A good time to ignore the noise machine

First impressions are good ones on Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. A compelling personal story, mainstream-liberal opinions, lots of experience including two previous Senate confirmations. She seems like she will be a good justice, which is exactly what we would expect of Obama.

Most of the criticism of her has been of her "demeanor," which is code for acting like the male judges act. (Helpful hint: If the word "domineering" appears in an article about an accomplished woman, it's sexism.) A particularly problematic instance of this was Jeffrey Rosen's article on her in New Republic; this has been authoritatively inspected and rejected by Glenn Greenwald but it will be interesting to see how many times the article is cited in the next couple of months.

Mainstream journo Mark Halperin thinks that her confirmation will not only come, but will come easily:

Assuming nothing surfaces in Sotomayor's background that causes controversy, expect her to be seated when the court opens for its new term in October, after thorough confirmation hearings that will seem more like a lovefest than a legal firing squad. By both design and luck, Obama faces a Supreme Court–pick process that has been drained of the tension and combat that has characterized such moments in the past several decades.

(snip)

Since she is certain to be confirmed, there are plenty of smart conservatives who will, by midday Tuesday, have done the political cost-benefit analysis: at a time when Republicans are trying to demonstrate that their party can reach beyond rich white men, what mileage is there in doing anything but celebrating such a historic choice?

Which means that the only people who will be complaining about her are the hard-right, the people whose only goal is governmental dysfunction, Arbitron numbers and/or direct-mail fundraising. Given this near-consensus, this is a really good opportunity for the mainstream and mainstream-left press to take my prior advice to stop letting the right wing drive the agenda. If Olbermann and Maddow spend the next 2 months with stories like, "Can you believe what those nutters are saying about Sotomayor now" (at least as major stories; if Keith wants to make them "worst persons" I have no objection) then they're wasting valuable time that could be spent explaining the actual issues that are actually facing this country.

The right-wing noise machine is only that if we help it be so. This is not a controversial pick, and we have no reason to abet those who will pretend that it is.