May 4, 2009: Conservative Columnist: Prospective Supreme Court Nominee ‘Dumb and Obnoxious’

Mark Hemingway of the conservative National Review uses law professor Jeffrey Rosen’s analysis of prospective Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 4, 2009) to call her “dumb and obnoxious.” [National Review, 5/4/2009] Fellow Review columnist John Derbyshire responds to Hemingway’s slam by writing: “Judge Sotomayor may indeed be dumb and obnoxious; but she’s also female and Hispanic, and those are the things that count nowadays. Get with the program, Pal.” [National Review, 5/4/2009] Less than a month later, Sotomayor will be nominated to the Court (see May 26, 2009). After her nomination, Hemingway will attempt to backtrack from his characterizations of Sotomayor, claiming: “I never ‘attacked’ Sotomayor. I was only characterizing what Jeffrey Rosen wrote.” [National Review, 5/26/2009]