For me, it was the pause. I knew that the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson would produce a lot of insults and smears from Republicans trying to be racist enough for Fox News viewers to get the message but not so racist that The New York Times would have to acknowledge it. Jackson surely knew it too. And despite over 20 hours of questioning over two days, during which Republicans yelled at her and grandstanded and repeatedly insinuated that she was a terrorist and child-sex-trafficker sympathizer in front of her daughters and parents, she never once lost her cool.
But she did take one really long pause. During Tuesday’s opening round of questions, Senator Ted Cruz went into full racist smear mode. Cruz is a former law school classmate and Harvard Law Review colleague of Jackson’s, but as for many, many white boys from that school, the comity and collegiality of a shared alma mater only seems to extend to fellow whites. Jackson is a Black woman, and Cruz’s teeth were out. He was trying to scare white voters by implying that Jackson was a black radical who believes in “critical race theory” and would use her position on the court to put dangerous thoughts in the minds of white children.
Only it was Ted Cruz doing this, so his teeth were crooked, dull, and almost unintentionally comical. Cruz came prepared with posters, like an office manager who never learned
— source thenation.com | Elie Mystal | Mar 24, 2022