Mr. Justice Whoop-dee-damn-doo
We're working our way backward through the '90s. With OJ Simpson again on the national stage, it was inevitable that Clarence Thomas would follow. The Thomas confirmation hearings were a milestone in real-time mass-mediated American psychodrama. Before the Juice, there was Long Dong Silver. Before the bloody glove, there was the pubic-hairy Coke can. Before the suicidal white Bronco driver, there was the victimized black conservative martyr. Before there was OJ's jury nullification, there was Thomas' "high-tech lynching," which acquitted him right onto the Supreme Court.
I still recall being so obsessed by the Judiciary Committee hearings that I listened to them through an earphone while pushing a baby stroller through the mall. I remember watching Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch hard at work, attempting to destroy Anita Hill, and finally understanding what the Salem Witch Trials must have been like. I remember being torn between awe at Chairman Joe Biden's pomposity and amazement at the goings-on in his scalp. I remember calling my friend Jack Rosenthal, then the editor of the editorial page of the New York Times, nearly every day, haranguing him to stiffen the Senate's opposition. To this day, I recall my revulsion at George H.W. Bush's cynically gleeful, preposterous attempt to frame the Thomas nomination as a filling of the Thurgood Marshall seat.
It turns out, of course, that the alarming character traits Anita Hill observed in her boss Clarence Thomas were nothing compared to the nutcase judicial temperament he has since revealed. At his confirmation hearing, Thomas -- like Marshall before him, and Roberts and Alito after him -- paid tribute to stare decisis, the importance of precedent in guiding Supreme Court decisions. But no less an authority than arch-conservative fellow Associate Justice Antonin Scalia told Thomas' biographer, Ken Foskett, that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period." If you think nutcase is too strong a word to summarize that view, listen again to Scalia, as quoted in this Terry Gross interview with Jeff Toobin about his new Supreme Court book, The Nine:
Mr. TOOBIN: Clarence Thomas is not just the most conservative member of the Rehnquist court or the Roberts court. He's the most conservative justice to serve on the court since the 1930s. If you take what Thomas says seriously, if you read his opinions, particularly about issues like the scope of the federal government, he basically thinks that the entire work of the New Deal is unconstitutional. He really believes in a conception of the federal government that hasn't been supported by the justices since Franklin Roosevelt made his appointments to the court. You know, I went to a speech that Justice Scalia gave at a synagogue here in New York a couple of years ago, and someone asked him, `What's the difference between your judicial philosophy and Justice Thomas?' I thought a very good question. And Scalia talked for a while and he said, `Look, I'm a conservative. I'm a texturalist. I'm an originalist. But I'm not a nut.' And I thought that...
GROSS: Meaning that he thinks Thomas is one.
Mr. TOOBIN: Well, that was certainly the implication.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. TOOBIN: It was pretty amazing. I mean, Thomas is well outside the mainstream, even of the conservatives on the court.
The Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito-and-sometimes-Kennedy fivesome on the Court today is the closest the country has come to the domination of the third branch of government by the same ideology that gave us the Bush administration and its Congressional and Fourth Estate enablers. If Justice Stevens can hang on, and if Democrats can nominate and confirm his successor, there is a chance that the Constitution can continue to rely on the better angels of Justice Kennedy's nature. But even so, I fear that the first Monday in October has lost an essential element of its grandeur for years to come. When Justice Souter wept after the Bush v. Gore decision, he was not only mourning the naked politicization of justice; he was anticipating the tragic abrogation of the Constitution that we have experienced in the seven years since. No reaction to that silent coup is more appallingly prescient than what Justice Thomas now tells us in his memoir was his reaction when his wife came to him in his bath to say that the Senate had confirmed him 52 to 48: "Whoop-dee-damn-doo."
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
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We just get what we deserve by electing idiots like trhe Bushes to the White House. We deserve no better than these right wing NUTS. Mark my words, we are doomed!
In 1991, my company was being audited for compliance by the Office of Civil Rights. (Earlier, in my office, there had been a big debate about who was telling the truth during the hearings. The women in my office all believed Anita Hill and the men all sided with Clarence Thomas.) I was interviewed as part of this auditing, so I took the opportunity to ask the US official from the Washington, DC, Office of Civil Rights, what's the consensus of the people in the Office of Civil Rights who worked with Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas? Whom do THEY believe was telling the truth? The official answered, "Anita Hill."
As a woman I am still horrified that I was fooled by the pro-Thomas anti-Anita Hill media blitz way back then. I will regret being such a fool eternally.
Thomas is the dumbest, most incompetent SCJ we have ever had. Putting that kind of power in such feeble hands is dangerous.
