Politics Sunday

There was no Sports Saturday because following the Reds' loss to St. Louis Friday - runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, down one run in the ninth, the Reds hit into a double play. A double play, for God's sake! Talk about going out with a whimper - I was far too distraught to do any kind of clear-sighted competitive analysis. And, yes, yesterday's gem was able to right my mood, but now it's politics Sunday. Sigh. Sometimes the timing just never works out. But let's celebrate yesterday together, and root hard for the Redlegs, who once again can take sole possession of first place with a win today.

For today, I'd like to speak briefly on Elena Kagan.

Yikes. Can't anyone snap a decent-looking picture of the woman?

But, really, it's not so much her that I'm interested in speaking about as the conversation surrounding her. Now, I feel somewhat ashamed to admit (not really) that among the first comments I made about Ms. Kagan was, "Who's this Jasper that Obama nominated to the Supreme Court?"

- A Jasper, of course, is a slang term for a particular type of middle-aged lesbian -

Do I feel bad to have used such a base vernacular term in reference to a would-be High Court Justice? Meh. It was innocuous enough, and meant more as a joke about her disheveled appearance than her sexual orientation. Little did I know that the entirety of Ms. Kagan's confirmation process (the only real 15 minutes of fame a Supreme Court Justice gets) would revolve around similar comments made by media sources.

Now, the High Horse Blog enjoys only a modest readership, giving it leeway for being lax on certain ethical standards (i.e. Pete's column last week, or perhaps when I called Liz Cheney a dirty, dirty tramp), but news networks and papers are a different story.

The trouble stems from the Wall Street Journal's decision to post a picture of Ms. Kagan playing softball 17 years ago (when she was a law teacher at the University of Chicago) on the front page of the newspaper. The picture immediately ignited a flurry of conversation surrounding the nominee's sexual orientation because of the popular stereotype that women who play softball are often lesbians.

Court Nominee Comes to the Plate

For the moment, let's forget about the complicated and thorny issue of why people make this association in the first place (it gets into zeitgeist theory and how stereotypes are formulated, which are far too complicated for this humble post to tackle), and ask the question, "Why would the Wall Street Journal, one of the nation's most vaunted news outlets, publish a picture of a Supreme Court Judge playing softball on the front page?"

The byline for the picture, "Court Nominee Comes to the Plate," does not carry in it any substantive significance, and is really just meant to be a witty attention-grabber. It appeared in the May 11th Wall Street Journal after Kagan had been nominated on the 10th, so this was really among the first pictures of the potential Justice that would be published.

So why choose this picture? Why not something befitting the gravitas of the position of Supreme Court Justice? For instance, here is the picture the supposedly Liberal New York Times published the day after the John Roberts nomination:

Certainly, the picture promotes a more dignified image of Justice Roberts, one befitting a future Supreme Court judge. I think, then, that we can see that the Journal is using at least one irresponsible tactic, and inserting subtle bias against Ms. Kagan by using a picture that portrays her as laid-back and folksy as she is nominated for a court that is considered far more grave.

With such a disconnect, the Journal must have known that many people would wonder why it was this picture that was chosen for the front page. What makes playing softball front page news? News people, whose lives revolve around learning how people consume and interpret media, must have been able to predict that people would put together the association of softball's link to gay culture and Ms. Kagan's single status.

So I think that to call the Journal's softball picture an insinuation of Kagan's sexual preference is fair. And I think the issue's insertion into the general conversation around the nominee was intentional on the Journal's part. It's interesting to consider that, in addition to the Wall Street Journal, Conservative news mogul Rupert Murdoch also controls the New York Post and Fox News, organizations integral to controlling the national dialogue. Colbert did a pretty good segment highlighting how calculated interaction between those three sources of Conservative media can bloat a small idea into a national issue. It's very intelligent, and I highly suggest you check it out.

But I think that we should be comforted by the use of these sorts of tactics for Kagan's nomination. Obviously, if we're grasping at straws like the "gay card," as a means to stall the confirmation, it means her chances of getting through are pretty high. What we know so far about Ms. Kagan is that, though she may not have a long paper trail so that we have her registered opinion on EVERYTHING, she is considered one of the most brilliant legal minds in the country. She's not, as Conservatives would have you think, Harriet Myers (and isn't it odd that all of a sudden those who supported Myers's nomination are now suddenly using her as an example of a potential Supreme Court fuck-up?).

By the way, thus far, Miss Kagan has taken the high road and not responded to the calls that she confirm her straightness, but many trustworthy people have confirmed her heterosexuality. I think that questioning one's sexual preference when they obviously don't want to speak to it is one of the rudest things that people can do. Whispering about it in the privacy of your home is one thing - I whisper about how hideous Renee Zellweger is every time I see her squinty pancake face on television - but I hardly think that kind of conversation qualifies to be put into credited media.

So is she? Isn't she? Forget about it. Can't it just be a fun inside joke?