I would not normally link to the Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog (aka “where they’ve stashed Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn, since it would be too embarrassing to fire them outright”) but Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite has an intriguing post explaining “Why Anita Hill Deserves an Apology“:
Women like Anita Hill who try to tell the truth about being sexually harassed all too often are disbelieved and even demonized. Hill testified, during the Senate confirmation hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, that Thomas had engaged in a consistent pattern of sexual harassment of her in the workplace…
__
Anita Hill deserves an apology for having her life once again disrupted and being used by a right-wing activist in what seems yet another attempt by the Tea Party to drive their extremist agenda and move American history backwards.
__
I think, therefore, this is not just about “publicity” but perhaps an early sign of another front opening on Supreme Court decisions, and other legal precedents, this time about laws that have secured equal rights for women in the workplace…
__
So many women over the years have come to me in a pastoral context and told me about these patterns that constitute sexual harassment at work. They know it’s wrong, they even know it’s illegal, and they know they are being discriminated against on the basis of their sex. But even today many just want to keep silent because they are more afraid of what will happen if they speak up. The lesson of Anita Hill is not lost on them. Look at what happens to women who try to tell the truth? A few women dare to speak up and claim their rights to a workplace free of such discrimination, but many even today do not.
__
How much harder will it be for them if the Tea Party sets its sights on trying to overturn these important precedents that establish the legal arguments that made sexual harassment illegal?
Ruth Marcus, WaPo columnist, lets her commitment to truth temporarily override her commitment to Right-Wing Conventional Wisdom, sandwiching the following paragraphs between an extended defense of “wifely” grudge-holding and a quick both-sides-must-be-equally-at-fault finish:
… Ginni Thomas is wrong about who should apologize to whom…
__
Does anyone besides the two of them know the full truth about what happened between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill when he was a Reagan administration official and she was a young lawyer on his staff? Perhaps not. But as I wrote when Clarence Thomas released his angry autobiography, the overwhelming weight of the evidence is on Hill’s side.
__
She complained to friends at the time about his behavior, telling one, Susan Hoerchner, that Thomas, then the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had “repeatedly asked her out . . . but wouldn’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer.” Another former EEOC employee, Angela Wright, described how Thomas pressured her to date him, showed up uninvited at her apartment and asked her breast size.
__
Some of the strangest behavior that Hill cited — Thomas asking about a pubic hair on his Coke can, and his taste for extreme pornography — resonated with episodes from Thomas’s past. A college classmate, James Millet, recalled “an almost identical episode,” Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher report in their biography, “Supreme Discomfort.” Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson found two others who recalled a pubic hair-Coke can comment at the EEOC.
__
What’s a wife to do with this uncomfortable information? Clarence Thomas has taken the road of angry denial and, unless she’s about to let her marriage unravel over it, the path of least resistance may be for Ginni to join him there.
__
Why seek satisfaction from Hill now? One explanation might be that Ginni Thomas has recently found herself in the media cross-hairs over her role as head of a group dedicated to exposing the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama. Perhaps that has rekindled her unresolved feelings about Hill. Was it a coincidence that she made the call on the morning the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined, “Activism by Thomas’ Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues”?
And Dahlia Lithwick at Slate speculates “Why Ginni Thomas made that weird phone call to Anita Hill“:
… It’s also not clear why Ginni Thomas believes that re-arguing Thomas v. Hill 19 years later could possibly benefit Clarence Thomas. Yes, the Internet is buzzing today with claims that Prof. Hill, who never wanted to testify against Thomas in the first place and hasn’t sought out any of these Desperate Housewives-style battles, is a liar and always was one. But the Washington Post has already found a former girlfriend of Justice Thomas’ who claims that Hill’s account of Thomas’ behavior in the early 1980s is consistent with the Clarence Thomas she once dated. A new generation of Americans is being reminded of the fact that Hill took a polygraph test at the time of the hearings while Clarence Thomas did not. Anyone who ever read Strange Justice, by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer, is recalling the exhaustive research they put into establishing that Anita Hill had been smeared…
__
The cynic in me believes that there is no gender/race dispute the Tea Party is not willing to exploit for recruitment purposes, that reminding us all of the ugliest moment in American identity politics is no accident just two weeks before an election. The realist in me wonders whether Mrs. Thomas possibly believed this would stay private. She’s a brilliant tactician and a superb communicator: She couldn’t possibly have expected that ham-fisted attempt at reconciliation would have gone unreported.
