The Political Sexism Machine Strikes Again

After the misogynistic treatment that Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Nancy Pelosi during their political trials it's really no surprise that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Obama nomination for Supreme Court Justice, is facing a similar reception from the peanut gallery. Yet again, we are seeing the well-oiled political sexism machine wind up it's gears and shift into overdrive with one goal: degrade Sotomayor publicly, assault her with gender based insults and then spit her out into political oblivion.

Check out this most recent hit reported by Ali Frick at Think Progress:

Yesterday on his radio show, conservative host G. Gordon Liddy continued the right wing's all-out assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. First, just like Tom Tancredo, Liddy slammed Sotomayor's affiliation with the civil rights group La Raza - and referred to the Spanish language as "illegal alien":

LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, "the race." And that should not surprise anyone because she's already on record with a number of racist comments.

Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor's gender:

LIDDY: Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Finally, Liddy disputed the entire idea that there's anything wrong with the paucity of women and total lack of Hispanics on the Court:

LIDDY: And everybody is cheering because Hispanics and females have been, quote, underrepresented, unquote. And as you pointed out, which I thought was quite insightful, the Supreme Court is not designed to be and should not be a representative body.

While the far right flank is failing to get the all of the conservative leadership on board with the racist and sexist attacks, it doesn't mean that their message is falling on deaf ears.

How do we stop the political sexism (and racism) machine from shifting into action every time a female or person of color is put into a position of power? How much longer will it take to end the gender war in politics and power?