SATURDAY: She apparently thought she could be Nancy Drew!

SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2024

Perhaps not the world's worst idea: In this morning's New York Times, we find a fascinating portrait of Justice Sotomayor—more specifically, of the way she grew up.

Her father died when she was nine. In her portrait for the Times, Abbie VonSickle takes it from there:

VANSICKLE (5/25/24): She spoke with great warmth about her mother, who raised her as a single parent after Justice Sotomayor’s father died when she was 9. She said her mother initially wanted her to become a journalist, to travel and interview people. As a young girl, the justice recalled, her mother was unable to afford books or newspapers, leaving her to pluck papers from trash cans, eager to understand more of the world.

As a high school student, Justice Sotomayor said, she watched her mother return to school to become a registered nurse, a move that showed great determination.

“If I’m half the woman my mother was, then I’m satisfied because she was amazing,” Justice Sotomayor said.

The world contains a lot of great people, some of whom aren't famous. Justice Sotomayor's mother was one such person. 

As this morning's profile continues, so does Justice Sotomayor's portrait of her mother:

VANSICKLE (continuing directly): She also credited a series of mentors with helping her find her way as she rose from a young lawyer to a district judge, moving to the appeals court and finally the Supreme Court.

When she was asked to join the Supreme Court, she said, she hesitated because her mother had been diagnosed with memory loss, and she worried about whether she would have enough time to spend with her.

Her mother’s reaction was swift and clear: “She stopped me, and she said, ‘Don’t you dare not do this because of me. You would take away the dream I spent my life building for you. I wanted you to be the very best you can.’”

The world contains many such people. That said, we were most struck by something else the Justice told Vansickle about her childhood:

VANSICKLE: On a sunny spring day, hundreds gathered under an outdoor tent to hear Justice Sotomayor, including young children carrying Puerto Rican flags, a nod to her roots. The justice, whose parents are Puerto Rican, is the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court.

The justice said that she had first planned on a career as a detective, prompted not by her interactions with law enforcement in the public housing that formed her world as a child in the Bronx but because of the fictional girl detective Nancy Drew.

“I think Nancy Drew became sort of a role model,” Justice Sotomayor said.

That led to a fascination with helping others, seeking justice and, eventually, a more sophisticated understanding of the legal system and the power of judges...

As a child, she apparently thought she could be Nancy Drew. It wasn't the world's worst idea.

We'll guess that public libraries and public school libraries were involved in her ability to read the Nancy Drew Books. We read the Nancy Drew books too, along with the Hardy Boys counterparts.

Did it make sense for that girl in public housing in the Bronx to imagine herself as Nancy Drew? Nancy Drew was straight up suburban middle-class Anglo. As noted in the passage above, Sotomayor is a Latina. Both parents "were Puerto Rican."

Did it make sense for that kid to see herself in Nancy Drew? In part, we answer our question with a related question:

Is it possible that Donald J. Trump may get elected this fall because those of us in Blue America have sometimes possibly pushed too hard toward saying the answer is no?

To what extent have we in Blue America possibly helped advance the interests of Candidate Trump? There's no perfect way to answer such questions. That includes the question about Justice Sotomayor and Nancy Drew.

That said, we thought the profile of Sotomayor and her mother was worth noting. So too with the eternal need for villains, a need we found expressed, remarkably bluntly, at the start of a guest essay in today's same New York Times.

Has our own tribe's psychic need for villains helped advance the interests of Donald J. Trump? We'll probably explore that question all through next week's reports.

She apparently thought she could be Nancy Drew! In some ways, that belief may not have been totally accurate, 

That belief may not have been totally accurate. But seeing "how way [has led] on to way," it also may not have been the world's number-one worst idea.