__
But the depressive in me suspects that Ginni Thomas simply doesn’t care what any of us think of her attempt to reach out and touch someone she hates. Why would she? She and her husband long ago passed a point at which they worry about how they will be portrayed in the mainstream press. They stopped reading it years ago. They both live in a world in which the facts of Hill v. Thomas don’t matter. There are no facts. There are just “our” beliefs and “their” beliefs, just as there is “our” media and “theirs” and “our” Civil War history and “theirs.” To criticize either Thomas has always been to join in the imagined conspiracy against them.
__
Why did Ginni Thomas make her strange call to Anita Hill? She may never explain it fully. But those of us in the media who are pondering what she may have been trying to tell us should probably stop. This episode had nothing to do with us, and nothing to do with Hill, either. We are not in the Thomases’ bubble, and we never will be.
Blowback — it’s what’s for dinner, Mrs. Thomas, hopefully with a side of crow. Andy Borowitz takes to the New Yorker online to offer “Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas’s Wife Calls You”
Like many Americans, over the past several years I have been the recipient of multiple unwelcome voicemails from the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas… all of these voicemails have one thing in common: she always sounds like she’s drunk-dialing me, except she appears to be completely sober…
__
One final note: if you get a call in the middle of the night and there is silence on the other end, that is not Virginia Thomas. That is Clarence Thomas.
JPL
Ginni Thomas is either crazy or the call was made to further her agenda. Is it possible that she was going to give a speech about how she extended an olive branch to Anita Hill and never received an answer?
Scuffletuffle
I wish there was a way I could justify demanding that Thomas step down from SCOTUS based on this–IOW, I wish I was a Republican right now.
BDeevDad
Anita Hill’s response should have been those two little words.
bago
Thistlewaite? Not to be all classist and junk, but this IS a Quinn joint.
BR
Somehow I think if the senate was 52% female during Thomas’s confirmation rather than, what, 18%?, this would have been a bigger issue. Hell, the laws would be different if women were elected in proportional numbers.
MattF
I agree with Dahlia/Depressive– wingers live in an alternate reality, Thomas’ phone call is classic cognitive dissonance behavior. What matters is approval from people who hold your beliefs, and you win approval from the group of believers when you clap louder and get your co-believers to clap with you.
Princess
Thank you, Ginny Thomas, for reminding a whole generation now of voting age who were young or not yet born at the time, of what a creep your husband is.
eemom
Sooner or later, it will be revealed that Mrs. Thomas is a drunk, a drug addict, or suffering from premature dementia or some other DSM-IV classifiable illness and was perhaps off her meds…….and all this multilayered, multifaceted soul-searching for the answer to the eternal mystery of why batshit crazy people do batshit crazy things will cease.
Maybe not in our lifetimes…….but someday.
burnspbesq
It seems odd that so few people talking about this have seen fit to mention the agency where Thomas’ alleged sexual harassment of Hill occured.
It was [drumroll, please] the EEOC. That’s right, the head of the agency responsible for enforcing Federal laws that prohibit sexual harassment apparently engaged in the very conduct he swore an oath to eliminate. And for his punishment, he gets life tenure in an institution where he can do unlimited harm.
::headdesk::
BR
OT: Google does no evil:
Google pays 2.4% tax rate using various tax loopholes
Scott
Is it possible that Virginia Thomas is just meaner’n spit? She is a teabagger, after all.
Maybe she just hadn’t caused her daily quota of misery yet…
MeDrewNotYou
IIRC, Thomas called Hill early on a Saturday morning. To me, that, plus the call itself, is a drunk dial. A few problems, though.
First, while it’s probably floating out there somewhere, where’d she get the number? Either she looked it up, with more effort than most drunk dialings have, or Thomas just has it sitting around the Rolodex. Obviously, keeping the number handy of a woman who was sexually harassed by your husband is weird, even more so when it occurred decades ago.
