Unlike Anita Hill’s recent milquetoast column on Clarence Thomas’ bitter book, Marianne Means gives him a well deserved ass kicking. This guy could get a job in front of a HMO making people sick.
Clarence Thomas’ whiny book
By MARIANNE MEANS
In future histories of Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas will certainly be ranked near the bottom. He betrays the high court’s high standards with nearly every mean-spirited, ideologically driven vote he has cast. But the ultimate, most revealing act of hostility is his new memoir, titled My Grandfather’s Son, in which he portrays himself as Mr. Perfect, without a selfish political thought. His racial persecution complex is scary. He’s risen to one of the most powerful jobs in the land and he still thinks evil white liberals are out to get him solely because of his color, not because they profoundly disagree with his opinions. He completely reflects White House Republican thinking — never admit a single mistake, no matter what. Yet he’s supposed to bring a well-reasoned judicial temperament to tricky legal decisions that impact a lot of American lives, both white and black. His opposition to college affirmative action policies is particularly offensive, considering how he got into Yale law school with the help of a program to give black students a break.
He sounds insulted by the existence of the program, but he took
advantage of it anyway. Let me digress. I am one-half of a politically
divided household, in which fortunately both my husband, conservative
columnist James J. Kilpatrick, and I understand that in matters of the
heart there are more important things than politics.
But we do have some heartburn moments, and we are having one
now. As editor of the Richmond (Va.) News-Leader, Jack was for decades
the most prominent intellectual voice of the segregationist South. But
eventually he came to recant segregation and sympathize with its impact
upon oppressed blacks — and particularly ambitious males like Thomas
with whose conservative views he agrees. He believes Thomas when he
denies Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment. I do not. I believe
Hill and admire her courage in standing up to a man who had been her
boss but acted in an abusive manner.
Now a professor at Brandeis University, she recently repeated
her insistence that he was lying and noted "you can’t always believe
people because they are in authority." Well, we’ve certainly learned
the truth of that principle in many contexts over the past 16 years.
From the beginning, I felt her version of events to be more credible
than his. In a rebuttal in The New York Times, Hill accused Thomas of
trying to "reinvent" her, with "unsubstantiated representations and
outright smears." Since 1991, she writes, she had "regrettably seen
this kind of character attack on women and men who complain of
harassment and discrimination in the workplace … detractors routinely
diminish people’s professional contributions … " In his whining
memoir, Thomas writes about how much he suffered to win a seat on the
nation’s highest court, where he is one of its most undistinguished
members.
During his confirmation hearings, he disingenuously claimed
that he hadn’t thought for one second about overruling Roe v. Wade.
Hmm. He must have made up his mind quickly. He has consistently voted
against abortion rights since then. Thomas sees himself as a victim of
racism and bias — a rancid mind-set that isolates him not only from
white liberals but from much of the African-American community as well.
One of his heroes is Robert Bork, for pity’s sake. The Senate rejected
Bork for nutty unconstitutional ideas that would have thrown individual
rights and the legal system into chaos. Thomas’ own legal theories are
not explored in his memoir. He concentrates on his self-serving temper
tantrum, and he serves up a whopper. He got paid a reported $1.5
million for this rant, more than any other justice in history. One has
to wonder whether the book publishing industry has lost its collective
mind. "No reason other than hatred could account for such (a) vicious
attack," on his nomination, Thomas writes.
His reflections are full of political, self-serving baloney.
The hearings were held to determine if the country was going to get
stuck with another right-wing blockhead like Antonin Scalia. The Anita
Hill harassment charges were extremely serious and had to be probed.
Ultimately, the controversy had to do with the fitness of Thomas to
serve, not skin color.
Thomas won confirmation because not enough senators could muster
the courage to vote against him. And so we live with a justice who has
life tenure, never asks questions from the bench, and votes almost
automatically with Scalia. Thomas helped hand the presidency to George
Bush and is thrilled to have Vice President Dick Cheney attend his book
party. Thomas won; so why is he complaining?