Moving beyond Judge Alito's judicial record, a coalition of liberal groups is preparing commercials attacking his integrity and credibility instead, several people involved in the effort said Monday. They spoke only after being granted anonymity because the plans are supposed to be confidential until their formal announcement on Wednesday.
Conservatives, for their part, are capitalizing on ethnic pride to rally Italian-American support for Judge Alito with public events and newspaper advertisements. The efforts are aimed particularly at the Northeastern States, where some moderate Republican senators have expressed doubts about his confirmation.
And in Arkansas, home to two moderate Democratic senators whose votes are considered to be in play, another group, the Judicial Confirmation Network, is running Christmas-themed commercials beginning this week on African-American gospel radio stations. In them, the Rev. Bill Owens, a black pastor, urges support for Judge Alito to protect public displays of Nativity scenes and menorahs, and to uphold the right of schoolgirls to "draw pictures of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for class projects."
It's an ugly picture, one drawn by David D. Kirkpatrick's "Advocacy Groups Prepare New Ad Campaigns on Alito" in this morning's New York Times. On the left, you've got moles or egomaniacs looking to score with the Times by dishing, on the right, "ethnic-pride's" the selling point for a Supreme Court Justice and on the far right (we'll assume there's a difference between the two groups on the right), you've got someone making a perfect fool of himself in public. Willingly. What's next? Proudly standing up for really bad middle school doodles of horses?
I don't usually make a point to offer that someone's a "fool" unless they're a politician or a journalist but it's not often that someone not of either camp enters the public fray to make such a deliberate fool of themselves. By the way, Owens isn't just "a black pastor." Though Kirkpatrick doesn't tell you this, he's also on the executive committee of the Arlington Group and fond of dismissing issues of race with comments to the effect that it's neither a black or white issue but a Christian one.
Dismissing issues of race guarantees him a seat at the Bully Boy's table. Another refrain also earns him a spot. This one goes something like this, "The homosexual community has brainwashed America." He likes to trot out both in various forums whenever possible. But in the Times today, he's just "a black pastor." And Jesus was just a carpenter?
David E. Sanger wrote in Sunday Times of Bully Boy hankering down in Crawford, now we'll get to see what all that "work" was about.
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the new york times
david d. kirkpatrick
