Sotomayor hearing is a missed opportunity

Excellent Newsweek column on Sonia Sotomayor by Dahlia Lithwick. I especially loved the final paragraph:

There is little doubt that Sotomayor will be handily confirmed. Her judicial record is unremarkable, and her life story is exceptional. And this is the paradox of the Confirmation Foxtrot: we learn too much that is trivial and not enough that is important. The whole process is constructed around the fiction that nominees are hideous monsters in the eyes of half the Judiciary Committee. But calling someone an unintelligent, racist bully under the bright lights of C-Span leaves scars the nominee may never forgive or forget. This game is insufficiently serious to vet a lifetime appointment to the high court, yet serious enough to create lifelong resentments and grudges (think of Clarence Thomas). Confirmation hearings are both surreal and far too real. The court, and the country, might be better served by a bracing dance-off and a viewer poll.