(no subject)
I really want my authority figures to be smarter than I am. Like, it really does matter to me that Harriet Miers (US Supreme Court candidate) seems to be dumb. And I don't really think this is an elitist view at all. I also don't think it's superficial for the news media to be reporting things that make her seem dumb. The first quote I read from her contained an agregious grammar mistake and it really did upset me. She said something like "I think that each member of the Supreme Court should form their own opinions." Each...their??!! No. Since then, I have seen an inordinate example of grammar mistakes in what she says. And it's not just that. In a meeting with Senator Leahy she seems to have mistaken Chief Justice Earl Warren for Chief Justice Warren Burger. And yes, it does bother me that she wrote to Bush that he was "the best governor ever." God. Yuck. I want my Supreme Court to be composed of intellectuals. I want them to be brilliant. I'm sure Miers is more intelligent than the average American, but that's just not enough.
So, naturally I expressed this view in one of my government classes. I was genuinely surprised when three other people said that they liked the fact that Miers was more like an ordinary person. They said they liked her line that Bush was the "best governor ever" because it was something they would write. I'm sorry. I don't want a Supreme Court justice that writes like I do. I don't want a Supreme Court Justice who is accessible to me. I want a superhuman, Constitution-interpreting MACHINE who has never made a grammar mistake, writes eloquently all the time, and is way beyond my scope of comprehension.
Government officials, upholders of American justice, should be held to higher standards than normal people and to the standards we apply to ourselves. Just because a candidate is on the same intellectual plane as you does not mean that he/she is poor like, unemployed like you, struggling like you. And it doesn't mean that he/she is going to be more sympathetic to your interests or care about you at all.
That was boring so I LJ-cut it. But I wanted to write it out.