From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Bob Garfield.

With the choice of federal judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill Justice David Souter's vacancy on the U.S.

Supreme Court, President Obama seems to have found an unsinkable nominee. An inspiring personal

biography, a long history of judicial even-handedness,

presumed dependability on the litmus test issues, nobody can actually speak aloud, and,

not insignificantly, an Hispanic female two-fur. But never mind, Sotomayor's qualifications,

in the weeks leading up to her confirmation hearings,

she will be subjected to public evisceration. Tom Goldstein, a partner in the law firm Eakin Gump,

and founder of Scotus Block, says any high court nominee is but fuel for the politics industry.

No matter how principled, thoughtful, smart, and qualified the nominee, the other side will immediately paint them as an activist outlier outside the box, unprincipled person hell-bent

on destroying the Constitution.

But there was a bonus this week, because the likes of Rush Limbaugh and

Ann Coulter and even former Speaker Newt Gingrich played the racism card. They suggested that Sotomayor

is a reversed racist based on a remark she made some years back. Tell me about that. In a speech

that was converted into a law review article at Berkeley, she said that it's my hope that

a Latina judge will make a more wise decision than a white male judge, something to that effect.

And she's really talking about the simple fact that we are the some of our experiences

and someone who has lived a different life from a upper middle class white male has been through

more, has seen more can add to the discussion. Anybody can have one sentence in their life

kind of plucked out of context and

made into a lot more. You could line that up with a half dozen cases where she's ruled against

the discrimination claims of African Americans and Hispanics and realize that she's not

...