Inside from the Inside

Can you imagine the look on Jon Stewart’s face when he landed a copy of the new National Review?

Bizarrely, it depicts Sonia Sotomayor, the catholic, Latina Supreme Court nominee, as a Tibetan Buddhist.

In trying to re-construct what must have been the editorial rationale for this cover design, I kept thinking… um… WTF?

A while back I wondered why Republicans have struggled to attract minority voters when many seem to share conservative social values.

I’m starting to wonder:  Do they actually want to?

This topic initially struck me as an important conversation about the merits and attraction of conservatism over and against the politics of identity (as Ta-Nahesi Coates, Andrew Sullivan, and Rod Dreher have been exploring and debating).  But when National Review — the leading light of intellectual conservatism — publishes a cover from the mind of Rush Limbaugh, the topic becomes farce.

What were the editors thinking?  I can think of three possibilities:

1. “Oriental, Mexican — what’s the difference? All those darkies look pretty much the same to us.”
2. “Unlike Judge Sotomayor, we at National Review are beyond race. She could be Chinese for all we care.”
3. “Lighten up, you hyper-sensitive PC zealots. I dare you to call us racists… Just watch how indignant we can get.”

One gathers from Editor Rich Lowry’s response that the third was at least a factor in their thinking.

Honestly, I’m not convinced this is racist.  I am convinced it’s tone-deaf.  Politically speaking, that may be just as bad.

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