In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
It is the strength of our culture that we can have Sonia Gandhi, who is Catholic, a Sikh prime minister, and a Muslim president.
We made history when President Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a proud Latina, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. And as the President likes to say, 'Every single one of them wasn't just the best Latino for the job, but the best person for the job.'
In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play.
Ireland has always been a nation of great athletes from the past: in the nineties, we had Sonia O'Sullivan and Steve Collins.
Shoes are a good starting point. I've become quite fussy about them! A patent pair of Sonia Rykiel oxfords have become invaluable.
Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them, race baiting is a joke, as 'humorist' Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans 'stupid.' Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racialist' which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist.
They didn't even like Margaret Thatcher but at least there was Margaret Thatcher. There have been women, you know, Sonia Gandhi for heaven's sakes in India.
Willem de Kooning as an artist is insane, Sonia Rykiel is amazing for her colour sensibility, and Ettore Sottsass was an architect and product designer who sometimes created clothes to go with his other designs.
Sonia Gandhi and her husband have always been persons I look at with a lot of respect. Of course, one of the reasons we look at India with a lot of sympathy and enthusiasm is Sonia Gandhi. Now she is Indian, not Italian, but she will always represent a myth for Italians.
