Confirmation BiasAs we await Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation vote next week, one thing has already been confirmed: the hypocrisy and double standards of the corporate left-wing media.
By Horace Cooper
March 31, 2022
You might not know it from the news coverage, but Ketanji Brown Jackson isn’t the first black person to be named to the United States Supreme Court. She’s not even the second. But the fawning coverage might make you think she was—especially in contrast to the last black American named to the high court, Justice Clarence Thomas.
The media’s treatment of a liberal nominee versus a conservative nominee has been a study in stark contrasts these past weeks.
According to the media, Jackson is brilliant and accomplished. A sitting judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and a former vice-chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission with two degrees from Harvard, we’re told her background is unassailable. But Clarence Thomas was an assistant secretary at the Department of Education, chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Yale law graduate.
When he was appointed in 1991, the media felt obligated to ask President George H. W. Bush if Thomas was selected only because of his race; they responded with skepticism when the president replied he didn’t believe there was a “black seat on the Court” and had instead chosen the best man for the job.
In contrast, Joe Biden said explicitly during the 2020 campaign and again following Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement in January that race was the only rationale in Jackson’s selection. The media now says that any inquiry about the reason for her selection is unfair and probably racist.
After a week of hearings, we learned a great deal about Jackson, namely her sympathies with respect to critical race theory, which aims to unfairly tar America as a vessel for racism and white supremacy. We also heard her explain her soft spot for convicted child pornographers going back to her time as a law student at Harvard.
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If Thomas had held idiosyncratic views on child pornography or race, there would be a media frenzy to discredit his confirmation. In fact, it was precisely because of the remarkable job he did during his formal confirmation hearing that the Anita Hill smear ultimately took place.
Fortunately for Jackson—and liberals who are desperate to replace Justice Stephen Breyer with a like-minded jurist—that type of scrutiny doesn’t exist for Democratic nominees.
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Source:
https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/31/confirmation-bias/
