There's a ready market for arguments that victims are responsible for their own victimization. But you have to be a member of the victimized group and have escaped the pathology that afflicts your peers.

Can you imagine how far Clarence Thomas would have gone if he hadn't been an ultraconservative? His whole career is premised on knocking people who say that blacks are held back by institutionalized racism. And didn't he make it all the way to the Supreme Court?

The Republicans earnestly strive to find people like that. Sometimes the people that turn up are too good to be true, like Linda Chavez. Chavez, nominated to be Secretary of Labor, shamelessly exploited an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, making her do housework and babysitting in exchange for small and irregular amounts of cash.