Here's a tantalizing what if. What if the nation had known about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's alleged pornographic obsession in 1991? Lillian McEwen, Thomas's one-time paramour, says that Thomas was virtually a serial peep artist: looking at women's breasts and bra sizes, keeping his head buried in porn magazines, and ogling porn films. Unfortunately, McEwen never got a chance to do her tell-all about Thomas at the time of his contentious confirmation hearings in 1991.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, for reasons known only to it, didn't choose to call her. But McEwen's revelations ring true for two reasons. Anita Hill said virtually the same thing, and few doubted her veracity. And there were a slew of other women who pretty much backed up Hill's assertion about Thomas's alleged perversion.
McEwen is right on target with them. Just think what we would have been spared if the Committee had called McEwen and given her testimony about Thomas the pervert the weight it properly deserved. He would almost certainly not have been confirmed. The nation would have been spared two decades of goofball opinions, views, and rulings from arguably one of not just the worst judges to ever plop his rear end in a seat on the bench, but also one of the most embarrassing. His silly, at times bizarre, legally and constitutionally defective clockwork-like opinions -- to sanction discrimination, gender and workplace discrimination, and even the most blatant civil rights and liberties violations; uphold unrestricted government power; support school prayer; and hammer affirmative action, voting rights,and abortion -- are now the stuff of laughable and pitiable legend. Thomas has been a cancer on the bench, and has mocked every cannon of constitutional and legal jurisprudence by his mere presence.
The worst part of this is that he and his wife, Ginni Thomas, have not even the most rudimentary concept of shame. This was amply born out when Ginni, in an absurd voice mail, asked Anita Hill to apologize for the alleged harm her truthful testimony did to Thomas -- 20 years after the fact, no less. Ginni, and by extension her husband, got what they deserved when McEwen came forth and publicly ragged on Clarence Thomas as a pervert.
This can't and won't get Thomas booted off the bench. Though it's as close to smoking gun corroboration as you can get that the justice perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee when he swore that Hill was lying about his obsession. And that almost certainly would have been the final nail in Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hope coffin. Lillian, Lillian, where were you when we needed you? Again, just think of the agony we all would have been spared from the two decades of Thomas embarrassment and disgrace if we could have heard from you then.