You guys are amazing. Did any of you actually read the oriiginal thread? My argument is that the major dustup that has ensued regarding political affiliation and conservative/liberal politics with relation to the Supreme Court nominees in the last generation or so has been a result of the choice of Clarence Thomas as a nominee and ultimately as a justice.
Part of the argument (and not such a large part either) is that as a beneficiary himself of affirmative action he might ordinarily be expected to support it, but no he doesn’t. Since the seat he was to occupy was previously held by Thurgood Marshall, arguably the most liberal justice to be seated in any of our lifetimes and the only person of color, there was some clamor to replace him with a justice of a similar stripe. But no, they decided to find the most conservative black lawyer/judge in the country and nominate him for the seat, in spite of a serious dearth in qualifications.
Now you may not agree with any of this. It was all posted in great debates. However you would have to be an absolute idiot like Bricker to say that Thomas did not necessarily attend Holy Cross as a result of affimative action and the website I chose as a cite confirms this to all but the most determined conservative %&^%$%&&*. What possible reason to mention the recruiting effort at Holy Cross other than to give the impression that Thomas, a Catholic by the way, went there as a result, and would not have gone there otherwise, but leaving that aspect aside, how can one possibly argue that he did not benefit from the recruitment when, after finishing 9th in his class, he subsequently was chosen for Yale’s affirmative action program?
Yes he is a smart guy and probably would have achieved a measure of success in any field he would have chosen to enter. He is not qualified to be a Supreme Court justice and should never have been nominated. End of my participation
You know I never said he ought to think this or he should think that, I simply said that the uproar was a result of his nomination and his clear cut conservatism, so whether or not affirmative action is something that we think is right or wrong it is so unexpected in a black person who has benfitted from it that it causes suspicion as to the motives of the nominators.
But you’re not pitting Bricker for that, so who cares? (You’re not getting any argument from me on that, either.) You’re pitting him for this:
Which you have singularly and spectacularly failed to back up. Of course that’s what your cite is implying, but again, so what?
Frank moved to Colorado, after Roy Romer was elected governor. Does that prove that Romer let me move here?
Boyo Jim above found some evidence that backs up your assertion, so his work has demonstrated proof. You did not provide, nor did your cite provide, any evidence at all.
I dunno about that, but the other day, Roy and I were chatting about this ‘n’ that, and apropos of absolutely nothing that had gone before, he said: “I wonder if Frank ever got the word after Dick Riorden brought me to the LAUSD that it was okay for him to move to Los Angeles?” He had that look on his face that you sometimes see people wear in a restaurant when they try to remember if they left the shower running.
It is often the case that AA starts off as efforts to recruit from places other than the traditional ones for the institution in question (companies interviewing or drawing interns from traditionally black colleges, for example). Then all the candidates who are otherwise qualified for the position get snapped up.
Then the institutions are faced with a dilemma. Much of the thinking behind civil rights legislation is predicated on the idea that, all other things being equal, the variously defined protected classes will always appear in a given population in proportion to their numbers in the general populace. And that if they do not, that is an indication of racism.
But when no otherwise qualified minority representative is available, the temptation is strong to game the system to include minorities and avoid the accusation (or fulfill an otherwise laudable commitment to fairness). Suppose you want to hire a Ph.D in math as a professor. No other professors in your math department are black. So you look for a qualified black.
So the temptation is to change the standard, and look for someone who has the right color rather than the right degree. And thus piss off every other non-black math PhD. in the country who would like to be considered for the position, but won’t be.
Is that discrimination based on race? Sure looks like it to me. “Sure you are better qualified, but you are the wrong - err, candidate. Best of luck somewhere else.”
