New York Times columnist Bob Herbert pokes fun at Newt Gingrich this morning for calling Judge Sonya Sotomayor a “Latina woman racist,” writing that Gingrich is “apparently unaware of his incoherence in the ‘Latina-woman’ redundancy in this defamatory characterization.”
Herbert is technically correct. But as we all know, Sotomayor’s most controversial public pronouncement came during a 2001 speech in which she said:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Watch Herbert tie himself into knots as he attempts to allude to that statement without quoting it directly.
For the record, I don’t think Sotomayor is incoherent, redundant or a racist.