Clarence Thomas: Nobody Knows the Trouble He's Seen

You have to feel sorry for the judge. Like George Bush he has failed upwards until the poor guy is now hopelessly out of his league. Unlike our president, however, he doesn't have to pretend to understand the complexities of his job for just eight years and then retire to the back nine. Poor Clarence is stuck there for life. He seems caught in some sort of chilling Twilight Zone episode, cursed for what he wished for. His new memoir, My Grandfather's Son,"is yet another sad chapter in his lifetime of self-hate.

Am I being too hard or condescending on what should be one of the wisest people in the nation? How else do you explain his terror of asking a single question from the bench? His excuse is that the other justices "talk too much."

It's called doing their job.

They arrive with questions that need to be answered, instead of dogma that needs to be adhered to. Justice Thomas is clearly that terrified kid in every class that knows that if he opens his mouth everyone will realize that he didn't understand today's lesson. Instead of being a beacon of pride for young black kids that, like him, might have been raised in poverty, he is an embarrassment.

His supporters point to his writings, but back in his chambers he is backed up by clerks who are some of our very smartest legal minds. Kato Kaelin could sign off on their briefs and sound like he knew what he was talking about.

George Bush the First's appointment of a black man who was patently unqualified to the highest bench is exactly what affirmative action is not supposed to be about. The point is to open up gatekeepers like elite law schools and medical schools. Once the students graduate, however, they, and every other job applicant has to rise to a certain standard. My sister is a heart surgeon. Nobody is going to let her cut somebody open just to fill a quota. She has to be excellent at what she does. The bar for a lifetime appointment to our highest bench should have been just as high.

My mom went to Yale law school a few years after Thomas, after having graduated Magna Cum Laude from Howard. She was a thirty-five-year-old black mother of two teenaged kids. She knew she was brilliant, the best of the best, and thrilled at debating the other students. She never once said, "Oh, I'm only here because they needed a brown body. I really belong at the DeVry College of Law."

And that's how she raised me. Old school. Yes, racism still exists, she would tell me. So a B+ might do for the white boys, but you have to be that much better. How pathetic is it that Clarence Thomas writes that he graduated from Yale Law School with his head hanging low, convinced that the world knew that his diploma came with an asterisk of inferiority? When my mom's friends graduated they burst out of law school ready to kick ass and take names.

The most odious part of Thomas's memoir is his continued insistence that his contentious confirmation hearings elevate him to the canon of tragic black heroes like Native Son's Bigger Thomas and To Kill a Mockingbird's Tom Robinson. As Jane Meyer and Jill Abramson clearly demonstrate in their book, Strange Justice, Anita Hill was only one of several and Thomas, now one of the nine highest judges in our nation, lied repeatedly during his confirmation hearings. The bitterness that seems to be eating away at him and spews out of this book might stem from the fact that he was the head of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission while he was sexually harassing Anita Hill and he is now sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America because he lied his ass off in the United States Senate.

Comments

[vippy]

Give me a break. I remember Anita Hill with a bad command of the English Language and I am a foreigner. Her story was not the truth because it was shown late on TV one night about the timeline being way off for it to have been true. Guess it got buried. I would feel resentment too if I was Clarence and I don't blame him. Why doesn't this documentary
get shown again on TV during hours where most of the people watch??? Come on, someone dig out that piece again and set the record straight.

[meandmagoo]

Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment as an American.Period.

Why the hell hasn't the Senate dragged his ass in to testify?When a sitting Supreme Court Justice admits he is biased to the point of hatred,I would think Congrees ought to have a problem with that.

[bluewombat]

Brilliant, well-written piece.

[pangardenguru]

I saw Anita Hill interviewed last week and she was as poised and gracious as any human can be...quite a contrast to the disturbed, bitter, clarence thomas.

[RSU]

I don't understand why it is that black Americans who succeed in life are trashed just because they think and act differently from the 'liberal mainstream.'

