Senator Coburn, Sotomayor, and I Love Lucy

From Immigration Prof Blog:

Is this a great country, or what? Even though Alabama’s Jeff Sessions was blocked from a federal judgeship because of kooky statements about the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan, he could still go on to become a U.S. senator, and lead a racially tinged charge against the first Latina Supreme Court nominee. Equal opportunity, indeed!

I thought that Sessions’ bullying and blundering in the first two days of the Sonia Sotomayor hearings might get the GOP to ask him to hide his light under a bushel for a bit, but there he was on Wednesday, holding a quick press conference in the hearing break to announce he continues to be “troubled” by Sotomayor’s views on race, as if there was any doubt about that.

Not to be outdone by Sessions, though, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn shamed himself with an unbelievable reference to Desi Arnaz’s ancient Cuban stereotype, Ricky Ricardo, husband of Lucille Ball on “I Love Lucy.” During a surreal exchange on gun rights, in which the theoretical example was what might happen to Sotomayor if she (wrongly, illegally, but maybe understandably) got a gun and shot Coburn, the right-wing senator told her, “You’d have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do,” referring to Arnaz’s refrain when Lucy got in trouble with one of her crazy schemes.