“Philosophy can impact your judging,” Sessions, an Alabama Republican and his party’s leader on the Judiciary Committee, told Sotomayor. “I think it’s much more likely to reach full flower if you sit on the Supreme Court … than it will on a lower court, where you’re subject to review by your colleagues in the higher court.”

Armed with that prescience, Sessions and his colleagues were free to mostly disregard everything Sotomayor said Tuesday. Which was probably helpful to them, since nearly everything she said directly rebutted the assumptions behind their questions. “I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging,” Sotomayor said in response to a question from the committee’s Democratic chairman, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who asked her about some of the GOP talking points early on, in order to give her a gentle lead-in to those topics. “I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.”

Nevertheless, barely 10 minutes later, Sessions was asking her this: “Do you think there’s any circumstance in which a judge should allow their prejudices to impact their decision-making?” Sotomayor — who didn’t get to the point where she was virtually assured a seat on the Supreme Court by being born yesterday — knew how to answer that one. “Never their prejudices,” she told Sessions. But he kept at it. “Aren’t you saying there that you expect your background and — and heritage to influence your decision-making?” he asked. “That’s troubling me. That is not impartiality.”

The obvious point — that the background and heritage of old white guys influences their decision-making all the time, too — would not have been the politically sound one to make. So Sotomayor played it cool. “My record shows that at no point or time have I ever permitted my personal views or sympathies to influence an outcome of a case,” she said, and would wind up saying again and again, in more or less the same words, throughout the day. “In every case where I have identified a sympathy, I have articulated it and explained to the litigant why the law requires a different result. I do not permit my sympathies, personal views, or prejudices to influence the outcome of my cases.” A few hours later, Sessions flat-out told reporters he didn’t care what she’d said. “I don’t know — this is the confirmation process, so we got a statement from a day of the confirmation process that contradicts a decade or more of speeches.”

That was more or less how the whole day went; Republicans hurled increasingly pointed questions at Sotomayor, the nominee calmly parried them, and the Republicans mostly ignored her. (Democrats chimed in between the GOP rounds to offer her softballs, though Dianne Feinstein of California and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin both pressed her — gently — on issues relating to the Bush administration’s claims to unlimited executive power after the 9/11 attacks.) She mocked Sessions’ reliance on a brief YouTube clip, but in a peaceful, nonconfrontational tone that seemed to discombobulate the Alabama senator. “Judge,” Sessions sputtered, “I would just say, I don’t think it’s that clear.” When Arizona Republican Jon Kyl began his questions by brusquely asking if he could pick up a line of interrogation about gun control, Sotomayor answered him cheerily, “Sure. Good afternoon, by the way.” (Yes indeed, that famous Bronx warmth you’ve heard so much about was on full display.)

By the sixth hour of the hearing, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham had dispensed with the formalities altogether. “If I may interject, Judge, [lawyers] find you difficult and challenging more than your colleagues,” Graham blurted, without irony. “Do you think you have a temperament problem?” A minute later, he had turned, weirdly, to personal advice: “Maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.” Graham also cautioned Sotomayor to “appreciate the world we live in,” in which she could say something about a “wise Latina” and still expect to win a seat on the Supreme Court — since white men wouldn’t be able to get away with similar remarks. And he led her through a ritualized denunciation of al-Qaida, asking how women would be treated if the jihadists had their way.

What made his performance even stranger, though, was that Graham is likely to vote for Sotomayor’s confirmation. “Now, let’s talk about you,” he told her, just before haranguing her about her temperament. “I like you, by the way, for whatever that matters. Since I may vote for you that ought to matter to you.”

