A most excellent question.

Feminists, like all liberation movements, face the question:
Do we want to change society to make it more egalitarian? Or do we just want in on current arrangements? Judge Sotomayor, like others before and since, has apparently decided that her own presence among the elite is revolution enough. Well, okay, if that's what she wants. She's certainly entitled. Her rise from poverty via Princeton and Yale to the highest reaches of clubbability is a testament to her and to America.

On the other hand, this Belizean Grove thing sounds like an especially self-conscious and farcical attempt to create a unnecessary meritocratic hurdle. You don't have to be a radical leveler to think that allowing the Bohemian Grove to fade into inconsequence would be better for equality than setting up a female imitation. It would have been nice if Sotomayor, with all her accomplishments, had been secure enough to laugh at the invitation to join this parody of elitism. But not many people who have risen so far so fast are so secure. Republicans ought to find that reassuring.