ANYONE who is thinking about not voting for the Democratic nominee in '08 for any reason, be it their views, gender, or whatever, needs to wake up. I don't care if the nominee is a pickle on the sidewalk; hold your nose, think "Supreme Court" and vote for the Democrat! Our very survival may depend on it.
Great article.
As a man, my experience, is much the same as yours, maybe even sadder. I hadn't even been conscious enough to realize the take-over that had occurred in the conservative paradigm. For me it was a no-brainer hat-trick. That is to say, the entire conservative elite had been pushing for Thomas; he was Black, and that seemed to be making some ostensible headway in our third branch; and it seemed to me that Anita Hill was not quite credible.
Unfortunately, thats not what the picture actually was - I was staring at an apparition completely concocted of my own dementia - supported by the news-talk radio back-up singers. Shortly thereafter, I started to become aware that intellectually I had submitted to a group that I was mostly opposed. At that time, as a financial principal of a modest Wall St. firm it was almost unavoidable to rub elbows with some of the Republican royals. Democrats met on higher number floors but everyone knew the gold was in the basement, as it were.
About the time grandiose speeches were routine on the house floor is when I considered that the entire 'special prosecution' was a distinctive 'special persecution' toward the Left. It wasn't long after I stared thinking for myself again and quit the laziness of taking up other's arguments.
From that point on I proudly called my self (spinelessly I might add) an Independent, Fiscal Conservative Social Liberal - what crap !!! Fact is, I was going to support people that I had scorned because of the underlying principles that would likely result - and I was going to have to actively defend my positions and know what I was talking about or lose friends and business.
Today, I AM holding my nose - because I can barely name a room-full of Democrats I'm proud to support. There are some, and my heroes are probably your heroes, but by and large, all I see are bunch of manicured illusionists and I'm very disappointed. No doubt though - some of them will find their spine before long as was my case.
Clarence Thomas and his neo-con colleagues are all part of the same Chicago School of Economics "Free Market Marauders" gang that would privatize everything including Social Security, The Post Office, and perhaps eventually Health & Welfare, all of the Military and the State Department, dissolve the legislature and turn it all over to private enterprise.
With, obvioulsly, no restrictions on what the mega corporations could do to make a bigger buck.
(sigh)
when are you going to realize that there is a HUGE difference between the "free market" and "corporatism"?
If not a market economy, then what? What is better? Remember this site doesn't exist if there is no free market.
JPJ - Maybe you should realize there is no Free Market system....
If it ever existed at all, it was always co-opted and strangled in it's crib by Big Business and now the Global Destroyer Capitalists. Your belief in immutable laws of economics smacks of religiosit
Agreed, JohnPaulJones. We do not have a free market. Our government (state government) requires its citizens to purchase insurance, that hardly qualifies our economy as a "free market."
Don't blame Chicago for these idiots. Chicago is one of the must progressive cities in the States - and one of the must beautiful.
yea, especially that green cesspool, um i mean river, running through it.
When I lived on the streets of Hyde Park and ate from dumpsters on 47th Street, I didn't think it was so damn beautiful. It is a cold, hard city and I hope I never go back.
I watched the interview with C Thomas and I would have liked to have been watching it with a mental health Dr.
In analizing him on my own, he has lots of problems and has not gotton over his early years.
He is still trying to prove himself (no need to Thomas, You have made it)
Married a white women to also prove he could.
He wasted a great interveiw, he could ha reached out to the public. WHAT A WASTE
So he married a white women to prove he could?
How much time have you spent with Justice Thomas? Obviously you know him very well to make such an outrageous statement. Does his wife know he doesn't love her? Does she know that she is only a trophy?
Do you know how racist you are? If not that's sad and you need help. Please stay away from all children until you find some sort of peace in your life.
I'm with Clarence on the constitutionality of the new deal.
Yes moving aging Americans out of poverty and providing them with health and security in old age with Medicare and Social Security was a TERRIBLE thing.
Never mind the fact that Social Security is such a meager allowance that seniors that rely on it entirely STILL live in poverty.
It truly amazes me that the two most important life saving programs in the 20th century are dispised by conservatives. Spending BILLIONS on unnecessary wars is just fine. Funny how conservatives pick and choose what is worth the expense.
AND there is NO evidence that these programs have damaged the country AT ALL. BUT you spew proapagnada over and over again for so many years attacking these programs and you can convince fools of anything.
These programs have not necessarily done harm to the US....yet.
But do the numbers. Someday, if these programs are not thoroughly reworked (or abolished) they will collapse the economy. The numbers show clearly an unsustainable situation.
