Now on ScienceBlogs: Antibiotic Resistance and the House and Senate Healthcare Bills
The Egyptian goddess Isis was celebrated as the ideal wife and mother. The blogger known as Dr. Isis has some fancy-sounding degrees and is a physiologist at a major research university working on some terribly impressive stuff. She blogs about balancing her research career with the demands of raising small children, how to succeed as a woman in academia, and anything else she finds interesting. Also, she blogs about shoes. In fact, she blogs a lot about shoes.
...And behold, he raised the motherfucking Jameson on high as Isis bedecked her feet in glory, and the masses were sated. -- The Holy Gospel According to PhysioProf
Widget doesn't work?
Here's my giving page.
Thanks!
« Why Jesus Makes Me a Bad Scientist... | Main | Jams to Write Your Grants By... »
Posted on: July 12, 2009 8:57 PM, by Isis the Scientist
This quote from CNN today about the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor:
Republicans say they will question Sotomayor about her views on affirmative action, gun rights and whether her Latina heritage would unfairly affect her judicial rulings.
Isis the Scientist would like to know whether their white dude-li-ness will affect any of their congressional votes.
Seriously Republicans? Seriously? Are you really going to continue to play these cards this far forward?
Find more posts in: 
Politics
Humanities & Social Science
Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/114706
Neurophilosophy 11.19.2009
The Island of Doubt 11.20.2009
Greg Laden's Blog 11.20.2009
The World's Fair 11.19.2009
Laelaps 11.20.2009
Comments
Does a pothead scrape the resin out of her pipe when she runs out of weed, even though she knows that smoking that shit is barely gonna get her high, and is gonna give her a massive headache?
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | July 12, 2009 9:10 PM
WTF?!??!!!!
Posted by: postdoc | July 12, 2009 10:11 PM
"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
I'm not sure I'd just accept CNN's characterization. Rather I expect the R's in the Senate will be asking for an explanation of the above. As someone who very passionately supports the whole "content of character" way of assessing a person rather than the size of their gametes or the albedo of their skin, I'd say it's a legitimate question. I know the "Imagine if white guy X had said that" card has been beaten to death, but good lord.
Doesn't matter though. She won't be filibustered and she'll probably get >70 votes.
Posted by: Matt Springer | July 12, 2009 10:29 PM
These dudes deserve the wackaloon theocratic neofuedal douchescrotes title. Amen sister.
Posted by: gnuma | July 12, 2009 10:29 PM
Isis the Scientist would like to know whether their white dude-li-ness will affect any of their congressional votes.
So would Ambivalent Acadmic!
WTF!?!?!?!
Posted by: ambivalent academic | July 12, 2009 11:37 PM
This is especially ironic given that just 5 years ago the Republicans were crowing mightily about how strongly the Hispanic community was supporting them (which, if I remember aright, was something like 53% of Hispanics, barely a majority). This just seems like a very quick way to shoot themselves in the foot and consign yet another major voting demographic over to the Democrats. At least the party is beginning to more closely resemble what it really is: flabby pink fundamentalists and greedy bastards.
Posted by: Toaster | July 13, 2009 12:48 AM
Isis the Scientist would like to know whether their white dude-li-ness will affect any of their congressional votes.
Yes.
As Atrios would say, this has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
Posted by: Eric Lund | July 13, 2009 9:19 AM
Isis: that's all they've got, the one dumb quotation they've been beating to death for 2 months now. This is going to be a show trial for the R base, that's all.
Posted by: Historiann | July 13, 2009 9:31 AM
Sen Grassley explained that old white d00dli bias is totes okay for policy makers (such as US Senators) but not for jurists. Pretty much just by assertion though so I can't help with the *why* on this..
Posted by: BikeMonkey | July 13, 2009 9:50 AM
I get creepy-crawlies at the thought of defending the current Republican party, but this is more than a bit of creative extrapolation by CNN. The quote they get that idea from is this (just below in the article): "In a number of speeches, she has advocated a view that your personal experiences and even your prejudices will influence your decisions."
The idea is not that people of Latina heritage or any other heritage are unfit to be judges, but that no one's heritage, be it Latina or white dude or Aka pygmy, should factor into their decisions on the bench. It's the same old strict constructionist theory they've held since at least Nixon: the judge's role should be to interpret the Constitution (and to a lesser extent the various statutes) as written, leaving no room at all for personal experiences or prejudices of any flavor.
One can disagree with that theory. One might say that it's impossible for anyone to make any decision without relying on their own experiences and prejudices. Hell, one might say that a strict across-the-board application of that theory would be flat-out Tom-Cruise-crazy. But there's nothing inherently racist or sexist about the idea -- they would certainly be asking the same questions if Obama had named a white dude, and they did just that with Justice Breyer back in the Clinton years -- and to suggest otherwise seems like a pretty underhanded little move by the CNN writer, specifically designed to provoke exactly the (understandable) reaction it got here. It's easy enough to refute the crazy without portraying it as something sinister that it's not.
Posted by: Bill | July 13, 2009 10:37 AM
Frankly, I am more concerned that a majority of the supreme court justices will now be Roman Catholic which could have dire consequences for reproductive rights in this country.
Of course our backgrounds and experiences influence our opinions. If they didn't, we would all see everything the same way --- and we clearly don't, even within the awesome forum presented here.
Posted by: Pascale | July 13, 2009 11:54 AM
Yes they will. As Tom Coburn says " it's just the things she says" that bother him.
Posted by: ScientistMother | July 13, 2009 12:06 PM
I am not super concerned over catholics. There are lots of surveys about how the majority don't follow what the pope says about a variety of issues, especially the stuff about birth control and reproductive choices.
Posted by: nails | July 13, 2009 12:47 PM
I am not super concerned over catholics. There are lots of surveys show that the majority don't follow what the pope says about a variety of issues, especially the stuff about birth control and reproductive choices.
Posted by: nails | July 13, 2009 12:50 PM
And you must really be loving the testimony today. They're talking about a previous highly-qualified latino candidate who didn't even make it to hearings, and saying how this proves their problem with her is not her ethnicity. No, obviously it's because the previous dude was a dude, and she's not a dude. I'm tired of it already.
Posted by: msphd | July 13, 2009 12:58 PM