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Clarence Thomas' Petty Crusade for "Justice"

TUESDAY OCTOBER 9 2007 12:00 PM

Submitted by Subrosa. Edited By erin_broadley.

TAGS: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, on sale now!

I’ve 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&rdquo, but that’s 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 it’s all in good fun. I don’t have anything personal against Justice Thomas; I just think he’s a bad jurist who is profoundly wrong about a great many things that I care very deeply about.

I think he’s wrong on his approach to personal privacy and abortion rights. I think he’s wrong on his blind acceptance to the excesses of executive power. I think he’s 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 he’s 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 document’s framers. In my mind, it’s a deeply hypocritical and myopic way to look at the law. Now, I’m sure they’d say the same thing about people like me, and that’s 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; they’re 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 Grandfather’s 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. It’s 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 Thomas’s book, “My Grandfather’s 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 don’t 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 I’ve learned not to trust Thomas. Or it could be because one of my favorite professors from law school actually testified on Ms. Hill’s behalf at the hearings and he once regaled us with the long, sordid and extremely believable story. Regardless, it’s 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 couldn’t get a job," Thomas says.

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

"I couldn’t 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 blacks…it 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 state’s attorney general, John Danforth.

Newsflash to Justice Thomas: finishing in the middle of your class anywhere doesn’t make it easy to find a job in the legal profession. Trust me, I’m living proof. But that doesn’t 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. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.

Ms. Hill proceeds to defend herself forcefully and if you’d 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 it’s hard to begrudge him for trying to do just that. Or rather, it would be if he weren’t 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 didn’t 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 you’ve 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. 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.

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.

38 Comments

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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.

Subrosa

San Francisco, CA

July 2004

OCT 09, 2007 01:11 PM

wildswan said:

Subrosa said:

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

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

God, stop trying to lynch him, wildswan.

wildswan

I'm lost

June 2006

OCT 09, 2007 01:14 PM

Subrosa said:

God, stop trying to lynch him, wildswan.

This time it's even more high-tech!

cowpunk3rd

New Zealand

December 2005

OCT 09, 2007 03:28 PM

He /was/ and still is crucified for not thinking like a "good colored boy" (not my words but his on Limbaughs show last week)

Others, like politicians JC Watts, Condi Rice, Alan Keyes, Columnists Thomas Sowell, Ken Hamblin, Walter Williams, Jesse Lee Peterson have all specifically by name come under fire (with C.T.) by the NAACP for not supporting their agenda. All because they refuse to partake of the holy sacrament of the high church of liberalism which is abortion and govt handouts.

His book was an /autobiography/ which by definition is 'his' story in 'his' words reflecting 'his' feelings about 'his' life.

Good article even though I disagree with you. Have to point out that this is probably the wrong forum for something so in depth. Too many words for this crowd to reply with anything more insightful than a fart joke and a 'fuck bush'. By the time most got halfway through it The OC would come back from a commercial break.

Uncognitive

Brooklyn, NY

May 2003

OCT 09, 2007 03:38 PM

The irony here is that the same conservatives who excoriate others for portraying themselves as victims will turn around on a fucking time and claim that they've been victimized for similar reasons.

cowpunk3rd said:
His book was an /autobiography/ which by definition is 'his' story in 'his' words reflecting 'his' feelings about 'his' life.

It's also a book that takes the whole "Supreme Court Justices are supposed to at least pretend to be impartial when they consider things as massively important as ruling on matters of Constitutional law that will echo through the ages" concept that's been taking a beating since Bush V. Gore and bludgeons it to death with a pubic-hair-adorned coke can.

AshenLight

USA

October 2005

OCT 09, 2007 03:58 PM

A Bush appointee... he's one of the boys alright

mojo77

Norcross, GA

June 2007

OCT 09, 2007 04:05 PM

hecklongtree said:
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.

"Lynching was perpetrated against blacks accused of attacking white women."

What?

I guess I'll be the only person of color to offer a counterpoint to what amounts to white people, once again, whining when people suggest that perhaps discrimination DOES, in fact exist and is used to smear the reputations of minorities in a position of power. Regardless of the actual issue.

But, that's not the issue I have. Racism is everywhere. I say deal with it. The Issue I have is with the statement to which I've quoted. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of, but then I can consider the source and have a good laugh to myself.

It really galls me when white people pretend to know ANYTHING about what blacks [or any other minority] have gone, and continue to go through in this country. I blame racism for stupid people like you, who in your ignorance, can quote some wiki definition of lynching to prove that somehow vigilanti justice can explain the millions of lynchings and other hangings committed against those not judged by YOUR beloved criminal justice system, most likely due to their skin color and NOT the 'alleged' attack of white women. That's how most white people 'out' themselves from being racist. "Lynching was perpetrated against blacks accused of attacking white women." WTF? Yeah, you're the expert, right? Whatever dude. Think what you want, but you're not proving anything, nor does that have anything to do with Clarence Thomas. The term he used was a metaphor. Because you know nothing about the fear generated by the possibility of being lynched, maybe you should reserve your comments for subjects in which you are knowledgable.

