possibility, and set impressions among official Washington. Though other news outlets were able to find named sources to praise Sotomayor, the characterization made by Rosen's article clearly provided those inclined to oppose Obama with a rationale. After lots of criticism from the blogosphere, which Rosen wouldn't have dealt with in past years, when he would just be able to inject a hit piece into the DC bloodstream, he had to offer an apologia, where he blames the headline writer for creating a misimpression.

Many people have mischaracterized my argument, and I can understand why. The headline--"The Case Against Sotomayor"--promised something much stronger than I intended to deliver. As soon as the piece was published, I regretted the headline, which I hadn't seen in advance. The piece was not meant to be a definitive "case against" Judge Sotomayor's candidacy. It was intended to convey questions about her judicial temperament that sources had expressed to me in the preceding weeks. That's why I concluded the piece not by suggesting that Sotomayor was unqualified for the Supreme Court, but by suggesting that "given the stakes, the president should obviously satisfy himself that he has a complete picture before taking a gamble."

I would definitely blame the headline writer for the parts of the piece where Rosen calls Sotomayor "not that smart" and "not the brainiest." How could that headline have steered us wrong?

Then Rosen defends his anonymous sources by pointing to the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary item on Sotomayor, again picking out a few negative comments despite the line "most of lawyers interviewed said Sotomayor has good legal ability." He defends the line in the original piece where he says that he hasn't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to make an informed judgment (really) by claiming no, he had read enough, and found them "good but not great."

Quite a bit of the other "evidence" for Sotomayor's opinion in the piece comes out just wrong. Rosen's assertion that a footnote from a "senior judge on the Second Circuit" was misleading, but a law professor pretty conclusively argues that the footnote says just the opposite. Rosen had little to say in his defense - "there's more than one way to read that footnote," he claims. That's just not true. Rosen cropped the comment of one of the few named sources in the article to make Judge Jose Cabranes, who called Sotomayor "tough and tenacious and also smart" in the original quote, seem like a critic.

Glennzilla sums this all up:

What really happened here is now manifest -- and typical. A couple of Rosen's secret friends don't like Sonia Sotomayor and called him to encourage him to smear her in the pages of The New Republic. Rather than do the work to determine if these "questions" about her abilities had merit -- by, say, conducting a thorough survey of her key judicial opinions the way a conscientious law professor might -- he instead set out dutifully to undertake the mission assigned to him by these "eminent legal scholars" by calling the people they handpicked for him, who then eagerly attacked Sotomayor. Rosen then mindlessly wrote it all down -- including facts that were either false (the footnote) or highly distorted (Judge Cabranes' New York Times statement about Sotomayor, which was clearly a compliment, not a criticism), and then sent it to TNR, which slapped a provocative and (by Rosen's account) misleading headline on it and then happily published it. That Rosen himself was a chief champion of John Roberts, and had already expressed concerns that Obama might take diversity into account when appointing someone to the Supreme Court, undoubtedly made Rosen more than happy to be chosen to carry out this dirty task against someone who is most assuredly not part of his circle.

In other words, Rosen did what the modern journalist of the Respectable Intellectual Center does by definition: he wrote down what Serious People told him to say, agreed to protect their identity, and then published their very purposeful chatter without doing any real work to verify, investigate or scrutinize it. As a result, a woman who spent the last four decades of her life using her talents and intellect and working extremely hard to reach amazing heights in the face of great obstacles is now widely viewed as an intellectually deficient, stunted, egotistical affirmative-action beneficiary who has no business being on the Supreme Court -- all thanks to the slimy work of Jeffrey Rosen, his cowardly friends of the Respectable Intellectual Center, and The New Republic.

John Cole has some more thoughts, noting that Rosen irreparably harmed Sotomayor's reputation and changed her life, all because his friends wanted to stop her career rise. The "white man's burden" argument picked up by the more subtle parts of the Village media complex is just an recapitulation of Rosen's story, making the snap judgment that Sotomayor isn't "deserving" of the appointment, in the way, oh, a white man would be. I'd gather this happens far more than we all think - the Gladys Kravitz gossips in the Village whisper to one another about such-and-such, whether because of jealousy or backstabbing or whatever, then find enough anonymous sources to confirm the storyline and enough facts they can twist to back it up. And the target gets smeared in enough high places to set that storyline in concrete, and wherever he or she walks in Washington, they are subjected to disapproving stares and the shaking of heads. Somewhere in the Village, there's a list of those on the inside and those on the outside, and the insiders guard their turf in the most zealous, vindictive way possible.

I didn't know much of Sotomayor before this week, but I really WANT her to get the appointment now. She has the right enemies.

...The NYT Ed Board hit back at this pretty hard today.

Never mind that President Obama has not even tipped his hand about his choice to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It’s never too early, it appears, to start the character assassination, especially against one possible candidate, Judge Sonia Sotomayor [...]

Supreme Court vacancies have long been political fights, sometimes intense ones, but generally, they begin when a candidate is picked. This time, the attacks have already begun, many aimed at Judge Sotomayor and beyond the pale of reasonable debate. She is being called insufficiently intellectual despite her stellar academic credentials. Her temperament is being assailed, generally by anonymous detractors. Online critics have even groused about her weight [...]

The White House has no doubt been reviewing a long list of nominees. When President Obama makes his decision, he should ignore the uninformed and mean-spirited chattering and select the best person for the job.

As Glenn says, the Times could have mentioned Rosen by name, but this remains fitting.