Lots of Sunday confusion

CURRENT EVENTS

From today's New York Times article on how Sonia Sotomayor would be the Supreme Court's sixth Catholic:

A White House spokesman, speaking on background, put it this way: “She currently does not belong to a particular parish or church, but she attends church with family and friends for important occasions.”

Why is this on background? I simply do not understand. Is everyone forbidden to speak about her? Then why speak at all? Are even anodyne political justifications too hazardous? Why do newspapers put up with this?

And I simply do not understand, for entirely unrelated reasons, why this isn't seen as a profoundly ironic thing to say:

But legal scholars say that while Judge Sotomayor’s Catholic identity will undoubtedly shape her perceptions, they will not determine how she would rule on the bench.

Replace "Catholic identity" with "Puerta Rican background."

A meditation on the virtue of a vigorous national paper: On the day Obama announced the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, the New York Times published, in addition to their straight-up news story and a analysis piece, a biography of her that ran six virtual pages. It also carried this insane credit:

Contributors to this article include Jo Becker, David Gonzalez, Jodi Kantor, Serge F. Kovaleski, William K. Rashbaum, Benjamin Weiser, Manny Fernandez, Karen Zraick, Colin Moynihan, Richard Pérez-Peña and Michael Powell and Tamar Lewin from New York; and Charlie Savage, Scott Shane and Neil A. Lewis from Washington. Kitty Bennett, Itai Maytal and Barclay Walsh contributed research.

Add the author, Sheryl Gay Stoleberg, and it was a 20-person effort.