Commenter Incensed over Onion Report on Sotomayor’s Dead Kennedys Tactic

The blog How Appealing is known for its links to judicial opinions and news of appellate litigation. Sometimes blogger Howard Bashman also links to news stories in the Onion, the humor publication that makes up its news.

Bashman confessed in a recent How Appealing post that he wrestles with whether to indicate that the Onion is an attempt at humor, but he usually decides against it. How Appealing readers generally know the Onion is satirical, he says, and those that don’t would surely figure it out after reading its stories.

One reader didn’t catch on.

How Appealing linked to an Onion satire that said Justice Sonia Sotomayor had to miss an important Supreme Court case because of jury duty, despite her best attempts to evade the obligation.

The Onion had this supposed quote from Sotomayor, who is the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court: “I wore my tattered old Dead Kennedys T-shirt, and I told the judge I didn't really think I could be fair and impartial if the defendant was white." She got on a jury anyway, the story said. “I’m totally daydreaming most of the time," she confessed, according to the satire. "Honestly, I don't know how anyone could possibly pay attention to all that testimony and evidence and legal mumbo jumbo all day long."

Justice Antonin Scalia has a better tack for getting out of jury duty, according to the Onion. “Sonia should have told the judge that she would take a strict constructionist interpretation of the law and make her decision accordingly,” the Onion has Scalia saying. “That gets me dismissed every time."

An incensed reader wrote Bashman to say he was “appalled” by Sotomayor’s statements. “Those quotations by Sotomayor simply indicate she has no right to be a judge of any kind at all,” the reader opined. "She is a not a wise Latina; she's a regular fool."