Don’t get that excited.

I am a social liberal, but this morning’s Sotomayor nomination riled me up. Firstly, the nomination continues the recent political trend to nominate judges who are far removed from the actual governing. The best courts had at least one legislator–Sandra Day O’Connor, Hugo Black, Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, etc.

The nomination of a female, colored supreme court justice is exciting, but concerning ourselves with racial debates vitiates the very relevance and impartiality of the highest court of the realm. It is false and presumptive to assume that a colored candidate should (blindly) advocate for that race. I am not saying Justice Sotomayor will favor Hispanics, but that is what the Hispanic community expects of her….and there are detrimental precedents too: Every time the name of an African American justice is mentioned, there are shrill calls, “Marshall, not Thomas,” indicating that the black community wants someone as vocal as Thurgood Marshall as if a justice of another calibre or reticence is not representative of their cause. Sotomayor’s nomination is already clouded by her decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, in which she threw out the results of a firefighter promotion exam in which no minorities qualified for promotions. This is not the impartiality we want at the supreme court, which is currently debating to overturn Sotomayor’s decision. It is not fixing history’s mistakes. It is a reverse discrimination.

Some say the president is saving political capital by nominating a moderate liberal for a seat vacated by similar moderate. However, some (by which, I mean, I) see a wasted opportunity–the presidency sadly is limited in length, scope and breadth. The next year, the Mid Terms will come and who knows whether the democrats will be able to maintain its filibuster-proof majority. With relatively young Roberts, Scalia and Thomas firmly in conservative docket (with Alito sitting with them more often than not), the Americans need more liberal voices to balance the court, just to service what William J. Brennan called the first rule of the Supreme Court (rulings by five of the nine justices).

The next big debate for the supreme court would be with the same sex marriages since states from New Hampshire to Iowa are seriously debating and changing the existing legislation. The supreme court must gear itself for at least one issue concerning DOMA or same sex marriage in next few years. It is a sad missed opportunity that the nominee is neither Kath Sullivan or Pamela Karlan–openly gay legal scholars no less distinguished than Sotomayor.

When Justice David H. Souter retired, New York Times ran an article noting (perhaps somewhat disparagingly) that Souter was no Warren or Brennan. Most of us will agree, and if Sotomayor got confirmed, we will have to face twenty years or so (just pray her diabetes don’t interfere) of moderation. In the face of modernity, such stagnancy can be fatal. Yes, the centre of the court will be well tended, but it is to be noted that she is no Antonin Scalia or Pamela S. Karlan.

A Few Thoughts on Elitism

That famous socialite Leonore Annenberg had to resign her post as the White House protocol chief after curtsying to visiting Prince Charles. Michelle Obama was praised for breaching the protocol and touching Her Majesty, while her husband was demonized for bowing to the Saudi King. For a country that gained its independence by deposing a king (and crowning many more since: king of rock, of late night shows, poultry production; czar of drugs, intelligence, etc.), small gestures like these spoke shrilly.

I am not titled (no thanks to a morganatic marriage made a century before I was even conceived) and I am entitled…. and that’s probably how most of my friends view me–a naive, harmless simpleton who hid his second-rate intellect and closed mind behind a first-rate fortune. The latter, combined with my parents’ occupation, was enough to send me through an English boarding school and a prestigious American university, two bastions of elitism.

I don’t own a Ferrari, a Bond Street wardrobe or a villa overlooking Lake Como (all, perhaps, telltale signs of extravagance, rather than elitism) but I know people who do. I dined with royalty, presidents, dictators and ambassadors. My family and I were overnight guests of American actors, Greek shipping magnates, and British lords. The Conde Nest executives came to grouse hunts with us, I rode with the professors from Oxbridge, and every year, without fail, comes that coveted invitation to Royal Enclosure at Ascot. It is good to be an elite.

Why am I expounding on this? U.S. Presidential Election. On this side of Atlantic, the political system doesn’t look favorably upon the E-word. During this election season, the word ‘elite’ and ‘elitism’ was so excoriated that it paved the way for the rise of a ditzy, gun-toting, grammar-disrespecting governor. Inside my university–an institution that frequently produced presidents, senators, supreme court justices and other ‘elites’–the word was frowned upon, citing, “All Men are created Equal”. The framers of those lines ironically belonged to those ‘elites’.

‘Elitism’ is the closest the United States has ever come to aristocracy. Those East Coast WASPs who liberalism entails evading taxes and donating to charity organizations. They are elites, but elites also include those like the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Vanderbilts, a veritable who’s who of American greats, who asked what they can give to their country. Yet, it is a closed community too. An Ascot invitation had to be endorsed by someone who had been going there for years. A nouveau riche, unlike most French words, is only used with disdain.

But just became someone shops at Whole Foods, or gets a Prius means they are elitist. Sometimes, we have to be proud of our elitism. Sometimes, we have to be grateful that our lineage prevented Europe from the barbarians, fought for morality and decency in the heart of darkness, and produced great philanthropists. Sometimes, we have to be entitled that we went to Eton, Harrow, Oxbridge, the Ivies. Sometimes, we have to acknowledge that we eat healthier, live cozier. We have to be thankful for this (hence adding an ‘P’ to WASP and sending our kids to strict Catholic schools) but we can be thankful for giving back to.

By running for elected office or through charities, there are many ways that we can affect change. We have wherewithal and publicity to do it. Why waste it on some holiday home in Aspen or a $2,000 Max Mara? Be the change.

Meanwhile, the line “All Men are created Equal” remains a cheap punchline to a motivational poster. Perhaps because men are not created by some ethereal being, as much as our elitist prep-school education would like us to believe.

Terra Australis Incognita

The Southern Unknown Land–that was how Australia was known (along with Botany Bay and New South Wales) collectively before some Scottish busybody (Governor Lachlan Macquarie) popularized the current name in the early nineteenth century. I knew that–but we know surprisingly little about Australia and Australians, except the fact of course that they have weird animals and even a weirder animal watcher.

So, I was surprised to find in a friend’s room a 300-page travel journal, written by Bill Bryson. I like Bill Bryson’s books but I couldn’t imagine why he (or my friend for that matter) would want to travel to Australia. Granted that they have great beaches and forests, so do a lot of other more hospitable places (it is just me but a place devoid of any poisonous creepycrawlies counts as a more hospitable place in my book). After a brief disagreement with my friend about the Ayers Rock (with him insisting upon the unpronounceable name of Uluru-Kata Tjuta–yes, some letters underlined no less), I opened Bryson’s book. 

It is called, “In a Sunburned Country”. It is excerpted here. It began with the usual Brysonian mumbo-jumbo about how little he knows about the place. Well, everything is funny and sightly amusing until this moment:

“[in 1997--that book was released in 1999, so a little outdated] scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.” 

WTF? Someone set of an atom bomb in Australia and no one noticed it? Bryson continues: “Aum’s substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in Western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union. The group’s avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.” 

I will probably buy the book for my summer reading (I can link the Amazon page of the book here, but I’d rather not, just because they won’t pay me) just to laugh at the Australians and the Japanese. But the, even after reading Bryson’s books on language, I still don’t understand why the Australians are plural and the Japanese not so–so I consider all my previous spendings on his books wasted.  

… and he comes from Des Moines, Iowa — which apart from being named after monks, also produced my college roommate (apparently they even share highschool alma mater) — which just proves my point that nothing important and nothing good come out of Iowa.