But the Senate is, in general, kind of a weird place, and Graham isn’t the only reason. For proof, just look at Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who engaged in a colloquy with Sotomayor about nunchuks, or Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley’s improvised line after an anti-choice protester disrupted the session again: “People always say I have the ability to turn people on.” Two days of hearings — well, one day of Senate bloviation, and one day of hearings — have only given the impression that the whole thing is pure political theater. Sotomayor spends her time fitting her opinions into narrow brackets that tell the Senate what it wants to hear, and the lawmakers, in turn, spend their time asking questions hashed out by aides in advance that are mostly geared toward scoring points with voters, not with the nominee.

If anything, actually, Sotomayor has shown herself to be even more conciliatory toward the Republicans going after her than is the pragmatic president who nominated her. At one point, nudged by Kyl, Sotomayor distanced herself, quite firmly, from Obama’s theory that empathy helps judges make their minds up in the 5 percent of cases where the law doesn’t indicate a clear winner. “I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does,” Sotomayor said. In response to Feingold’s questions, she also indicated Obama may be in for a surprise if he thinks a Justice Sotomayor will rule in favor of any of the Bush-inspired legal arguments the administration has been making in terrorism cases. “A judge should never rule from fear,” she said. “A judge should rule from law and the Constitution.”

For the most part, though, the very nature of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing keeps anything too substantive from being discussed; the nominee always begs out of debating legal points that might come up if she winds up on the court, pleading a possible conflict. If her patient, unruffled testimony Tuesday is any indication, Sotomayor appears to play that game as well as any of her predecessors. Sessions may not be the only one who can see the future — so far, anyone watching the hearings would feel comfortable predicting that this whole process ends with her on the court. 

Since the article published, Lipman has been taken to task for her tendentiousness and factual inaccuracies, for her “gratingly pompous” tone and “insanely massive overwhelming ego” — her ego, I have to confess, was refreshing — as well as her bizarre argumentative mash-up connecting 9/11 to the supposed flame-out of female advancement. (This argument, a colleague of mine pointed out, was first made by Susan Faludi, though I would say not very convincingly then, either.) But what of Lipman’s declaration that cultural attitudes toward women have regressed? Have they gone the way of the caveman in recent years?

It’s unlikely there’s a woman who writes for a living, or whose work has made her subject to public judgment of any kind — hell, it’s unlikely there’s a woman living in America today — who would argue with the assertion that the “conversation online about women” is “just plain ugly,” as Lipman writes. She tells readers that she has been called “a witch and a bimbo.” Most women, at some point in their lives, publicly or privately, have been insulted similarly, or worse. (When I wrote for Salon about my faulty iPhone, the reaction was overwhelmingly sexist, with letter writers calling me, in various colorful phrases, a dumb girl.) The Internet, of course, is a magnifying glass for all forms of vituperation, with bloggers and commentators drawing on a rich fund of misogynist language. And the sexist talk of male media personalities, including many of the supposedly liberal persuasion — Keith Olbermann and David Letterman and Chris Matthews and Bill Maher — is often shocking, especially when they are criticizing women reviled by their fellow liberals, like Michelle Malkin or Sarah Palin (or Hillary Clinton). 

This sort of abuse needs to end. But are the attitudes on display new? Didn’t the Internet just provide a novel, free, easy-access, anonymous pasture for the age-old dinosaur of sexism to roam? Perhaps more to the point, do such attitudes, even if they are more public or available or distributable than they once were, indicate a corresponding stall-out of progress? Might they actually be a result of progress? During the presidential election, in an essay I wrote about Hillary Clinton, I argued that the success of her candidacy had brought long-latent fears about women and power to light. The criticism is loudest when the successor is approaching the throne. Seventy-seven cents on the male-earned dollar, or the dearth of women in corporate boardrooms, are indeed pitiful statistics, but I’m not sure they indicate backsliding, or even that progress has ground to a halt. What about the proliferation of feminist Web sites and mommy blogs? What about those women in Congress? What about all the “great news” with which Lipman opens her essay? The picture may not yet be rosy, but I’d still say we are inching along.