Second, does Virginia Thomas have a reputation for drinking? Lots of jokes in the media about this incident, but are they referring to a rumor inside the Village? If she is a drunk, why now and not years ago?
Finally, other than the fund raising stuff, I haven’t heard anything about her and Clarence since his autobiography. Any Villager rumors about him screwing around again, or women about to come forward?
When you’re the wife of a Washington big-wig, even one as scuzzy as Thomas, calls out of the blue are really bizarre. It would be irresponsible not to speculate!
The Republic of Stupidity
@eemom:
Indeed… indeed…
And but too also, for the time being… she will remain…
***drumroll…***
Yet ANOTHER conservative victim of godless liberalism…
***rimshot…***
Thank yew Thank yeeeeeew verrrrrrry much…
You’ve been a wunnnnnnerful audience…
Cat Lady
Somewhere buried in my memory banks there was a news story back in the early 90’s about a chief executive of some large company – a cosmetics company, I think, who finally was fired for sexual harassment, but only after 20+ women came forward. I remember seeing them all on a panel being interviewed by a reporter in an ABC 20/20 style fashion, and the first one who brought the case against him, and lost, made the comment that it took 23 women’s voices to equal one man’s.
Nothing has changed. It would be nice if a high profile white man would affirm that Justice LongDong is a lying creep, because you just know that his proclivities are common knowledge by now. I’ll take my pony with hot pink sparkles, too. kthx.
shortstop
@burnspbesq: They’re not just not mentioning it now. They didn’t mention it at the time. I remember being stunned that all the flush-faced pundits creaming themselves over this titillating story–and even the cooler heads who were correctly assessing the seriousness of what Thomas had almost certainly done–all seemed to ignore the supreme (sorry) irony of where Thomas was working when he pulled this crap. That would have been my lede for sure.
JGabriel
JPL:
And the usual question rears its head: Why not both?
.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
If Ginni is the cool, calculating winger communicator Lithwick states she is, then she miscalculated regarding how this would remind a new generation of younger voters what happened 19 years ago and how we ended up with arguably one of the worst justices appointed in the 20th century *and* how sexual harassment wasn’t a barrier to such an appointment.
I do agree that the other part of her probable calculus was one of sending a message to folks the Tea Party would like to see shot: we don’t forget and we’ll hound you until the day you die.
Assholes all. I truely hope that Thomas enters his senior years with a bitterness that will continue to gnaw at his soul until the day he dies.
And Chuck Fucking Robb for abandoning all his Democratic principles when he helped foist that fucktard off on us.
Ordinary Joe
I wonder what David Brock has to say about all of this.
shortstop
Thirty seconds of googling will get you the office phone number of any faculty member at any university.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
These people condemning Hill aren’t crazy – they’re ignorant. They’re the same people who believe rape myths and ask what a girl was wearing when she was assaulted.
When everyone is a Galtian god who is completely in control of their destiny and success, everything that happens to them has to partially be their fault.
I wonder what the correlation between people who really like “the secret” and Ayn Rand is.
SpotWeld
Maybe it’s some sort of bizzaro version of the 12 steps. Instead of apologizing for wrongs done against others while you were an alcoholic maybe Virginia Thomas is … looking to give others a change to apologize for wrongs done to her?
Ross Hershberger
We’ll never know what the hell Ginny Thomas was thinking but I don’t think she’s done herself any favors with this stunt. There’s a lot of WTF? going on and that’s never a good thing for a public figure trying to recruit support and raise money.
curious
@JPL: interesting theory. on a related note, did she not leave her phone number or has it just been edited out of the transcripts? if this was a sincere effort to “reach out,” to not leave a return number seems odd.
cleek
@BR:
if they did otherwise, shareholders would flay them alive. taking advantage of all legal methods to maximize profit is a fundamental requirement of a public corporation.
Peter
I think she (Thomas) is trying to control the narrative. She has managed to change the headlines from “Ginny Thomas’ Activism Casts Doubt on Husband’s Judicial Integrity” to “Ginny Thomas Extends Olive Branch to Anita Hill”. The real story is buried in paragraph 16. Her actions, which constitute a real conflict of interest for Thomas, together with Thomas’ own attendance at right-wing political planning sessions (like the Koch Brothers meetings), suddenly take a back seat to the clownish phone message.
