Go get ’em, Samantha Bennett!
Courtesy of Media Matters, we learn that Bennett — who contributes a regular column to the Post-Gazette — is taking on Pat Buchanan over this column.
In that now-notorious piece, Buchanan expressed concern that if the Senate confirms Elena Kagan’s appointment to the Supreme Court, the court will be packed with Jews and Papists:
If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.
Finally — somebody willing to speak out about the shameful exclusion of Protestants from public life. It’s the last acceptable prejudice, I tell you!
Bennett’s own column typically stays out of the partisan fray. But in addition to her P-G gig, Bennett is president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. And in that capacity, she more or less takes the piss out of the Buchanan, telling Media Matters’ Joe Strupp that
“Pat Buchanan used to be kind of the fringe guy. But he has been surpassed in that role. I guess he feels like he has to come up with something more outrageous and potentially offensive to stay in the spotlight and keep his position.”
Buchanan, Bennett suggests, is trying to cling to the spotlight in “the theater of outrage. This has been our public discourse. It is who is shouting the loudest.” Strupp adds such right-wing blather may be “hurting columnists as a whole,” since as Bennett says, “[I]t can put more pressure on the rest of us to be more out there.”
Actually, I wish that were more true. If you look at the Post-Gazette roster of columnists, for example, nobody comes anywhere CLOSE to being as bonkers as Jack Kelly, the Burghosphere’s bete noir. That’s too bad, in my book. But these days, an ultra-left perspective is about as hard to find on a newspaper editorial page as it is on the Supreme Court.
In fact, THAT may be the last acceptable prejudice.
This article appears in May 20-26, 2010.
Buchanan’s a demagogue, Chris. That’s not in dispute. But that doesn’t mean that, in some small way, he doesn’t have a point.
I wrote about this, albeit briefly, a few weeks ago in the Friday Notes. I’ll likely write about it again in the wake of this latest mini-kerfuffle. But…
…we often hear arguments, especially from the anti-Buchanan left, that the high court, like a president’s administration, like all the (ahem) hallowed halls of our federal government, should “look like America.” That these places should, in some significant way, reflect the great melting pot of America. That diversity, in all its forms, is something to be embraced and striven for. (We’ve certainly heard that last part again, in the pleasure — most of it justified — over seeing yet another woman nominated to the high court.)
But does religious representation, or theological diversity, not count too?
You can argue that Christians are well-represented — and they are. To the tune of 67%, if the current nomination holds. And that’s likely close enough to the roughly 86% of the adult American population who identify themselves as Christian. But over 50% of those Christians — or, just under 50% of the adult American population — are Protestants.
Don’t they count? Isn’t that at least worth noting?
The percentage of Protestants in the U.S. is damned close to the percentage of women in the U.S. If we had 9 men and 0 women on the court, that would certainly be worth mentioning. And so, I think, is this.
(For the record: I noted in my TRM comments that I’d love to see a Muslim or Hindu justice. If only for the reaction it would bring from people like Pat Buchanan…)
Does Buchanan overstate his point and overheat his rhetoric? Of course. (What else is new?) And he certainly makes it easy on his critics by complaining about the three Jews — even as it surely worth noting, if only for curiosity’s sake, that the Supreme Court would have a 67% Jewish representation, which would be just a tad higher than the country’s roughly 2% Jewish population.
I think the best person for the job should be hired, nominated, promoted, whatever. But a lot of people do not, opting instead to engineer some sort of just or diverse or righteous mosaic. And that’s fine too — even as it seems to me awfully disingenuous for proponents of that strategy to be able to pick and choose the types of diversity they feel are important, and then to dismiss as pure bigotry the thought, even if it is offered by a guy like Buchanan, that there are other types of diversity to be valued as well.
Damn. Typon in the second to last paragraph: 33%, not 67% representation on the court. Sorry.
Clearly, there are not enough Existentialists.
@ Chad — The problem with Buchanan’s argument is that it suggests that the difference between Protestants and Catholics is equivalent to the difference between, say, men and women. I’m not aware of many court cases that concern the rights of Protestants in particular — as distinct from Catholics, or Jews, or members of any other religious faith. (I’d prefer to see an atheist or two on the court, actually, though I’m not counting on Buchanan’s support for THAT cause.) By contrast, it’s easy to think about numerous cases that concern the rights of women as distinct from men. Sidelining their role on the court, then, is a lot more problematic.