NickFaust

USA

April 2004

OCT 09, 2007 04:09 PM

cowpunk3rd said

Good article even though I disagree with you. Have to point out that this is probably the wrong forum for something so in depth. Too many words for this crowd to reply with anything more insightful than a fart joke and a 'fuck bush'. By the time most got halfway through it The OC would come back from a commercial break.

Well. I've gotta hand it to you. This is the best pre-emptive ad hominum I have seen in a while.

Lemme ask you, did you get training as an asshole? Or is this natural talent we are seeing here.

Thomas is a tool. He is not a tool because he is black. He is not a tool because he is conservative. He is a tool because he is a tool. He was unqualified to be a justice of the highest court in the land when he was appointed. Sadly, his time on the court, which many people have used as an opportunity to grow and learn, has had no impact on him and done nothing to improve his qualifications, primarily because his rigidity and essentially paranoid world view make him highly defensive when confronting new ideas or concept.

His race has nothing to do with his lack of qualifications and everything to do with his appointment and confirmation. His "conservatism" is in fact not "consetrvatism," or at least not a conservatism that is recognizable outside the Christian Identify Movement.

But, I do agree with you on one thing: great article Subrosa.

Subrosa

San Francisco, CA

July 2004

OCT 09, 2007 04:16 PM

cowpunk3rd said:
He /was/ and still is crucified for not thinking like a "good colored boy" (not my words but his on Limbaughs show last week)

Yes, Limbaugh is one of his biggest fans. This does not really help his credibility, in my estimation.

Others, like politicians JC Watts, Condi Rice, Alan Keyes, Columnists Thomas Sowell, Ken Hamblin, Walter Williams, Jesse Lee Peterson have all specifically by name come under fire (with C.T.) by the NAACP for not supporting their agenda. All because they refuse to partake of the holy sacrament of the high church of liberalism which is abortion and govt handouts.

Oh come now. That's ridiculously simplistic and largely inaccurate. Is there a certain percentage of the grief that those political figures take that is based on unfair assertions of being a modern day Uncle Tom? Absolutely. Do they also deserve some legitimate criticism for hypocrisy? You bet your ass they do. It's really a cop out to say that these people are being attacked simply for not playing their roles. There's plenty of room for legitimate criticism here.

Take Justice Thomas. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who benefited more from Affirmative Action and race-based preferences than he has. And you'd be hard-pressed to find someone more in a hurry to get rid of them. Now, does that mean his opinions are automatically invalid? No. But it sure does cast some doubts as to his credibility.

His book was an /autobiography/ which by definition is 'his' story in 'his' words reflecting 'his' feelings about 'his' life.

Which, as I said, is a fair point. On the other hand, it's not exactly commonplace for sitting SCOTUS Justices to come out with autobiographies. It's even more uncommon for sitting SCOTUS Justices to come out with autobiographies where the main thrust of the piece seems to be to settle old scores and justify his own particular worldview.

Thomas has an ax to grind. And goddammit, he's going to grind it, no matter how unseemly a light it shines on him. It's barely appropriate behavior for a politician, let alone a Supreme Court Justice.

Good article even though I disagree with you. Have to point out that this is probably the wrong forum for something so in depth. Too many words for this crowd to reply with anything more insightful than a fart joke and a 'fuck bush'. By the time most got halfway through it The OC would come back from a commercial break.

But I didn't write it for them, cowpunk3rd. I wrote it for you.

PointBlank

New York, NY

November 2004

OCT 09, 2007 04:30 PM

cowpunk3rd said:
He /was/ and still is crucified for not thinking like a "good colored boy" (not my words but his on Limbaughs show last week)

Others, like politicians JC Watts, Condi Rice, Alan Keyes, Columnists Thomas Sowell, Ken Hamblin, Walter Williams, Jesse Lee Peterson have all specifically by name come under fire (with C.T.) by the NAACP for not supporting their agenda. All because they refuse to partake of the holy sacrament of the high church of liberalism which is abortion and govt handouts.

His book was an /autobiography/ which by definition is 'his' story in 'his' words reflecting 'his' feelings about 'his' life.

Good article even though I disagree with you. Have to point out that this is probably the wrong forum for something so in depth. Too many words for this crowd to reply with anything more insightful than a fart joke and a 'fuck bush'. By the time most got halfway through it The OC would come back from a commercial break.

Definition of irony: judging the intelligence/polical awareness of others while listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Kanner

New Zealand

September 2007

OCT 09, 2007 04:36 PM

Great article!

cowpunk3rd

New Zealand

December 2005

OCT 09, 2007 04:49 PM

PointBlank said:

Definition of irony: judging the intelligence/polical awareness of others while listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Huh? It was in a transcript of the show quoted in a different article. I live in Canada where there is no Limbaugh on the air that I know of or even care about.