An explanation

Last night I received a really ugly private email message from someone about my most recent post, which commented on Maureen Dowd’s op-ed piece in the New York Times regarding the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. I would not normally make note of such things, but in this particular case, I think there needs to be a bit of explanation.  In the headline to my post, I quoted Dowd’s use of the phrase “Sonia Legree” which she used as a satirical metaphor to characterize Judge Sotomayor’s ongoing efforts to distance herself from any kind of “empathy” (a vague and vastly overused term in this set of hearings).  The judge has made it appear that she would put her own mother in jail if the law said it should happen. “The law is the law.” On NPR this morning Nina Totenberg characterized the judge as “sphinxlike” in her blandness.  (Thank God for Senator Al Franken asking about Perry Mason yesterday.)

My correspondent last night clearly did not read the Dowd piece (or if she did, she totally mis-read it), and she addressed her diatribe to Ms. Dowd, not to Virtual Farm Boy. Unfortunately, I don’t have a direct line to Ms. Dowd, so I can’t pass it along.

I still think the whole confirmation hearing process is dysfunctional, and in this particular case there are strong and disturbing undertones of sexism and racism that have permeated this display of Grand Political Theatre.

Maureen Dowd: White Guys Gang Up on “Sonia Legree”

Maureen Dowd, in today’s New York Times, gets it just right about the ongoing confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.  Judge Sotomayor has learned her coached lessons well: that is, don’t say anything; be as bland as possible; don’t let the old white guys get under your skin.  Listening to the re-caps of yesterday’s hearing, it was astonishing to witness the patronizing and condescending behavior of the senators toward the judge.  The most outrageous was when Senator Lindsey Graham asked about her judicial “temperament,” and said that it was reported that she was “nasty” and “a bully.”  This is a classic case of gender bias: a male in a similar situation would be called “aggressive”; a female is “a bitch.”  Today’s hearing appears to be more of same.  These hearings take on the aspect of an old-fashioned college fraternity hazing: something horrifying to endure in order to become a member of the club.  It is an unseemly spectacle.

New York Times on the Cleveland Orchestra “Marriage of Figaro”

New York Times music critic James Oestreich’s review appears in today’s paper.  A positive review, aligning with what I wrote in my post yesterday.

New York Times weighs in on the Rosenberg/Cleveland Orchestra fracas

The New York Times on Thursday, September 25th, published an article by Daniel J. Wakin on the front page of its arts section about the Plain Dealer’s dismissal of Donald Rosenberg as the critic of the Cleveland Orchestra performances. Not much new ground is covered; there are quotes from Rosenberg himself, from Plain Dealer editor Sarah Goldberg (who declines to comment on an “internal personnel matter”), from Franz Wesler-Möst (“If the same person writes after six years that the orchestra plays beautifully and what I do is bad, somehow it misses logic.”) and from Gary Hanson, who reiterates most of what he said in the comment he left on this blog.

The Orchestra’s first concert of the season was last night.  So far, no review on the PD web site.  I’m going tonight.

Op-ed in the NY Times kicks Case’s butt

An op-ed piece in today’s New York Times by Stephen Budiansky describes in vivid and hilarious terms the extent to which university’s will go to attract “customers” (formerly known as students). The prinicpal example is my fine employer, Case Western Reseve University, which a couple of years ago decided (after an expenditure of many dollars–rumored to be over a million, but a closely guarded secret–and numerous “focus groups”) to style itself as CASE, based on the idea that all great universities have one-word names: think Harvard, Yale, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern. (Sorry, we’re not in the same league.) The only flaw in the plan was that they failed to “focus” on the the zillions of old ladies and old gentlemen who didn’t graduate from CASE, but instead have allegiance to Western Reserve University or Adelbert College, or Flora Stone Mather College–all of which were swept away in the name change.)

The Times piece goes on to describe Case’s new undergraduate curriculum, SAGES (Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship), which is sucking up untold resources in terms of faculty time–time that is subtracted from the time they have available for research–and classroom resources. Most damning is the quotation from the SAGES web site about the coffee shop that supports the SAGES program.

Working for an institution whose president just resigned more or less in disgrace, which has a $40 million budget deficit it is trying to make up in one year, and currently seemingly nobody in charge, this piece on op-ed page of the New York Times is the last thing we need. It’s all pretty pathetic.