The attribute that Thomas, Cheney, Bush share is belligerence - a belief that they hold the power, and not the law, the precedent, the document - not "the word." They are all idolaters who have melted down the gold of frameworks (and silver spoons) to create their own self-serving graven images.
What got lynched at those sad hearings was the messenger.
Clarence Thomas seems, to me, to be a narcissistic, mental lightweight, consumed with self-hate, which he insists on projecting to everyone he comes in contact with.
He is doomed to be lumped into the same category as other loser Supreme Court justices, despite the denials of his vanity.
I doubt he'll ever consider retirement before his term ends because he seems too incompetent to get a job which is not based on favoritism. In that respect, he and Alberto Gonzales are definitely the same.
Exactly. The only thing he seems expert and passionate about is hating everything and everyone and being a total 'against the grainer'. Never heard a word out of him that wasn't bitter, spiteful, and full of menace that he would do exactly the opposite of what a well-reasoned person could be expected to do.
A tantrum throwing, belligerent, obstinate, hates everyone especially himself Supreme Court Justice. Perfect.
I want to make sure I have the undisputable facts correct...
1. The Hill acusations were over a non-short time period with some going back many years (prior to the hearings)?
2. Hill followed Thomas to at least one career move during the time frame that the harassment was ongoing.
3. When contact by a Congressional staffer regarding the upcoming hearing, Hill decided that she could not allow someone like Thomas to be confirmed to the SC so this would be the appropriate time to bring up sexual harassment issues.
I wonder if theses facts (again I am assuming these are the facts) would be looked at differently if they were coming from a women regarding a particular Governor?
Or his choice in cigars?
Half of Greenburg's new biography on Clarence Thomas mentions Anita Hill. For those who do not remember she had testified before congress on some unpleasant conduct by Thomas when she was asscociated with him. Thomas later successfully played the proverbial race card (ironically against a black woman) by testify the charges Ms. Hill made were false. What we should remember most here is both Thmas and Hill testified under oath and since their stories contradicted each other someone was lying yet nobody was ever proscecuted for this.
It should be mentioned that Anita voluntarily took a polygraph administered by a notable expert that showed her charges against Thomas were valid. It is disgusting that our sole affirmative action justice has acted to cloud that image by going all out to deny such advantage to others.
Anita Hill was the one who got "lynched".
It should also be mentioned that polygraphs aren't allowed as evidence in court, for good reason.
It should also be noted that Anita Hill was not the only woman to make such allegations about Thomas.
Thomas's arrogant attitude is insulting to me and I would imagine to most women. I saw an interview this morning where his wife stated that she was waiting for an appology from Anita Hill. God help us when women like Mrs. Thomas can not see the light and the flaws of her very powerful husband. Women are not served by this kind of dismissal and the country is not served by the likes of Thomas on our highest court.
If anyone wants to read a well-researched book about this topic, read "The Selling of Clarence Thomas" by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. Mayer is a highly regarded investigative reporter for the New Yorker and Abramson is the NY Times managing news editor. They present compelling evidence to support Anita Hill's claims.
According to David Brock (Media Matters) when the book came out some of Thomas' most ardent right wing supporters, like judge Lawrence Silberman were appalled to find out that Thomas was guilty as charged.
Why Thomas' behavior mattered so much was that he was head of the EEOC whose job is to crack down on things like sexual harassment in the workplace.
Thomas blames blacks for always crying victim, but he is one of the biggest offenders. Scalia is right - he's a nut.
whenever 2 people come out with opposite stories, I ask: 'who has reason to lie?'
Hill took years to come forward because she knew exactly what would be done to her and her testimony-- exactly what WAS done.
Clarence, on the other hand, had ample reason to lie what with the Supreme Court appointment hanging in the balance.
So Anita or possible others who disagreed with his judical leaning or thought that he would overturn RvW would have no reason to speak up prior to him being confirmed for a lifetime term on the SC?
Mr. Kaplan, what you really mean is that he doesn't believe in making law, what he believes in is interpreting the law. Despite what you and other liberals believe, the Constitution is not a living document. If the Constitution needs to be changed that is what we have amendments for. I guess Justice Thomas has gone off the reservation as far as you liberals are concerned. Maybe, he should Mr. Jackson and others "Mas-er" right Mr Kaplan.
Steorn the solution to Global Warming can be found at http://www
Actually, Mr. Kaplan is correct and you are incorrect. Justice Thomas only interprets the law when it suits him. AS was mentioned in the article, both Justice Thomas and Anita Hill were under oath and one of them lied. What would Anita Hill have to loose by telling the truth? We all know what Justice Thomas would have lost.
"What would Anita Hill have to loose"?
