A major focus of our program today will be President's address in Cairo, as well you might expect. Highly anticipated, heavily covered, we'll have two segments on the speech.We're speaking with three young Muslims from three different countries who are studying and working in the US about their reaction to the speech and we'll talk with two Muslim writers and intellectuals about just what IS this Muslim world that we keep talking about? it's sort of a cousin to the conversation we had yesterday with Gregory Rodriguez about "the Latino community." And we close the program with a visit with the director and one of the stars of Joe Turner's Come and Gone, that August Wilson play that the Obama's visited last weekend. ( and now he's in Cairo...that's a head snapper for you ).

And now a followup to my Can I Just Tell You? column from Monday: A couple of conservative bloggers have put me in their sights. Actually, I don't think most of them listened to or read what I actually said...because why really bother? SO much more amusing to trash people based on what suits your ideological interests I know..BUT..the stated source of their angina are some comments I made six years ago about Miguel Estrada whom President Bush had nominated to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and which a significant number of Democrats opposed and threatened to filibuster. There's a long background to this as you might know...Democrats were angry about the way the Republican dominated Senate had treated Clinton judicial nominees, Republicans were still mad about Robert Bork some years before that, all that...anyway Estrada eventually withdrew and there was some personal tragedy attached to that. But that all came later...anyway. Some of the bloggers have their knickers in a twist because I called Miguel Estrada "an affirmative action candidate." Natually they took what I said completely out of context (what fun!) but since we're here, let me set the record straight for those rs who care. Here is what I actually said. This comes from February 9 2003:

Miguel Estrada is a very promising young lawyer who went to some excellent schools, had excellent clerkships, has a good work record. What he lacks in judicial background he makes up with a compelling life story. He was born in Honduras, came here speaking very little English and has done some important and impressive things. And you know what's that is called, George? Affirmative action. He is an affirmative action candidate as practiced by the Republican party and the conservative movement, and what it also indicates is that the Democrats haven't succeeded in making judicial nominations as an important grass roots issue as the Republicans and the Conservatives have.

 

A couple of points to make here. This conversation took place on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, on the Sunday roundtable, which is clearly dedicated to analysis and commentary. I was acting as a reporter, using my reporting and expertise to comment upon and analyze the story, hopefully adding a perspective that was otherwise missing. I think it's entirely legitimate to argue about whether reporters should be placed in that situation at all but that's an argument for a different time. The point is that was the job my then bosses at ABC asked me to do at that time and I generally think it's wise to accept assignments your bosses ask you to take, don't you ? (Assuming they're legal and moral and all that.) The substance of my main point, given below in the latter part of the same discussion, is that both parties were playing identity politics and had been for a very long time.

GEORGE WILL

(Off Camera) We can have an end to this mutual assured destruction. A, Michel, affirmative action, in the Michigan style, would be to give Mr. Estrada 20 extra points. He didn't get that. He got the highest possible rating from the ABA.

MICHEL MARTIN

(Off Camera) Which, by the way, rated Clarence Thomas as minimally qualified, but the President at the time didn't consider that relevant so, I mean, the ABA's evaluation seems to be of interest when it is of interest but please.

GEORGE WILL

(Off Camera) And furthermore, now we've had some, a bunch of non-Hispanic male Senators saying he is Hispanic in name only.

MICHEL MARTIN

(Off Camera) There are no female Senators, no, I think you're saying, I think you're talking about the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, to which I would say is the argument people are supposed to support him because he is Hispanic, even though they have questions about his fitness for office, his ideological, what they consider extreme conservatism, so that's the argument.

GEORGE WILL

(Off Camera) No, because he argued 15 cases, he argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, because he served for four years in the Clinton (INAUDIBLE).

MICHEL MARTIN

(Off Camera) I think it seems identity politics is practiced in both political parties.

Clearly affirmative action is not a dirty word to me....as it is to some of the people who are all upset with me. Nor is diversity for that matter. But I certainly did not belittle or insult Mr. Estrada or his qualifications. What I said was that identity politics were being practiced in both political parties, which is so obvious as to hardly bear repeating.Facts, as Ronald Reagan said, are stubborn things.

I was further accused by one jokester of being "knee deep in grievance politics" because I have reported on issues involving race, ethnicity and sometimes gender throughout my career. I think that's hilarious. As I told that person, by that standard so is he. Race and ethnicity are sources of conflict and tension, and also pride and affirmation. If race and ethnicity cease to be a source of interest in this country and around the world then I will certainly stop talking about those issues, but I very much doubt that day will come because I or you or anybody else stops talking about it. I thnk the real issue is that some of these people can't stand the fact that their little club of like minds doesn't get to run the world anymore and some of us unwashed from Brooklyn and the East Bronx and East St. Louis and ..Honolulu actually get to participate in public discourse. Oh well. I know its hard to take, but as one great mind once said, they'll just have to get over it...