We keep hearing that Sotomayor has a compelling life story.
And no doubt she does. I happen to think that most people on earth have compelling life stories. Granted, some are a lot more dramatic than others, and contain elements that make it easier to garner sympathy for their hardships and admiration for their ability to overcome them.
For example, coming up from poverty and discrimination—as Sotomayor has—is one of those factors. And the possibility that she may indeed have been helped along the way by affirmative action doesn’t invalidate her gifts and accomplishments, which allowed her to take full advantage of whatever leg up that affirmative action may have offered her.
Of course, the life story of Clarence Thomas, her predecessor on the Court, featured poverty so grinding and deprivation and loss so profound that it makes Sotomayor’s seem like a cakewalk. We didn’t hear all that much from the MSM about Thomas’s extraordinarily compelling life trajectory way back when, however. That’s because, although his life story was about as compelling as that of anyone in public office since Abraham Lincoln, his politics weren’t—at least, not to the press.
So one of the messages we get about compelling life stories is that it depends what side of the political coin that person ends up on. If it’s the “wrong” side, the story ain’t so compelling, it’s only perplexing: how could a guy like that end up so muddleheaded?
Obama’s story is pretty compelling, too, especially his childhood and early life. Of course, then the record goes blank for quite a while during college and grad school—formative (and potentially compelling) years that one would have thought the press would be extremely curious about. So we also learn that it depends; candidates on the “right” (that is, the Left) side of the issues get to decide what part of their life stories are worth revealing and what not.
Then there’s a person like George Bush the younger. I chose him, but I could have chosen any number of politicians, some of them on the other side—for example, Al Gore. Privileged scion of a political family and wealth, WASPy as all get out—sounds more repelling than compelling, right?
I may get some laughs for writing this, but being the child of wealth and privilege has its own challenges and traps. Just look at the later generations of the Kennedy family if you want evidence, or really at any children of the rich and famous. There are abounding opportunities, yes, but there are also huge opportunities to get lost, either through drugs (or alcohol, as was temporarily the case for Bush) or selfishness or laziness or any number of other pitfalls. And yeah, it’s not going to rate a big “boohoo” from anyone when a person does fall down in that way; no one is especially sympathetic to the plight of someone who has too much. But it still takes strength to recover.
And the children of the famous are often neglected emotionally, in a way that isn’t apparent from studying the bare bones of the life story (not saying this was at all true of Bush or Gore; just that it is often true), and can cause lasting scars that are even deeper than poverty of the more pecuniary variety.
Yes, yes, yes, it’s all a cliche—“poor little rich girl” and all that. But that doesn’t make it less true. And although Bush’s story as a recovered alcoholic is extremely compelling (especially to those struggling with alcoholism), it’s about fighting internal rather than external demons. It’s garnered him more ridicule and even contempt than sympathy or admiration, this time because of a combination of his despised politics and his privileged upbringing.
Bill Clinton was another politician with a compelling story, despite his lack of minority pedigree. Although he was white, he was from the wrongish side of the tracks, with early tragedy and hardship—father died before his birth, lived with grandparents while mother went back to school to get nursing degree, and an abusive stepfather. Clinton milked this tale dry in the 1992 Democratic Convention with his “Man From Hope” biopic (even his home town had cooperated with its own “compelling” name to make his story more dramatic).
Clinton was the beginning—as far as I can recall; correct me if you remember differently—of the blatant and extended promotion of the life story through lengthy film features as part of the nomination process. I know that the attraction of a politician with a compelling story goes back at least to Andrew Jackson (take a look; his early years managed to combine some of the most dramatic elements of Clinton, Lincoln, and John McCain’s stories in one extraordinarily colorful person). But somehow I think it’s gotten way out of hand.
It reminds me of the Olympics. What do I mean by that? I used to be a big fan of the Olympics when I was young, and in the olden days the TV coverage was very straightforward: we watched the unadorned sports. Now, I’m sure there were a lot of very compelling stories there (if the early years of this lady, a personal favorite of mine, aren’t compelling, I don’t know what is). But if those stories were told at all, it was in a brief manner and was very secondary to the athletic competition that was the main attraction.
Somewhere along the line this changed. I don’t know the exact date, but the terms “up close and personal” became a joke because of the dominance of these human interest stories, which came to overshadow the original point of the whole thing, the physical feats. When the ratio of biography to athleticism reached a tipping point I stopped watching.
I’m interested in people and their stories—probably even more so than most. But I hereby go on record as being heartily sick of the glorification of the story over the substance, as though the first makes up for any lacks in the second. I’m also less than pleased with the differential treatment of such stories depending on the politics of the biographee. Don’t expect that practice to change any time soon, though—it’s the triumph of the easily accessible versus the harder business of evaluating a person’s actual accomplishments and what they might mean.
