Anita Hill speaks up

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

I don't know who's innocent, who's smeared, and who's "guilty" here, do you?  I don't like seeing women patronize other women by assuming they're always the victims.  But I don't like Clarence Thomas.  Is it possible that we're watching two angry, self-righteous people -- both with tiresome agendas -- duking it out here? 

Jeffrey Toobin, in an interview yesterday, talked about the importance of judicial temperament.  Absence of judicial temperament is Thomas' major flaw and that's what leaps out of the Anita Hill controversy.   Still, he's said to be a "good friend."   Within the Supreme Court building, Thomas is seen as a humorous and convivial man who is popular with his colleagues and clerks. 

But ohmigod, so very, very self-righteous.  And so lacking in wisdom.  Otherwise, why would he raise the issue of his confirmation again? Fifteen years later?  What kind of justice is this?

Comments

[PDiddie]

Thomas showed me undertones not just of anger and arrogance but of bitterness.

He played the race card in that confirmation hearing like it had never been played before. And it hadn't. And nobody has played since with such belligerent zeal.

Thomas stated he lost his religion when someone in the seminary he was attending said MLK got what was coming to him, and then found it again during the Hill testimony. That sounds like his faith is just like everybody else's: non-existent, until you really want something.

Clarence Thomas together with 'judicial temperament' is an oxymoron.

[PW]

Bitterness is right. If you get a change, Diddie, listen to the audio of Monday's Diane Rehm show with Rosen and Toobin talking about the Court. Fascinating in itself, but astounding in its sketch of Clarence Thomas. He provokes that old combo of pity and terror.

[daveinboca]

Best comment I've seen yet on the Anita Hill controversy comes from G. Will:

"Anita Hill and her allies blazed the path subsequently trod by Crystal Gail Mangum and her fans in the university/media establishment in the Duke non-rape case last year."

But Thomas has an even better last word:

Once I got on the Court, I vowed I would never do my job as poorly as journalists do theirs.

Bravo! You've risen far far above the abysmal bottom-feeding standards of ink-stained hacks & political media-whores like Hill.

But the left-wing racists still want more high-tech lynchings, like the one they're arranging for Juan Williams.