Diverging on diversity

In today’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus adds to the already overflowing sewage tank of PC gobbledygook with a strained cry over the lack of "diversity" in Bush’s nomination of Samual Alito to the Supreme Court. But like most of the drivel spewed out from the PC left, it’s an incomprehensible mix of vague, trite pronouncements and self-contradiction.

Marcus starts by agreeing with nearly everyone that the Miers pick was a mistake.

The Miers pick represented the elevation of gender over quality; instead of adding to the sense that it is normal and appropriate to have women on the high court, the choice made it look as if presidents have to make sacrifices to scrounge up female nominees.

But she immediately follows that statement with this nonsensical conclusion:

I also find it disturbing that the drive for diversity has been so quickly, so blithely abandoned.

So wait—let me get this straight: Miers was bad because she “elevated gender over quality.” In other words, using her gender as a qualification made her a bad selection. Logically, it would seem to follow that gender—male or female—shouldn’t be a factor in selecting judges. Implicit in Marcus’ statement is that quality, not gender, is what matters in a judicial nominee.

So how then to explain that in the very next paragraph she pines for a pick that seeks to mollify proponents of “diversity?” Diversity for its own sake, which we are to assume in this case translates to picking a woman, is what Marcus says made the Miers nomination so troubling. If quality, not gender, is the true delineator, then why does she continue to make irrational, contradictory statements like this:

Just imagine an all-male, all-white Supreme Court. No president looking at a high court vacancy would consider that acceptable in this day and age, nor should he -- or she. A court with a lone female justice -- or, for that matter, a lone African American justice, or no Hispanic justice at all -- isn't all that much better.

Marcus wants to have it both ways by opposing the Miers nomination for its shameless play to diversity, but also complaining about Alito’s nomination for its lack of that same nonsense qualification. One imagines that if Bush had nominated a white, Catholic male who was also an extreme liberal, her complaints would’ve been somewhat muted.