You don't think for yourelf much do you? She had everything to gain by lying. She was very much against having a pro-life justice on the SCOTUS. She was a tool for the pro-choice movement.
"Making law" versus "interpreting law" is a fraud. Show me a judge who seriously believes interpretation does not involve lawmaking at some level, and I'll show you a moron. Isn't it just a tiny bit curious that Justice Thomas' "interpretation" of the Constitution is always 100% consistent with his political views? Or that when the case facts don't support his interpretation he simply ignores them?
Didn't that STEORN thing die a humiliating, public, 'flopping like a fish' death - Live on the internets?
Your world of disinformation is exceedingly small, but obviously very REAL to you pa104inf.
You declare a lot of nonsensical things, things you state as fact just because you wish it so. Sure we all do this from time to time. However I find your posts are nothing BUT things you wish; stated as fact. For your own mental health, you may try suspending this cloying behavior and re-examine the things you say. Mull it over, before you spit it out. Ask yourself, do I have proof or just assertions from my RightThinking mentors? Can these issues be construed otherwise, by sane people? Should I be libeling a whole 60-70% of americans with my assertions, or should I consider they may have used logical instruments to arrive at their conclusions?
You keep telling us how wrong we ALL are, and expect that the old tripe you throw down as proof will somehow obliterate all arguments. Those of us who know a few more things giggle, smirk, or get a pained gassy expression when we see someone trying so hard, believing so hard, with such shaky and handpicked arguments.
I love to annoy you liberals by mentioning Steorn. I have invested no money in Steorn and I have grave doubts as to the validity of there claims but I still hold a kernel of truth as to the truth of there statements. I find it interesting that nobody on this blogg believes Justice Thomas but until he actually admitted he lied most individuals on this blogg believed President Bush and didn't believe Paula Jones.
Steorn the cure for Global Warming can be found at http://www
I always find it interesting to watch conservatives play the race card against liberals when it suits them.
yet, liberals are the ones who have consistently been in favor of equality for all while the conservative record on the issue is spotty at best-- self-serving at worst.
"liberals have consistently been in favor of equality for all..."
Ummm except for that pesky little period of SLAVERY.
You are funny.
Thomas says of Anita Hill "she never showed much religious sentiment.
retribution and smiting the evil liberal non-believers. We don't need a constituion, bill of rights, legal precedents all we need is a bible and the power of the law to make you neil down and live by our religion. I always wonder if they think Jesus was going to return would he be wearing a AK 47 killing people promote war, be a liar to promote his beliefs and beat up on the poor because they are no good slackers and his deciples would be the wealthy right wing CEO's. Whats wrong with this picture???
The court isn't "conservative" any more than Bush is conservative. The justices are partisan idealogues who bend the law to suit the decisions they arrived with. We've seen this approach recently in the executive branch, and it didn't turn out well there either.
They are partisan intellectual acrobats. Always have been.
Thomas was in charge of seeing that the equal rights laws were carried out before the nomination. That's where anita Hill worked as his assistant.
Justice Clarence Thomas confirms in his book that Professor Anita Hill was CORRECT about him- and he doesn't even know he said it!
Let me explain HOW! Professor Hill was a professor at the Oklahoma University Law School then.
My son was her student during those congressional hearings. I asked him at the time, "Son, what do you think of Professor Hill?" "Dad", he said, "she is the epitome of the 'understatement'- if she said it, you can believe it! She constantly reminds us of the serious role of law in our American judicial system. She is always cautioning us that justice works slowly through facts, evidence and circumstance and that we should not rush to conclusions in securing justice for American citizens. Everyone who knows her would vouch for her veracity and clarity about the law."
Justice Thomas, in his comments, spoke of that time in 'political terms'. A Supreme Court Justice knows the libelous nature of law when misused. Intriguing that his innuendos, implications and inferences about Professor Hill are NOT legal in nature but political. BUT HE DIDN'T!
I live in Oklahoma where the 'spew & spin machine' of the Oklahoma Republicans is most notably dispensed through the Daily Oklahoman newspaper(referred to by the thinking public as 'The Daily Disappoint
I introduced Professor Hill to Ambassador Andrew Young. Ambassador Young visited a state "Prayer Breakfast" where myself and other Oklahoma pastors celebrated our faith. He asked me to call her. She and her mother were 'holed up' in Norman, OK, unable to answer her phone without receiving vitriolic and venomous epithets from the Republican lackeys who spewed their vicious distortions and outlandish inferences.
That was my experience. That was my observation. That is the truth-'so help me 'God!
Watch out Pastor..yo
Thank you...I have been accused on several occasions.
you see I live in Oklahoma..
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