In France, Fights Over U.S. Supreme Court Nominees Are Only Petty and Vindictive if They Are Undertaken by Conservatives

In a world where liberals can do no wrong, and all the planet's ills are, somehow or other, related to American conservatives, Le Monde publishes an article in which not only Sonia Sotomayor appears like the poor victim of clueless, vindictive conservatives — "the populist right has undug 62 words that is waved like a red rag", we are told, while we are served a caricature of the Lilly Ledbetter Act — but Corine Lesnes also ignores the fact that any vindictiveness over a Supreme Court nominee these past couple of decades have usually been the doing of liberals (Robert Bork, anybody).

Indeed, she makes it almost sound, by inference, that Clarence Thomas was a victim of rightist anger — by ignoring whom (and which party) he was nominated by, by renouncing the hostile language used for Sonia Sotomayor's opponents, and by using language that is more neutral and more passive ("his nomination was the object of a violent left-right fight in the Senate") and more of the "we are all equally guilty" variety.

Le juge Clarence Thomas, renversé dans son fauteuil, ne dit jamais un mot. Il a remplacé Thurgood Marshall à ce qui est devenu le siège « africain-américain » à la cour. Sa nomination en 1991 a fait l’objet d’une violente bataille droite-gauche au Sénat. Depuis, il s’est enfermé dans le mutisme public le plus complet.

Yes, Clarence Thomas has shut himself into the most complete silence and never says a word… except for the fact, of course, that he has written his autobiography…

Indeed, Corine Lesnes speaks of America's leftist humanitarians as incarnating the "American dream as Barack Obama has resuscitated it", while ignoring the fact that Clarence Thomas's path from poverty in Georgia is far more reflective of the American dream than middle-class Barack Obama's, with support from right and left, not least Chicago's Democratic machine.