Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
Division I regional track finals
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2007 > October > 02
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Still sulking after all these years
I was writing editorials for a living at the time of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings. I watched them for hours on end. I had a lot of trouble deciding whom to believe. Then Thomas said that he hadn’t watched Hill’s testimony, which he reiterates now. That seemed amazing to me, because if she were lying, you’d think he’d want to watch for possible places to catch her in her lies.
Then, as I recall the order of things, a book came out defending Thomas and denouncing Hill, only to be renounced by its author, a then-right-wing hack, as a fraud. Then a respectable book came out by two top journalists that made Hill look good and Thomas worse.
Now he denounces her as “mediocre,” despite having hired her twice. He attributes certain bad work-place characteristics to her that don’t seem to have hindered her climb from Oklahoma to Brandies and Wellesley.
Before the Hill testimony, I developed doubts about Thomas’ honesty because of his testimony on abortion. He repeatedly insisted that his views on Roe vs. Wade were unformed and that he had never even discussed the subject with anybody. The latter point seemed just bizarre. At any rate, I was certain he was the flaming right-winger he turned out to be, as conservative on abortion as anything else. Everybody else was certain, too.
So, all things considered, I guess I believe her.
But what’s really offensive about Thomas is not that he lied about her, if he lied. If you found yourself in his situation, you’d lie too. What’s offensive is his lifelong determination to portray himself as a victim, and particularly as a victim of racial discrimination.
He insists now, as he did then, that the political left had to get him because he was a black conservative, and the left had decided that a black man must have liberal views, and, further, that the liberals would attack him by using the racial stereotype of a black man out of sexual control.
This is such utter nonsense on so many levels.
First of all, ideological control of the court seemed to be at stake. The fight would have been the same if he were white.
Secondly, Anita Hill came forth. Does he really imagine that if a similar thing happened to a liberal nominee, the conservatives wouldn’t have pounced? Please.
Thirdly, the sexual charge happened to be the one that she made.
After being confirmed, Thomas made his mark on the court in two capacities: as a reliable right-wing vote — not conservative like, say, Kennedy, but right wing — and as the guy who never asks any questions of the lawyers appearing before the court.
His strange silence is difficult not to see as a symbol of his bristling anger. It makes him preposterous.
He needs to get over it. He got a lifelong job on the top court in the land at a very young age without exceptional qualifications. And yet he’s mad. He’s mad about, of all things, racial discrimination against him.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: National politics