Lipman is right to argue for an overhaul of “popular perceptions” vis-à-vis women. In order for women to, well, progress there needs to be a change in the way we are perceived. But for this to happen, we must put an end to the notion that we are fundamentally different or “Other” — a few short steps to “inferior.” Tossing out  Lipman’s own gender “exceptionalisms,” as Jezebel’s Anna North calls them, would be a start. Lipman tells us that women are risk-averse (and thus hesitate to ask for things, like raises), that they tend not to laugh at their mistakes, that they are “built to withstand hardship and pain,” and that they “are less likely to define themselves by their job.” I am a ninny about pain, and if I lost my job, my identity would suffer. I know I’m not alone. Friends who work as accountants and software executives and real estate agents in the Midwest, where I was raised — women who, unlike me, have children and houses and husbands — would feel the same. My mother, who runs a marketing company, tells me her female employees do in fact ask for promotions and raises, often with a greater sense of entitlement than the men. You might say that Lipman’s own attitudes about gender are as antiquated as the more poisonous ones she decries. 

Jan 20: Barack Obama is inaugurated as president.

Feb 17: The president signs the stimulus package into law.

Feb 18: President Obama proposes his mortgage relief plan.

Feb 19: Rick Santelli delivers his rant on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

 Feb 26: The White House releases its bold budget proposal.

Apr 15: Protesters mark Tax Day by attending Tea Party events around the country.

May 26: Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

May 27: Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comments emerge.

May 27: Newt Gingrich attacks Sotomayor as “racist.”

May 28: The president calls criticisms of Sotomayor “nonsense,” but adds, “I’m sure she would have restated it.”

June 2: Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, calls attacks on Sotomayor “unbelievable” and “vicious.”

June 4: The president delivers his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

July 1: Unemployment reaches 9.5 percent.

July 13: The Senate Judiciary Committee begins confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor.

July 15: Sen. Tom Coburn tells Judge Sotomayor, “You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

July 20: The first notable disruption of a congressional home district meeting occurs, when a Birther hijacks Delaware Rep. Mike Castle’s attempt to discuss healthcare with constituents.

July 20: The arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at his Cambridge, Mass. home becomes public.

July 21: The president comments on the arrest in a press conference, saying the police acted “stupidly” in arresting Gates.

July 22: Liz Cheney attempts to justify Birtherism on CNN, saying, “People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas.”

July 24: Obama says of his comments on the Gates arrest, “I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

July 28: Birther frenzy reaches an approximate peak.

July 28: The Senate Judiciary Committee votes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.

July 29: Obama redoubles his healthcare sales pitch, holding public meetings in Raleigh, N.C., and Bristol, Va.

July 30: Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. Joseph Crowley go to the White House for a beer with the president and vice president.

Aug 3: Members of Congress on recess find hostile, combative crowds at town halls.

Aug 6: The full Senate votes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.

Aug 7: Sarah Palin worries, in public, about “death panel” measures in the healthcare reform proposals.

Aug 11: William Kostric brings his 9 mm pistol to the president’s town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. He carries a sign saying, “It is time to water the tree of liberty” and seems to touch off a trend of bearing arms to town halls.

Aug 22: Obama denounces “outrageous myths” about healthcare reform.

Sotomayor, of course, was born in the Bronx, and besides, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens — so strictly speaking, she has nothing to do with immigration at all. But why should that get in the way of a good scare? “What do you think Obama and the Globalists plan to do to Americans next?” the e-mail asks. (Americans such as… Sotomayor, presumably.)

“Resistance to Sotomayor’s nomination was considered light by Senate staffers due to their ability to convince most Americans that resistance was futile,” the e-mail continues. “We expect this same PSYOPS technique to be used in the push for Amnesty next. Many thanks to all of you that called, e-mailed, faxed, and fought bravely. If more of our fellow Americans had joined us we could have prevailed.”

The group is soliciting comments from its members on the Sotomayor vote here, if you want to read more in the same vein.