Does individualism and diversity not fit in a liberal world?

Is it so important to become obedient cookie-cutter reflections of one another that independent thinking must be utterly destroyed as bad examples to follow?

Who then decides which direction is right or wrong as we are molded into our stations in life? In other words, who decides who your 'master' in life will be . . . you? . . . or, some think-tank driven organization scheming out a path for you?

If one wonders why blacks struggle so with getting ahead in life, all one need do is look around at what the left does to blacks who succeed 'outside' the liberal party group-think apparatus.

Dr. Bill Cosby, who by any measure has succeeded in life, was vilified by progressives for telling black youths they will never be taken seriously as long as they treat their bodies and each other with disrespect, fail to master spoken English, and kill each other over shoes while wearing pants no higher than their thighs.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice, whose resume is an astonishing string of incredible achievements is happily portrayed by the left as an aloof bucktoothed caricature of Butterfly McQueen's character of Prissy in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind.

Lt Governor Michael Steele, who while running for U.S. Senate, was greeted by the left with Oreo cookies thrown at him, labeling him an Uncle Tom, stealing his credit report, and portrayal as Sambo on Steve Gilliard"s liberal blogsite.

Instead of celebrating their black achievements, they each were maligned for not conforming to liberal beliefs. Even this article goes to lengths to diminish a prominent black American who by whatever means, pulled himself up to successfully obtain a seat on our nation's highest court.

By suggesting his success is unwarranted because he supposedly kowtowed to an unwarranted affirmative action can only make blacks everywhere question - why they should try to succeed at anything at all.

[LIR]

That's because Clarence has a lot of bitterness to let loose...as Mr. Ellis eloquently points out, this bitterness is founded in self-hate.

[pangardenguru]

thank you Mr. Ellis. brilliant post. You nailed it.

[TruthAndConsequences]

Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for capturing what I have long thought about Clarence Thomas. You have so completely crystallized it, I could never say it better. Thank you also for filling in perspective that I, as a white male, can't have even though I feel great solidarity with you.

[radlib1]

Mr. Ellis, your mother is a true heroine. Mr. Thomas is scum who rose to the top. He didn't get there on his own merits. He certainly is no worthy heir to Thurgood Marshall's seat on the Supreme Court. Mr. Thomas got into Yale Law School because of affirmative action (which is a good thing) and everything thereafter because he was a black man who was a willing servant to conservatism (which is a perverse thing). He's an angry, self-hating man who sexually harassed Anita Hill and other young black women and then denied it. He doesn't deserve his self-pity. He only deserves our scorn.

[grannyE]

A Ha!!I wondered about this the minute He said that Big Daddy had summoned him to Kennebunkport to talk to him about being appointed. I thought, "he will be Big Daddy's tool...". Then there would be two dummies to order around placed in the two highest positions of this nation. Rove must have been Big Daddy's consultant even back then?

[Magnulus]

Clarence Thomas is a perfect example for those who would think Affirmative Action presents problems in fairness, for those of us who believe people should be hired for a job based on merit. Clearly, Clarence Thomas's qualifications for the Supreme Court were minimal, at best. And once he reached the court, rather than grabbing the oppurtunity to use his post to make changes in the system he so despised, he instead decided to cave in and become the "yes man" for all the injustice and unfairness he decried in his youth, trading doing what is right for doing what will give him status and prestige, at least in his eyes. As near as I can tell, he is content to let other people or ideologies do his thinking for him. He is an enabler and a sycophant, nothing more.

He is a bitter, self-loathing, narcissistic man. The fact his antipathy against the left, and certain people who will bring cases before the court in the comming years, shows his judicial vision is clouded, and he should recuse himself from these cases, or perhaps he should be impeached, shoudl the oppurtunity arise. He's incompetent. Not just becaues I don't agree with his judicial philosophy; scalia for example, I don't agree with, but at least he acts like a judge. No Thomas is just a mouthpiece, not a judge.

