Via Adam Shah, National Review legal blogger Ed Whelan has an interesting way of expressing his disapproval of Solicitor General Elena Kagan's handling of military recruiters on college campuses when she was Harvard Law Dean. Kagan ultimately allowed the recruiters back despite her opposition to their policy of discrimination against gays and lesbians:
If Kagan genuinely believed that the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law was “a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order,” why would she make herself complicit in implementing the grave evil? Yes, of course, it's true, as the article points out, that “barring the recruiters would [have] come with a price.” But, as George Bernard Shaw would have said to Kagan for selling out her supposedly deeply held principles, “We’ve already established what you are, ma’am. Now we’re just haggling over the price.” (My point isn’t that Kagan deserves the Bernard Shaw slam—she doesn’t—but rather that she evidently doesn’t believe her own rhetoric.)
The Shaw quote is actually apocryphal and may not be his, but in any case refers to an incident in which the speaker was calling someone a prostitute.
Whelan hurriedly disclaims that Kagan doesn't "deserve" the "Shaw slam," but if he actually though that, he could have used another phrase. The point isn't that the woman in the story doesn't "believe her own rhetoric"; it's that she doesn't realize what a big whore she is. If you're wondering what Kagan has done to warrant this kind of treatment, it's that she might be the White House's nominee to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.
-- A. Serwer
