Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Alito Jumps Hoops With Ease

When I was younger someone once told me that acheiving your goal required a lot of "jumping through hoops." "Hoops" turned out to be those obstacles that had to be endured or overcome to get where you wanted to go....perhaps a BA degree or a particular job.

Some hoops serve a good purpose but many seem to have been created simply for the sake of jumping or crawling through them. Certain hoops even seem to have been created soley to bring humiliation to the aspirant and some kind or frat-boy initiation-rite joy to those who have already passed that way before.

Back in my Boy Scout days we had a hoop called "snipe hunting" that served this purpose quite well.

This week Judge Alito is jumping through his irrelevent and largely purposeless hoops in the United States Senate. The Democrats have been doing their best to turn it into a frat-boy initiation-ritual and seem to be taking perverse pleasure in trying to make the President's nominee to the Supreme Courts squirm or at least look humiliated.

Unfortunately, what the world is seeing instead is a bunch of campus bullies throwing their (not inconsiderable) weight around in trying to make life miserable for what they view as some young, nervous Freshmen.

Even more unfortunate for the Democrats is that Alito is proving to be a better man than they are (and this includes the women, too!). The contrast is striking. Senators bloviating and posing and ranting and raving over jots and tittles and motes and specks while beams the size of Pacific Coast Redwood trees can be seen planted firmly in their eyes. Alito, meanwhile, sits and tries his best to be civil and patient, demonstrating why he was nominated as a qualified Supreme Couirt Judge instead of the many wanna-be former lawyers who, facing him, pretend to be his betters.

The world is watching. Americans are watching. They are seeing the quality of leadership representative of the conservative, Republican Party. They are also seeing the quality of leadership representative of the liberal, Democratic Party. It should be clear to all that there is a difference. And the difference is not flattering to the liberals.

I think, when it is all over, the Democrats will look back and realize that, in some ironic twist of fate, they were the ones who were jumping through the hoop...and missed it.

Then again, the naked Emperor continued to insist that he was richly clad in spite of the wind and cold and all the other evidence to the contrary. Sometimes folks have a hard time getting their own jokes...especially when they are unwittingly the butt of them themselves.