Let the Slime Begin

In the twenty-four hours since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the GOP and the right wing have gone crazy all at once. Amid all the snide remarks to her gender and ethnicity, two stand out as quite possibly the stupidest reasons to reject a nomination - ever.

For starters, Mark Krikorian attacked Sotomayor for the way she pronounces her name: "Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English...and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to."

But that one looks positively sane next to some Republicans who actually blasted Sotomayor for, of all things, her tastes in food. In a 2001 speech, the judge talked about how the cuisine of her Puerto Rican heritage helped to shape her identity: "For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events."

That was a big red flag for the super-patriots among us for whom anything other than burgers and hot dogs is akin to Communism:

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo - pigs' tongue and ears - would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn't certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

"It's pretty disturbing," said Levey. "It's one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality. But it's almost like she's proud that her biases and personal experiences will cloud her impartiality."

This is truly nuts. And this is the best they've got! The GOP obviously cannot challenge the nomination on its merits, so they're going all-in on the slime right at the get-go.

It's going to be a long and dirty summer.