The Conservative Culture of Complaint

By Paul Rosenberg
Open Left

Yesterday in my Morning Maybe diary, I quoted from Talking Points Memo on Frank Ricci, about his history of filing lawsuit--"Ricci was for 'special rights' before he was against them," I wrote, referring to the fact that he was hired in the first place only after he sued to take the place of someone who scored better than him. Why? Because he was dyslexic.

And this poor sideswitching professional "victim" is the GOP's silver buller witness against Sonia Sotomayor?

But that was only part of the story, as Dahlia Lithwick points out at Slate. Ricci's sued his employers on other occassions as well. Heck, one might even say he had a penchant for frivilous lawsuits, that is, if he was a woman, or a Puerto Rican....

Lithwick notes:

Ricci is invariably painted as a reluctant standard-bearer; a hardworking man driven to litigation only when his dreams of promotion were shattered by a system that persecutes white men. This is the narrative we will hear next week, but it somewhat oversimplifies Ricci's actual employment story. For instance, it's not precisely true, as this one account would have it, that Frank Ricci "never once [sought] special treatment for his dyslexia challenge." In point of fact, Ricci sued over it.

According to local newspapers, Ricci filed his first lawsuit against the city of New Haven in 1995, at the ripe old age of 20, for failing to hire him as a firefighter. That January, the Hartford Chronicle reported that Ricci sued, saying "he was not hired because he is dyslexic." The complaint in that suit, filed in federal court, alleged that the city's failure to hire Ricci because of his dyslexia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Frank Ricci was one of 795 candidates interviewed for 40 jobs. According to his complaint, the reason he was not hired was that he disclosed his dyslexia in an interview. That case was settled in 1997 with a confidential settlement in which Ricci withdrew his lawsuit in exchange for a job with the fire department and $11,143 in attorney's fees.

But, as indicated above, that was only the beginning....(Remainder.)