And the media play right along.
Sigh.
John PM
@burnspbesq: #9
I think the fact that Thomas was the head of the EEOC at the time of his harassment of Hill got a lot of play during his confirmation hearing. However, I feel that Thomas was not actually harrassing these women, but was just role playing so that they would know exactly what to look for in cases they were handling.
Bill E Pilgrim
Anita Hill learns that you can never escape the Long Dong of Justice.
Punchy
tl;dr — had no idea the GOP would be cool with the jungle-fever motif of Thomas’ marriage. Figgy’d that would be wingtard heresey.
Dennis SGMM
Ginni Thomas threw a stink bomb to distract attention from the fact that her husband failed to recuse himself from a case whose outcome could financially benefit Ginni Thomas.
MeDrewNotYou
@shortstop: In my embarrassing* drinking escapades, if I didn’t have the phone number either on my phone or sitting right next to me, I couldn’t be bothered to look it up. However, I am a pretty lazy drunk, and I’ve never had urge to call someone that I share the… connection that Mrs. Thomas and Prof. Hill share.
*The worst I’ve done is call a friend’s number, thought the voice on the other side was him, and told him how hot his sister was. Who would’ve thought Steve’s dad sounded just like him and wouldn’t want to hear about his daughter’s nice ass? ;)
kay
I think that’s baloney. I think Tea Party lobbyists follow the media obsessively.
I bet Ginni Thomas could tell me what the Senate polls look like today.
She’s not deranged, she’s not hurt, she’s not angry.
She’s a paid political hack, and she has a job to do. The fact that she’s a raving ideologue is just the necessary qualification for the job.
Linda Featheringill
I view it as a game, a sick game.
What we now call “sexual harassment” renders the recipient powerless and humiliated. Many women are powerless in many areas of their lives and can live with it, more or less, but humiliation hurts.
In Anita Hill’s case, she had to undergo humiliation again at the hands of congress and the press at that time of the hearings. I suspect the humiliation hurt at that time, too.
What Ginny Thomas has done now is reach out and remind Anita Hill that the humiliation took place and Mrs. Thomas has the power to repeat that humiliation and the power to make that humiliation public [again].
It reminds me of the guys who gang raped a young woman, took a video of it, and then threatened to make that video public. Humiliation is the name of the game.
I don’t care what Ginny Thomas has going for her in the way of excuses. She acted like a mean, vicious bitch.
By their fruit you shall know them.
KCinDC
Okay, but Lithwick shouldn’t have put in that bit about the polygraph tests. We need to stop giving that snake oil any weight at all. Polygraphs should be treated the way astrology is (well, actually both should be treated much more harshly than they are).
Anton Sirius
@eemom:
Why are you trying to absolve her of responsibility for her actions?
She runs a Birch Tea advocacy group, and by all accounts I’ve seen she runs it well. There’s no reason to think she was in some way incapacitated when she called Hill.
rumpole
It’s distraction. Instead of talking about the fact that a supreme court justice’s wife is influence peddling, everyone’s talking about the fact that Anita told the truth. The fact that she did doesn’t matter–Thomas got concerned and he ain’t leaving unless Vivid Video needs a new general counsel. (Couldn’t resist).
Just Some Fuckhead
Jeez, enough already. Ginny Thomas was prolly just drunk.
HRA
@Peter:
This
Sexual harassment in the workplace is very difficult to stop. I recently went through it for over a year. The perp did not work with me. He worked in a different dept. on campus. I was told to call his supervisor. On further inquiry to someone who knew the supervisor, I was told to forget it. I would not be believed. On the day I had finally decided to go see campus police and file a complaint, the perp decided to wait for me right at the curb where on that day my husband was dropping me off. He was silently followed by my husband and when he stopped my husband just stared at him. It worked.
No one should ever have to ever go through this trauma and no one should ever have it revisited upon them.
Punchy
@MeDrewNotYou: This is hilarious.
tomvox1
I hope this weird occurrence also dredges up more of the historical record and serves as a refresher course for the actions of the supporting players in this sordid drama. Like, say, Asshole for the Ages & Catfood Commission participant Alan Simpson.
