Overwrought

Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump has been eviscerated by everyone on the Left, just about everyone in the media (but I repeat myself) and even some prominent Republicans. Unless you've living under a rock, you know that Trump violated every tenet of political correctness when he suggested that U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel's Mexican heritage (the Judge is an American) caused him to be biased in a lawsuit involving the infamous Trump University (you know, the school that took student money and provided them with little of benefit ... oh wait, that's what hundreds of colleges and universities across the country do every day). Depending on who was speaking, Trump was at best an outright racist or at worst, Adolph Hitler in pre-WW-II Germany.

James Taranto considers Trump's monumentally impolitic and politically moronic statements about Judge Curiel in the context of another statement on race, but this one made by a liberal woman who was to become a Supreme Court justice. He writes:

A kerfuffle had erupted over something [Judge Sonia] Sotomayor said in a 2001 speech, the substance of which (as we noted last week) was consistent with Trump’s comment about [Judge] Curiel, to wit: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Newt Gingrich made an appearance in that column, too, in a CNN story:

On Wednesday, Gingrich tweeted: “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman.’ new racism is no better than old racism.”

Moments later, he followed up with the message: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

We [Taranto] thought the charge of “racism” overwrought: “Sotomayor’s statement is not racist, even assuming that ‘Latina’ is a racial category. She is quite clear that her belief in the superior decision-making skills of ‘a wise Latina woman’ as compared with ‘a white male’ is contingent on culture and experience, not rooted in some essential racial difference.”

That might have been a tad too charitable, as we missed another quote from the same speech: “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences . . . our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

We thought Sotomayor’s statement was fairly described as “an expression of prejudice,” and we think the same of Trump’s recent remarks. But if she wasn’t a racist for stating the general proposition, how can he be one for applying it in a specific case?

There is, of course, a media double standard when it comes to GOP candidates' violation of PC as opposed to candidates from the Democrat party, but that's S.O.P., and there's little point in lamenting it—although it's very important to point it out. What Trump did was really stupid and arguably insensitive, but to suggest that he is akin to a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is overwrought in the extreme.