First of all, this is not law school (or a movie for that matter) and Bricker while he may be as big an ass as Kingsfield is, nevertheless, not Kingsfield and the issue we are discussing is not a legal one it is posted in great debates. It is therefore a debatable one. As such I offered an opinion. I did not expect to be asked for cites regarding something I thought to be common knowledge and when i said wiki it was because I thought I had read those things there when I had really read them on oyez. Now I don’t doubt that the method you describe for interrogating lawyers on the fine points of the law works well in life or death situations, although more and more from what I have read the Socratic method is used by some justices to make the lawyers look stupid while not negating any part of the lawyer’s actual argument. (Find your own goddamn cite, but you might start with the search word Scalia.) As to the rest of my argument and what Bricker extrapolated please read the argument or don’t comment. As for the citizens of Athens - cite please.
Finally, you say, Bricker challenged my assertion that an outreach program to African American students is affirmative action. I say to you, do you speak English? What is it if it is not an affirmative action? It is aimed at one race of persons who obviously are not currently entering the university, either because of cultural reasons, unfamiliarity with the curriculum, or possibly the admission standards are too high. It does not matter which of the reasons may be applicable in a particular case, one of these or a plethora of others that may exist, if the university is out to remedy the situation that is affirmative action. It does not mean that none of the persons discovered and ultimately admitted under the program are legitmate students or that they will ultimately fail. It means that the university identified a weakness or a failure in its own admission procedures and took an affirmative action to correct it. Clarence Thomas benefitted from this action (use whatever cite you want to convince yourself of this.) By the way, the entire legal debate over affirmative action may be to determine when particular applications of race are permitted (I don’t have an opinion) but we are not talking about that. We are simply determining what is or is not affirmative action. In my view any action taken to benefit one race that is not taken for all other races, if benign in its intent, is affirmative action. If it were not benign, but harmful it would be a negative or discriminatory action.
As to your paragraph 4 and 5 above, that is your opinion. See above paragraph for my opinion.
Actually Bricker did not challenge the main point of my thread, which is that the uproar over nominations followed Thomas’s nomination. There was never any question that he benefitted from affirmative action, only the question of whether the benfit accrued during his matriculation at Holy Cross. Please read the original thread if you want to make assertions about what occurred on it.
As to the Socratic method, perhaps I am not so accepting of it, not having gone through a few law degrees and living in a world where lawyers have everything so fucked up that George Orwell could not discern what went wrong. I have no doubt it is a well-accepted way of probing assertions in your universe, but in rational universes the assertion that the sky appears to be blue does not require a cite.
You know wahat? all of this was discussed on the original thread, which if i remember correctly was in great debates. it was not in general questions. there is no factual answer to determine whenther the uproar started over bork as you say or over thomas as i say. dude, go fuck yourself.
Please re-read my original thread or this one and show me where i slammed ct for being a beneficiary of aa and now opposing aa. actually since you commented so often in the original thread i assumed you were reading along, apparently no. I’d pit you also, but you aren’t worth the effort.
Perhaps there’s no objective method of definitively proving whether Bork or Thomas serves as the starting point, but do you really find that the question (of whether Thomas’s attendance at Holy Cross constituted being a beneficiary of AA) is crucial to your argument that it was Thomas?
To say that he was justified in criticizing the oyez cite because it did not make it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that thomas was admitted due to the recruitment policy when bricker himself knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was is not unlike the North Carolina District Attorney saying that there was evidence of a rape when he in fact knew that there was no evidence that the boys in charge committed a rape. It is just these ethical lapses which cause the public to hate lawyers. (find your own goddamn cite.)
It is precisely here and there. It is the point that I am arguing. The motives of the nominators became totally suspect after the CT nomination. (My opinion)
Step away from the pwnage. Slowly. Before you melt.
You’re trying to argue a point. It seems clear to YOU, because you’re invested in your own interpretation of the data. Others who are not so invested, or are as invested in a different interpretation of the same data, do not see it as “clearly” as you do. They do not see the path to the same answer that you do.
Bricker is challenging the validity of your path, in part because it appears that he does not see things your way, and in part because he seems to think (as do I) that your logic is flawed.
He is pointing those things out to you. Clinically.