[makemarc]

Clarence Thomas strikes me as suffering from nasty dose of internalized blackophobia. Not to mention untreated alcoholism. (And no, stopping cold turkey is not "treatment." It's called "white-knuckling" it, and leaves you a dry drunk, just like our deluded President.) Still Thomas' admission (on ABC) to heavy drinking at one time, begs the question whether he was indulging during the years he employed Anita. Wouldn't that explain how an otherwise gentlemanly sort might act like a perfect boor?

[Rascalitis]

It troubles me that he is still so full of hatred against Liberals and Democrats. Do you think he will ever give them a fair hearing. Hell no!

[amhcw]

Anita Hill is a lawyer. Lawyer's can't lie--and retain their licenses. Anita Hill was asked if she thought Clarence Thomas --something like--was qualified for the position. She said, "No." She told her truth. And thence followed the rest. Did the braying world expect this lawyer to lie?

[mntleo2]

I have been listening to NPR and other places about this. I wonder what all the "analysis" is all about. Who gives a crap about this sad little man, who along with the other sad little men, voted to end the vote in Florida in total disrespect of the Constitution and We The People. Thanks to him and his ilk he is responsible for the thousands, perhaps millions of needless deaths and war around the world because he allowed a fake president to foul our nation. The day they did that, I lost all respect for any of the SCOTUS members who voted for it. I believe they should all be massively mooned by We The People to show they no longer have any credibility. I think Thomas is a selfish, self centered man who is now taking pleasure in demeaning this woman he tormented. From the beginning, he proved himself a liar and should be impeached as should all the other tools he resides on the SCOTUS who promote their own sick agendas and ignore the Constitution instead of upholding it.

My 2 cetns

Cat In Seattle

[VicPerry]

A friend of mine took her kids to watch the Supremes a few months back and watched clarence t sleeping through proceedings. true story.

[GenericBlogger]

When I saw Clarence Thomas on 60 Minutes I saw an irascible lawyer with a chip on his shoulder instead of the tempered level headed judge he is supposed to be.

Seeing such a person, knowing he is one of the nine justices in the SCOTUS was not easy to watch.

I hope for his sake and more importantly for the country's sake he finds peace with whatever haunts or ails him if he will be there for life.

[Paladin2]

He's a perfect example of our entire government. Unqualified, biased, ignoring his job because he's tired from beating off in his office looking at dirty pictures he condems in public.

[LightningJoe]

What Thomas needs is an extended regimen of psychotherapy. But he will never get that, because he has to make the choice himself, and he's incapable of seeing the roots of his discontent.

His father left the family, and Thomas has ever since tried to prove to his absent father that he is, too, worthy of a father's love. I think there may have been hope for him until his grandfather later repeated his father's rejection. From that point, he was set on a course of unending self-criticism, of an intensity that can only be borne by denying and externalizing it.

That he did as well as he has, living with such a poisoned spirit, is ample evidence of his native brilliance, but it also contributes to his sense of paranoia. He knows that he's brilliant, but cannot let himself see that he is his own soul's jailor, clamping down any impulse of liberalism (in the emotional sense).

He sees such a self-constraint as an absolute necessity, lest he descend (as he would and perhaps should) into self-pity, which would undo him (until he lived through it). By projection, he sees all such liberal tendencies as critical failings, and feels called on to quash those impulses in every sphere.

He needs to realize that his father's "rejection" had nothing at all to do with him, except perhaps as another small mouth to feed. And he needs to realize that his father inherited his own failings from guess who.

This is the perennial tragedy of humans: we seldom know where we came from, and we create narratives that hide the painful past and effectively prevent our ever finding that out.

[daveLatchaw]

Good analysis, but mine's simpler and shorter. The guy's a dick. A Long Dong Silver sized dick.

[shockedNawed]

!HA!...gOOD ONE!