Posted 3 years, 9 months ago in the wee hours by oso
First off, gigantic congratulations to Mari who just recently published her first non-blog piece in AlterNet on the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales and its implications. Sensory Overload has been one of probably my favorite blog since I first started reading it and it is very cool to see Marisa get the recognition her writing deserves.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Gonzales or his confirmation hearing. Everything I know about what has been going on has come via sifting through the papers and this DemocracyNow! show.
Of course, not everyone is going to agree with Marisa’s conclusions because not everyone is as intelligent as we are. Ugly Casanova himself, our man HP, has posted quite a bit on Gonzales over the past couple months.
And, as always, Technorati, is the money spot to see what people are saying about Gonzales in real time.
I don’t want to get too much into Alberto Gonzales specifically, but I do think that his confirmation, along with that of Condi Rice shows clearly exactly what I have believed all along. If I remember correctly what I read, both of these people were confirmed with the most ‘nay’ votes against their position in United States history. Yet they are both the first of their ‘race’ in that position.
Liberals are, afterall, the affirmative action party. Being that they support racial (and in both Alberto And Condi’s case, socioeconomical) ‘breaks’, it is interesting to see that they don’t apply that same mentality during the confirmation of these two people, especially given the historical importance of this event. I don’t deny that liberals have true qualms against the nomination of these two people…Did Alberto Gonzales support ‘torture’, maybe, maybe not. It is debatable. Did Condi Rice ‘lie’ and lead us to an ‘unjust’ war, maybe, maybe not, it is debatable. But several (almost all, in Alberto’s case) Democrats chose to err on the side of their beliefs, instead of giving them ‘the benefit of the doubt’.
So I think we can conclude that Democrats, much like Republicans with regard to other minorities, support their core values much more strongly than they support ‘minority’ advancement.
Hopefully now we can move past the tired old slogan that Democrats support minorities for the sake of minorities and agree that both, Democrats and Republicans, support minorities in so far as those minorities support the core values of the respective parties. The minute they drift, thats the minute to support stops.
HP, one day I hope you get your own blog…oh wait.
LOL. Are you trying to tell me something.
I’m respectful as hell, Oso just has to say the word, and I’m out, no feelings hurt.
I actually did mean to turn of comments on this post because there are much better places than here (like Marisa’s blog) to discuss Gonzales.
But no, in general, the more comments the better. I figure it’s up to the reader if they wanna click on the comments and read through them.
Elena and HP, you guys are perfect for each other and I will be hurt if I’m not the “best blog-mate” at the wedding.