Ive used this webspace over the years to take some shots at Justice Clarence Thomas. Sure, some of them were probably below the belt (my personal favorite was when noting his dissent in the medical marijuana case of Gonzales v. Raich I referred to him as Justice Long Bong Silver), but thats kind of how the internet works. We all get some testosterone and snark out of our systems and sometimes it gets heated, but for the most part its all in good fun. I dont have anything personal against Justice Thomas; I just think hes a bad jurist who is profoundly wrong about a great many things that I care very deeply about.

I think hes wrong on his approach to personal privacy and abortion rights. I think hes wrong on his blind acceptance to the excesses of executive power. I think hes wrong on his laissez-faire attitude towards the Establishment Clause and most of the rest of the Bill of Rights. But most of all, I think hes horribly and terribly wrong on his entire judicial philosophy. Thomas, like Justices Scalia, Alito and (sometimes) Roberts subscribe to the philosophy of Constitutional Originalism, or the belief that the Constitution should only be interpreted through the express intent of the documents framers. In my mind, its a deeply hypocritical and myopic way to look at the law. Now, Im sure theyd say the same thing about people like me, and thats OK. Again, nothing personal, we just disagree.

Try telling that to Justice Thomas. It seems to him that the people who question him are more than just wrong; theyre out to get him. Some of you may be old enough to remember him referring to the high tech lynching he was being put through during his contentious Supreme Court confirmation. While there were many reasons why Senators at the time may have been cautious about confirming Thomas to the Court (chief among them his scant 15 month long record as a judge of any kind and his general lack of distinguishing accomplishment as a lawyer or scholar), the hearings largely revolved around the sordid tale of the Anita Hill affair. It was that controversy that caused Thomas to invoke lynching, and to this day it remains the thing for which he is probably most known.

His new memoir, My Grandfathers Son (on sale now!) notes that his confirmation was the most difficult moment of his life. By all accounts, his memoir is a frank and emotionally-charged account of his ascent from poverty in Georgia to Yale Law School to Public Service and, eventually, to the highest court in the land. Its also apparently a bit of a political hit-piece. As the New York Times notes, in their editorial review of the book, Thomas spares no metaphorical expense at re-hashing his confirmation hearing and one-upping his own hyperbolic "high tech lynching" line.

The problem with Justice Thomass book, My Grandfathers Son, is that it nurses bitter grudges and throws brickbats at organizations and people who opposed his nomination and might well appear before the court. Some of his targets, like Senator Joseph Biden and Yale Law School, he mentions by name. Others, like the American Civil Liberties Union, are not attacked as directly, but it is not hard to connect the dots.

The level of hostility is striking. He grew up fearing the Ku Klux Klan, he says, but my worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.

Now, I dont know what really happened between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. Having read the testimony, I tend to believe her. That could be, as some bloggers fairly suggest, because I am a liberal and Ive learned not to trust Thomas. Or it could be because one of my favorite professors from law school actually testified on Ms. Hills behalf at the hearings and he once regaled us with the long, sordid and extremely believable story. Regardless, its not really material. What is material is that the comparison Mr. Thomas makes between his experience in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the experiences of every black person fearing for their lives from the KKK is more that a bit extreme.

But then again, Justice Thomas is never shy to wrap himself in the imagery of the wounded and oppressed on the one hand while discounting the wounds and oppression felt by everyone else on the other. For example, in his 60 Minutes interview last week promoting his book (on sale now!), he helped justify his opposition to affirmative action programs by claiming he was a victim of the programs themselves.

Thomas did well at Yale [Law School], graduating somewhere in the middle of his class, but he says it was the first time anybody had tried to put him in a box because of his race, and whatever benefits he accrued from being there were tarnished when it came time to graduate.

"You know, I was in debt. I needed a job. And I couldnt get a job," Thomas says.

"Not even with a Yale law degree?" Kroft asks.

"I couldnt get a job. And I just saw the discounting of my degree happen before my eyes," Thomas says.

Asked why he thinks that is, Thomas says, "That degree meant one thing for whites and another thing for blacksit was discounted."

"You write in the book that your Yale degree was worth 15 cents," Kroft remarks.

"Well, you know Steve, I have still a 15 cents sticker on the frame that my law degree is in," Thomas says. "It's tainted. So I just leave it in the basement."

Thomas finally found a $10,000-a-year job in Jefferson City, Mo., working for the states attorney general, John Danforth.

Newsflash to Justice Thomas: finishing in the middle of your class anywhere doesnt make it easy to find a job in the legal profession. Trust me, Im living proof. But that doesnt mean your degree is worthless or tainted as you claim. Far, far from it. Frank Rich of the Times breaks down the 60 Minutes piece and the supposed uselessness of Thomas degree further:

The "60 Minutes" correspondent, Steve Kroft, maintained that Mr. Thomas had no choice but to settle for a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974 dollars) in Missouri, working for the state's attorney general, John Danforth.

