Senator Sessions' hypocrisy on race during the confirmation hearings has been well documented here and elsewhere. As a Latino, I certainly found the racist badgering of Judge Sotomayor by Republicans contemptible.
As someone who knows what it's like to spend morning after morning sitting around an hiring hall hoping - praying - that my name would be called, who knows what it's like to haggle with unemployment case workers so I can keep a roof over my family's head, who knows what it's like to stand in line at the city welfare line to collect a GA check, I found his comments on salary beneath contempt.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was born into wealth. His father was a wealthy businessman, and Mr. Sessions' life has been one of privilege.
So who the fuck is he to lecture Judge Sotomayor about salary?
The smarmy racist Alabaman asked whether Judge Sotomayor could live on the salary of a Supreme Court Justice. That Judge Sotomayor had already been living on such a salary for the past 17 years was not proof enough for the Senator. That she grew up in the fucking projects was of no regard to Beauregard.
To Judge Sotomayor's credit, she took the opportunity to point out the fact that Federal judges haven't been given a raise in 20 years. Beuregard responds by saying Judges make 4 times the amount of the average family, as though he had any idea what that even meant, and that Judges already receive COLA increases. He then told her, roughly, that if she couldn't live with the salary she shouldn't take the job.
O RLY??
Maybe YOU, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, should have gone into a different career path. Your voting record indicates you're more than willing to vote yourself a raise. If you weren't satisfied with your salary you could have gone into a more lucrative career path. Like lobbying. Like all of your friends do when they finally get the boot for being shitty lawmakers. Like you'll probably do when you finally get thrown out on you keister.
Your voting record also show, quite conclusively, that you don't give a rat's ass about the people who earn a fraction of your salary. That you would use the very people you've spent your career trampling on to add flair to your rhetoric is pure salt, especially when put in the context of lecturing a woman, a Latina, who had to work especially hard to overcome the barriers that people like you have dedicated your lives to erecting.
You, yes YOU, Beauregard, are a petty, petty man.
UPDATE: I wanted to make a correction. I made an assumption on Sessions' background based on the description of his father as a farm equipment distributor. At the prompting of cosette I researched it a bit and it appears as though Sessions's family was probably middle class, though I really don't have anything to verify this one way or another.
Not that it changes my feelings on this much. The guy's still a prick, has been pretty wealthy for most of his life, and shits on working class people every chance he gets.
Oh, and he's a disgusting bigot. Can't forget that one.