Common Sense Political Thought

Sharon has perhaps the only story on the internet about Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’ book, My Grandfather’s Son¹, that doesn’t mention Anita Hill.

Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court for sixteen years, after a confirmation battle in which the Democratic majority of the United States Senate didn’t really want to vote for him, due to his conservative legal opinions on Affirmative Action, but were hogtied by considerations of race; their own notions of Affirmative Action coming back to bite them, since Mr Thomas was nominated to replace the only other black justice to serve on the Court, Thurgood Marshall. His race had the effect of stopping the “borking” that had been promised.²

Then came Anita Hill. She accused Mr Thomas of sexually harassing her in two different jobs, the second one of which she had followed him to take. The hearings were contentious, and they gave the Democrats the excuse they needed to vote against Mr Thomas; he was confirmed by a bare 52-48 majority.

Mr Grey Ghost wrote some sensible advice for Justice Thomas, not that he will ever read it:

Personally, while he every right to still be upset at having to go through the whole ordeal, I just think Clarence Thomas needs to let go of whatever anger he has left towards Anita Hill. Hill wasn’t as responsible for the “high-tech lynching” Thomas received at the infamous 91′ hearings as much as Ted Kennedy and the rest of the liberal Democrats who were trying to make Thomas into another Robert Bork. To be fair Hill didn’t contact the liberal terrorists about any alleged sexual harassment, they contacted her. Therefore, at the end of the day Anita Hill was just a tool in a pathetic, high-level campaign of liberal terrorism.

Bottom line, even tho the witchhunt made his vote notably narrow, Thomas was still elected to serve on the highest court in the land. In other words he won. And now some 17 years later and the only people upset with Thomas serving on the Court are liberals. But who cares what they think? Most of America certainly doesn’t as after the hearings were done twice as many Americans believed Thomas’ side of the story than Hill’s. So while Thomas couldn’t possibly write a memoir without recalling some of the most darkest days of his distinguised career, by holding a grudge so many years later against Anita Hill all these years later, he makes himself look angry and sullen.

As Mr Ghost noted, about twice as many people believed Mr Thomas than believed Miss Hill coming out of the hearings; a year later, after a litany of stories in the mainsteam media, those numbers had reversed. And even today, as Justice Thomas’ book has hit the stores, our friends on the left are still up in arms, proclaiming Miss Hill as a saint and Mr Thomas as scum. Amanda Marcotte wrote, in answer to a comment questioning why our friends on the left automatically believed Anita Hill and similarly disbelieved Paula Jones:

Seroj, your presence here only reinforces the notion that wingnuts and anti-feminists have no life and lash out at the rest of us because you’re so damn bitter. Unlike Anita Hill, Paula Jones was groomed to come up with her accusations. There seems to be a strong possibility that the right, having long believed in the fantasy of the woman who lies for ulterior reasons, ended up creating one. Is she lying? If there’s anyone in the world who has an actual reason to lie, it’s Paula Jones, willed into existence by the very people who lie about the truth-tellers out there.

It’s fascinating that assholes like seroj think every single woman in the world is lying about sexual harassment except quite possibly the one who might be. It’s like they live in Mirrorland.

This from the woman who didn’t want to believe that the accused members of the Duke lacrosse team might actually not have raped anybody, because, after all, we all know that women never lie about these things — unless they might be lying about a Democrat!

Who was telling the truth, Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill? It is my belief that Mr Thomas was more probably telling the truth, because Miss Hill chose to follow him from the Department of Education to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, something which seems rather strange if she had believed him to be harassing her, but neither I nor anyone else actually know who is telling the truth — assuming that either one told the whole truth! What we wind up with are people taking judgements about something on which they have no proof, and probably know very little, based on the outcome they wish rather than the facts they possess. Like the Dule lacrosse team, even if completely innocent, his name will be forever linked with, and tarnished by, the scandal. That may be completely unfair, but it is what it is, and it will not change.

We are very fortunate to have Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court; his wisdom has proven to be everything we had hoped when he was nominated. But the Anita Hill controversy is a sleeping dog that should have been allowed to just lay there.
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¹ – I haven’t bought the book myself yet, and I am not certain whether I will.
² – Florence Kennedy of the National Organization for Women said, at a July 1991 conference, “We’re going to ‘bork’ him.”