You are getting angry.
You have to be prepared for the eventuality that others will not agree with you, and it is perfectly rational and not at all dickish to, instead of touting the rightness of one’s own opinion, to expose the flaws in yours. It’s a tested technique, and Bricker does not have to be right (or even take a contrary position at all) for you to be wrong.
That is what Bricker is doing.
If you are unprepared to deal with that civilly, might I humbly suggest ATMB?
In the meantime, you might want to consider not treating this message board like it’s an IM conversation, go do some research, actually address the contentions being made and the challenges put to you, and formulate a well-thought answer that addresses them. You might still be incorrect, but at least you won’t be “that frothing at the mouth guest whose one trick was AA until he got banned.”
If you allege something in Great Debates, you’re expected to back it up with cites if asked. It’s not just for rants about what “everyone knows.” That’s what Bricker was doing - pointing out weaknesses in your supporting facts.
No it’s not and I never said that it was, if you read the original thread I merely stated that as a beneficiary of aa it was one of the things that made his appointment by a conservative president hard to swallow. Here they were replacing Thurgood marshall with a black justice yes, but with the most conservative black justice they could find, thus the ensuing uproar.
There are many other things about Thomas’s nomination which cause it to be equally dubious and I mentioned several of them. This is why I think Bricker is an asshole, He takes one obvious fact and challenges its factualness and then the new debate began.
No, what would probably happen is that while they’re dragging him up against the wall, Bricker would argue that the execution could not occur because the wall didn’t meet the legally defined criteria for wall as set forth in People v. Coffenose, that even if it did, contemporary standards made the old criteria invalid, and besides, the firing squad members had not met marksmanship qualifications and were wearing scuffed shoes.
So they would burn him at the stake instead.
On the positive side, I think “I pit thee” is a perfectly valid construct when you’ve gotten yourself into a dudgeon over something that occurred at Holy Cross.
“Clarence Thomas has lived a life riddled with irony and contradictions. Although he has opposed racial preference and affirmative action programs, he nonetheless benefited from them. As a young student, Thomas entered the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit institution in Massachusetts, after the school began a black recruitment program. Thomas was the beneficiary of a similar minority program a few years later at Yale Law School.”
Please someone tell me that this cite does not say that he benefitted form AA at Holy Cross. It is the cite that I provided for Bricker. I know I am stupid and frothing at the mouth and a newbie, but if you could just parse the statement for me so I can see where my Enlglish language skills are failing me I would be ever so grateful.
I know folks are piling on you, but I actually agree with this latter point, about Bricker seizing on a minor point to dismantle your entire position. It happens a lot around here with many posters, not just Bricker. I have probably done it as well. We don’t mean to be assholes. It just happens from time to time.
But you know what you should have done? You should’ve conceded that point. If the Holy Cross thing was keeping him from seeing the fullness of your position by veering the discussion into a side argument you couldn’t possibly win, just say, “I don’t have a cite, so I’ll give you that one. But what about the other stuff I’ve said?” If posters continue to be sidetracked after that, then you have good Pit fodder to work with.
Although he certainly is no fan of mine (I’m one of those few Dopers who carry grudges), Bricker does not deserve to be pitted, even though I believe your irritation is kinda jusified. Believe me, if you stick around long enough you’ll find much better reasons to pit him. But this isn’t it.
Actually when I think of bricker it reminds me of a joke:
When france was still using the guillotine (maybe they still do - I don’t have a cite) Bricker had been arrested for defrauding a client and sentenced to death. He was waiting in line to be executed and the first man in line went up to meet his fate. The executioner released the blade and as it rapidly descended it suddenly stopped just short of the man’s neck. The executioner said: “The almighty god in his wisdom has seen fit to spare you. Go you are free.” The next man took his position and the identical thing happened and he too was set free. Now it was Bricker’s turn and as he placed his neck in the provided slot he turned and looked up at the blade and said: Well, look! There is your problem."
Stupid git.