Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness once made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke analyzes Elena Kagan's nomination to the highest court in the land.
I'm happy to see that Barack Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. Even if he doesn't win the next election, by installing two intelligent, nonpartisan women as justices, the president has already cemented his legacy. Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan (if she is confirmed) will be on the bench long after he has left the Oval Office. In my opinion, Kagan is the perfect person for the job.
In 1989, Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro banned the sale of our album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, and a federal judge backed him. We appealed. The next year, Kagan, who was working at a Washington, D.C. law firm, wrote a brief that argued the album "does not physically excite anyone who hears it, much less arouse a shameful and morbid sexual response." In other words, my homegirl Kagan was saying people could not be aroused by the lyrics "'cause my dick's on bone" or "me so horny, me fuck you long time." She realized these words did not meet the standard of appealing to prurient interests. She did a great job fighting on 2 Live Crew's behalf, which lets you know that Kagan is not easily swayed by public opinion or by politicians with their own hidden agendas.
She is not going to let any person or group tell her what is right or wrong. Kagan will judge each case based on the law of the land. She has demonstrated she can protect the Constitution by doing the fine work she did to protect 2 Live Crew's freedom of speech.
In fact, Kagan is such an ideal candidate that the right-wing, Tea Party Republicans have resorted to attacking her because she admires the late Thurgood Marshall, who was the first African-American named to the Supreme Court. She once clerked for him. As a tribute to her mentor when he died, Kagan noted that Marshall viewed the Constitution as "defective" because it allowed slavery to flourish. During the first day of her confirmation hearings this past June 28, one of the Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, showed no respect for Marshall — the great-grandson of a slave.
With the late justice's son Thurgood Jr. in the audience, Sessions criticized Kagan for associating herself with "well-known activist judges who have used their powers to redefine the meaning of our constitution." He named Marshall. I guess when Sessions refers to "our constitution," he's referring to the version before the 13th and 14th amendments were passed and when his great-grandparents owned a plantation stocked with slaves.
Sessions and the other Republicans who trashed Marshall are resorting to that same old hateful rhetoric that has come to define the Tea Party movement. They want us to think venerating Thurgood Marshall is a bad thing. That shows you we have a long way to go in this country.
Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1.
