During her nomination hearing last week, Judge Sonia Sotomayor showed America that she is a woman of substance. During the one-week hearing, Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee tried to intimidate her with harsh questions. But throughout the ordeal Judge Sotomayor remained unruffled, carefully crafting each response.

Her calm, stoic responses were particularly disappointing for the news networks - Fox News, MSNBC and CNN - that covered the live hearings. One could sense their urging for some dramatic occurrence during the hearing. They anticipated a break in the Sotomayor’s resolve, a possible “melt-down,” but the good lady neither broke nor did she melt.

While Sotomayor successfully fended off attacks from Republican senators, the media perhaps expected her to break when questioned by public witnesses, particularly Frank Ricci, the firefighter at the center of a controversial reverse-discrimination case she ruled on previously. The media was again disappointed when Ricci declined to offer an opinion on her, although he and fellow New Haven, Connecticut firefighter Ben Vargas, criticized the ruling. Sotomayor seemed to either have simply intimidated Ricci or his respect for her had grown during the hearing.

Prior to the controversial, publicly televised Supreme Court nomination hearing of Clarence Thomas in 1991, hearings were relatively low profile events. Thomas’ hearing, provoked by the caustic accusations of Anita Hill who tried to railroad his appointment with charges of sexual harassment, attracted a huge television audience for news networks. This warranted the claim by Justice Thomas that he was being subjected to a “high tech lynching.”

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