Democracy Has Prevailed.

May 27, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the legendary, the one and only Vast Hypocrisy of the Right Wing!

On Empathy:
President George H.W. Bush on Clarence Thomas in July 1991:

"I have followed this man's career for some time. He is a delightful and warm, intelligent person who has great empathy and a wonderful sense of humor."
On Empathy & Identity Politics:
Judge Samuel Alito's during his U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing for the Supreme Court:

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.



Your Mission:
Find a single Wingnut who screamed bloody murder about the above statements at the time that they were made.

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1 comment:

Sherry Pasquarello said...

they count on people having bad memories and short attention spans and who aren't very logical.