¡Viva Zapata!

Belying the shallowness of the foothold left on Mt. Demagogue, the Loyal Opposition's resistance to Sonia Sotomayor has essentially been reduced to what I call the Brick Tamland defense:



I know, it's childish and reductivist and a gross distortion of what is probably a complex and nuanced position. If I were being fair, I would point out that the resistance to her nomination extends past her lady parts and all the way into her gastrointestinal system. This is clearly a bad, bad, bad, bad, muy malo person.

The point, of course, is that beyond the objective merits of the person in question, Republicans need a win, or more specifically, to show that they retain the capacity to offer resistance of any kind. As summer approaches, the political targets are slim at best. It's either offer full-throated opposition to the Sotomayor nomination or shout down D-Day rememberances. And we know that won't happen because, after Ronald Reagan, World War II is the thing the Republican speaking class is most creepily clingy and possessive about. Heck, they'll even let you say the F word on teevee if it's Saving Private Ryan.

There is also vehement opposition to the way the woman prefers to pronounce her own name because--and how dare she!--it sounds so Spanish-y and foreign. Now, it's very possible that I am exactly the reason why there is a fight about this. Not me specifically, but other white kids who have grown up in the southwest, immersed in the creeping socialist linguistics of repressive Sandanista Spanglish, eroding our good Anglo-Saxon ears with the silly sing-song gibberish of non-English. The first time I read "Sotomayor," I assumed it was pronounced the way she prefers: accent on the last syllable. But white people are livid that they aren't allowed to pronounce it like the compound English nonsense word "Soda-Mayor." Like she's the chief alderman of Coca-Cola Ville. For me, I guess it's just too late. The brainwashing is already too far along. Look, I can even do it with the little accent thingy in the right place: Sotomayór. Sotomayór. Sotomayór. You can't hear it, but I'm totally trilling the R at the end too.

Hey, does anyone else have a wild craving for carne asada, followed by breeding mixed-race mongrel children? Man, I could really go for that right now.