What "60 Minutes" didn't say was that the post was substantial an assistant attorney general and that Mr. Danforth was himself a Yale Law graduate. As Mr. Danforth told the story during the 1991 confirmation hearings and in his own book last year, he traveled to New Haven to recruit Mr. Thomas when he was still a third-year law student. That would be before he even received that supposedly worthless degree. Had it not been for Yale taking a chance on him in the first place, in other words, Mr. Thomas would never have had the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start his career and to ascend to the Supreme Court. Mr. Danforth, a senator in 1991, was the prime mover in shepherding the Thomas nomination to its successful conclusion.

Seems to be more than 15 cents worth to me.

More troubling to me is the bitter glee with which Thomas is dragging up old wounds, specifically when it comes to Anita Hill. In the 60 Minutes piece, he shrugged off Ms. Hill as not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed [at the hearings]. The shots he took at her in his book were more far-reaching. Ms. Hill herself recounted them in an Editorial response, also with the Times:

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee that I was a combative left-winger who was touchy and prone to overreacting to slights. A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. Whats more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomass behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. Its no longer my word against his.

Ms. Hill proceeds to defend herself forcefully and if youd like to hear her response I urge you to read the rest of the linked article above. This article, as I said before, is not about saying she was right and he was wrong. But it does raise the question to Justice Thomas: If this situation brought up so many old wounds, why open them up again unnecessarily? Why devote such a substantial portion to your memoirs (on sale now!) to firing back at long gone critics and rekindling long-dead wars?

I guess everyone deserves to tell their story and its hard to begrudge him for trying to do just that. Or rather, it would be if he werent so brazenly dismissive of those who would try to tell their stories of racism or poverty or homophobia or sexism or oppression or being shoved into the institutional margins. It would be more acceptable if he didnt scoff at people who tried to explain to him why his actions hurt. It would be less ridiculous if he would look with self awareness at his own words from the 60 Minutes piece that practically beatified him.

Over the years the most vocal and persistent have been elements of the black community, where Thomas feels he has always been misunderstood.

"They feel that you received some preferential treatment because you were black. And that now, you are trying to say that they, that blacks, that other blacks shouldn't have it. That you've pulled the ladder on black people after youve climbed to the top," Kroft says.

"Steve, that's silly. Come on," Thomas says.

"This is a political reality. You are super charged," Kroft says.

"I don't think that when you're dealing with things that are matters of principle or matters of fact, that you can spend a lot of time worrying about what critics say. You have to do your job. My grandfather never worried about it. Youve got to do whats right. You dont engage in this type of pettiness," Thomas says.

It would be nice if you didnt either, Justice Thomas.

Subrosa will admit, in all fairness, that has not yet read Justice Thomas' book (which, if you haven't heard, is on sale now!) It's on his list, just after he finishes "The Nine" by Jeffrey Toobin, which covers much of the same ground.

wildswan

I'm lost

June 2006

OCT 09, 2007 12:59 PM

Subrosa said:

"I don't think that when you're dealing with things that are matters of principle or matters of fact, that you can spend a lot of time worrying about what critics say. You have to do your job. My grandfather never worried about it. You've got to do what's right. You don't engage in this type of pettiness," Thomas says.

It would be nice if you didn't either, Justice Thomas.

Absofuckinlutely.

His tactics are cheap, and are now (just as they were then), beneath someone seeking to sit, much less sitting, on a bench in the highest court in the land.

He's egomaniacal, and displays a classic case of internalizing events in his life, and has decided to ( in a rather undignified manner) seek the acceptance of the very type people he has been rejected by.

His assertions that he's attacked for "not thinking like a black person should" are completely preposterous and disingenuous. The people that don't buy him, don't buy him for his specific politics; it's just the cherry on the cake that he's a black person who's actively working against what many, if not most, black people believe is in their best interest.

Subrosa said:
I guess everyone deserves to tell their story and it's hard to begrudge him for trying to do just that.

Or, you know, he could wait until after he's not seated on the bench to have a hissy fit - and not bring to bear the weight and credibility of the prestigious position he holds to attack one person.

hecklongtree

Westhampton Beach, NY

February 2004

OCT 09, 2007 01:01 PM

It really galls me when people blame racism, sexism, right-wing conspiracies, etc. on problems that are basically of their own doing.

Thomas' calling his treatment by the Senate Judiciary Committee a "high-tech lynching" doesn't even make sense. Lynching was perpetrated against blacks accused of attacking white women. Here, his accuser, Anita Hill, is black. Black Congressman Mel Reynolds, convicted of, among other things, the statutory rape of his intern also blamed his prosecution on racism. He also failed to mention that the intern was also black.

Discrimination still exists, but it can't be blamed for everything. Thomas, Reynolds and others should stop using it as an excuse for things that are their own fault.