Opinion: Roe v. Wade? Fuggedaboutit!
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Even though it’s a variation on the ‘Area Man’ (or Area Woman) chestnut, the New York Daily News has a piece about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that offers another twist on identity politics. Under the headline ‘Will Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Finally Meet His Match?’, the article notes: ‘Neither of the brassy New Yorkers -- he’s from Queens, she’s from the Bronx -- suffers fools, or unprepared lawyers.’ (For the record, Scalia was born in New Joisey but raised in Queens.)
For a lot of non-New York readers, the adjective ‘brassy’ is redundant: All New Yorkers are brassy types who won’t suffer fools -- or sages -- gladly. My favorite New York story involves a freelance pitch I made years ago (eventually successfully) to The New York Times. When I reached the editor recommended to me, she answered the phone: ‘Who are you?’
Like ethnic stereotypes, their regional counterparts are rules proved (or unproved) by endless exceptions. Not every New Yorker is obnoxious, not every Southerner is hospitable, not every Californian says ‘like’ a zillion times in every sentence. And yet regional differences do survive even in an Internet-homogenized culture. Trial lawyers in my hometown of Pittsburgh loved to be pitted against Philadelphia lawyers, because the Philly mouthpieces hectored juries a mile a minute in a foreign, quasi-New York accent. It isn’t just Southerners who preface their summations with ‘I’m just a simple, small-town lawyer.’
I happen to enjoy the persistence of regional differences, especially the superior civility of Southerners. My Exhibit A appropriately comes from the U.S. Supreme Court, which I covered for a few years. At heavily attended oral arguments, spectators -- including student groups -- often were let out at the end of proceedings through the press section. As the students and teachers brushed by us, we would engage in small talk about where they were from and how the students had enjoyed the argument. (‘I was riveted to my seat,’ one sarcastic seventh grader spat out. He reminded me of myself at that age.)
It’s impressionistic, I admit, but I was struck by how many kids from Southern schools -- including boys -- addressed me as ‘Sir.’ It wasn’t the first time I had encountered the North-South politeness differential. A TV news producer who moved from North Carolina to Pittsburgh once told me that his son’s high school classmates teased him relentlessly for addressing teachers and other adults as ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am.’ I also have noted that Southerners of all ages who are caught up in CNN-friendly natural disasters address annoying TV reporters as ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am.’
Assuming Sotomayor becomes the third New York City product on the court (the decorous Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the exception that proves the rule here), it would be nice if a soft-spoken justice from the South would inject some civility into the judicial equivalent of a subway series. Alas, the only Southerner on the bench -- Clarence Thomas -- is soft-spoken to a fault, almost never opening his mouth during arguments.