I prioritize diversity in those terms, in terms of the social distinctions that are most at issue in society. That may seem like “picking and choosing the types of diversity I feel are important” … but as a Protestant guy myself, I can say that I’m not aware of any recent or pending court case where my rights or responsibilities, qua a Protestant, are at issue.
Anyway, the only other option is the reducto ad absurdum that Buchanan — quite deliberately — offers. Which is that a goal of “diversity” should take into account the claims of Irish Catholics and Italian Catholics alike. Even if that was a good idea — and as you say, there are other types of diversity to value — the fact that there are only nine people on the court means there are only so many demographic factors you can take into account.
Of course, implicit in my argument is that there are other factors, alongside judicial temperament and legal expertise, that should go into the selection of judicial nominees. But obviously, that’s been an issue for centuries in this country.
With respect, Chris, I think you’re skirting the point just a bit. Or at least introducing a new one — that diversity on the court should somehow depend upon whether the individual rights or responsibilities of that demographic group are likely to come up for review before the court.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that argument before, and I’ll admit that it holds a certain, sensible sway.
But if you want to go that route, then doesn’t it make sense, in our post-9/11 world, to get a Muslim on the court as soon as possible? As opposed to, say, the 3rd Jew or the 7th Catholic? There’s a demographic group whose rights have been pending, in large part because they’re pending constant assault, in this country for the past decade.
I, too, think it would be interesting to see an atheist or an agnostic on the court — watch Pat Buchanan’s head spin then — and yet the very suggestion seems to fly in the face of your own defense of the diversity. I mean, are there really that many cases pending for atheists? Really? By the standard you defend here, an atheist would never make the cut.
Which brings me back, again, to the very notion of a representational court. Of one that looks and feels and sounds and thinks (and, for all I know, smells) like a cross-section of the country. I have never heard that qualified as, “cross-section of the country that will have individual rights pending review.” And until I do — which, as I suggest above, might change my thinking — then it seems to me like “diversity” or “representation” or “image of society” gets cherry-picked based on the whims of the person (or persons) doing the picking.
And in a 9-slot court, it seems a bit odd to profess the need for that sort of representation, then devote exactly 0 slots to a group that constitutes roughly HALF of the country’s population.
Pending rights and responsibilities aside, and avoiding a lengthy theological debate, surely you can agree that Protestants see many things differently than Catholics and Jews and Muslims and atheists and agnostics. Is that perspective not important or valuable or special enough to have at least 1 seat on the court?
Chad —
Although my previous comment certainly made it sound this way, I don’t EXACTLY think that appointments should be made with an eye on the Supreme Court docket. What I’m saying is slightly different: That while I think diversity is important for its own sake, I also think given the sheer number of demographic groups out there, and the infinite way in which categories can be constructed, there’s value in saying “some kinds of diversity ARE more important than others.” And if we accept the value of diversity in the first place (which obviously you don’t have to) then it’s worthwhile taking into account the groups whose rights and privileges are most at issue in the country as a whole.
To a large extent, I agree that diversity “gets cherry-picked based on the whims of the person (or persons) doing the picking.” Nothing I’m saying here would prevent that from happening. But realistically, that’s ALWAYS the case, right? Elections have consequences … the Supreme Court follows the election returns and all that other Mr. Dooley crap.
But what I’m suggesting here does, I think, at least suggests grounds for dismissing the bad-faith argument of Pat Buchanan, whose argument suggests that the distinctions between Irish Catholics and Italian Catholics are as noteworthy as the distinctions between men and women.
I totally 100 percent agree that having a Muslim on the court would be great. But again, politics are always part of these equation here — and as I suspect we both agree, nobody would make such an appointment more politically impossible than Pat Buchanan and his crew. I often wish Obama showed more backbone — and that’s one reason I’m not gung-ho on Kagan myself — but I think we all know where the real stumbling block to a Muslim appointee lies.
Finally, I’d argue atheists really DO have pressing issues before the court, giving all the establishment-clause related cases that have come before it in recent years. There was just one about a war memorial in the Mojave Desert, if memory serves.
Oh, and do I think a Protestant is likely to see things differently from a Catholic or other groups? Since I’m a Protestant married to a Catholic, you’d think I might have a better sense of where such differences would lie. But I think there’s plenty of research out there to suggest that the most meaningful distinctions among religions have more to do with the depth of one’s faith than they do with the name of the faith itself. In other words, a fundamentalist Protestant tends to have more in common with a fundamentalist Catholic than with a more moderate Protestant. So while I won’t say you’re wrong, I WOULD say that distinctions between one Christian faith and another seem less pressing to me.