You know what they say about women who wear red! (harvard)
Blogging at National Review Online, Ed Whelan (former clerk to Justice Scalia) works up a fuming dudgeon over the New York Times deeming Solicitor General (and presumed SCOTUS nominee) Elena Kagan a “pragmatist” for opposing “don’t ask, don’t tell” while allowing military recuiters on campus when she was dean of Harvard Law School.
Failing to do so would have cost the school “hundreds of millions” in federal dollars, the Times said. Ergo, tough-choice making pragmatist. Whelan, having none of that, said, “she was just engaging in cheap and contemptible moral posturing.”
Yes, of course, it’s true, as the article points out, that “barring the recruiters would [have] come with a price.” But, as George Bernard Shaw would have said to Kagan for selling out her supposedly deeply held principles, “We’ve already established what you are, ma’am. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
Boom! Sorry — did Ed Whelan just call Elena Kagan a prostitute?
Media Matters certainly thinks so! The liberal watchdog group called Whelan’s piece “disgusting.”
“It is disgusting, yet not surprising, that the conservatives’ favorite judicial attack dog would stoop so low as to imply a woman is a prostitute merely because she didn’t to allow her personal views to stand in the way of our military’s recruiters,” said Media Matters president Eric Burns.
“Imagine the rightwing firestorm that would erupt if a prominent progressive insisted Sarah Palin was selling her body,” Burns said. “This should be no different.”
Cue harumphing demands for an apology, followed by testy clarification from Whelan:
I see that some lefty bloggers (such as this one) have taken, or feigned, offense at my use of the Bernard Shaw quip….The Bernard Shaw quip is widely used in political discourse (here’s just one example) to criticize someone for selling out; it obviously doesn’t carry (and in my case certainly wasn’t intended to carry) the particular stigma that a narrowly literal understanding would convey.
The blog has been debating with others whether this Supreme Court nomination is going to be a total yawner or whether the country (and Congress) is so dug in and polarized that even the most boring, benign nominee would touch off a furious partisan bloodbath.
If nothing else, at least today’s Very Special Mothers Day Exchange On Whether Whelan called Kagan a Prostitute shows the persistent culture of bad taste and corresponding umbrage appears intact and functioning. We’ll have that, at least.
Eric: Feel the Burns (MMFA)