Anya
I must say that I did not know much about the Anita Hill episode and how ugly it was. But this episode sparked my interest (mainly because I can now fully understand why my mom and dad hate Thomas). Just watching some of the asshole senators made me sick. Anyone who threatens to sit out an election should be forced to watch the Thomas confirmation hearings. Maybe they could then explain to us how elections don’t matter and how both parties are the same.
ET
What Thomas’s wife is doing seems a weird perversion of what addicts do when they seek forgiveness (step 5? of the 12 step program?) from those their addiction hurt.
She does seem a bit weird though. Obviously she feels Anita Hill was lying, hence why she wanted Hill to apologize. Obviously she feels it is self evident to EVERYONE including Hill that Hill was lying. But she it is very obvious that she is completely oblivious to the fact that Hill and others could possibly believe Hill was truthful.
I just don’t understand why this is coming up now? How many years ago was this? Seriously, her husband is possibly pissed at his wife for bring this up – AGAIN. I know people can obsess on stuff that happened to them are those they are close to, but something like this just opens a can of worms that she seem tone deaf to.
FlipYrWhig
If she was drunk, she was drunk on the euphoria of the idea that her ass-backwards ideological views might win a few elections. To me that’s the relevant timing. It’s a victory dance.
handsmile
I believe JPL may be on to something in his/her conjecture (#1) above. The motive for Ginni Thomas’ call remains baffling, and her sudden cancellation of a scheduled interview yesterday with NPR suggests she did not wish to entertain questions about it.
Among the astute comments on previous Balloon Juice threads on this subject was the salient point that by preserving the phone message and contacting Brandeis campus security, Professor Hill created an official record of the incident. Thus, neither party could deny that the call occurred should the matter become public.
Without such a record, it seems plausible to me that Mrs. Thomas could claim: 1) she had never placed a call, implying another falsehood by Anita Hill; or 2) she had charitably “reached out” in Christian reconciliation but Hill had never responded, implying Hill’s implacable bitterness.
My own practice, as is true I suspect for many of us, is simply to delete crank telephone or email messages. Could it be that Mrs. Thomas had anticipated that Professor Hill would do the same?
What prompted Ginni Thomas to place this call at 7:30 on a Saturday morning may never be explained. As Bob Somersby counsels, mind-reading is a futile exercise and I am unwilling to ascribe substance abuse or psychological impairment. Dahlia Lithwick’s final paragraph to her Slate article seems about right:
“Why did Ginni Thomas make her strange call to Anita Hill? She may never explain it fully. But those of us in the media who are pondering what she may have been trying to tell us should probably stop. This episode had nothing to do with us, and nothing to do with Hill, either. We are not in the Thomases’ bubble, and we never will be.”
But, of course, as the Tea Party knows so well, the Village just can’t resist whatever shiny new bauble is placed in the sandbox. The little darlings are so easily distracted.
MeDrewNotYou
@Punchy: It really drilled in the habit of asking the person’s name after they answer. I also learned that most people don’t really want to hear that their daughter or sister is hot. People are weird like that.
zmulls
Quick comment on how she got Hill’s number. It was to Hill’s office, which is public (faculty directories, and all that). So nothing sinister there.
I suspect Anita Hill has gotten a lot of crank calls over the years, and a handful of them threatening. This is probably not the first call she’s referred to campus security. (and maybe not even the first one referred to the FBI). That’s just speculation on my part.
I think the timing of the call — on the same morning the NY Times prints a huge front-page story calling Thomas’ fundraising and activism into question — is pertinent.
I think the proximity of the election, and the emboldenment of Thomas in feeling close to a victory over the traitors who are destroying the county, is pertinent.
Another speculation is that there is another long-held shoe about to drop in a memoir or book, and in a twisted way, Thomas may have been trying to lock this incident down before anything else came out.
All the above is speculation, with prejudice.
angellight
The Thomas’ profess to be Christians and yet the Christian religion asks that we Forgive those who transgress against us, and to do good to those who despise us or hurt us. I do not see this Christian attitude in the actions of Mrs. Thomas. Is she a Christian or not? And if she is, why does she not act like one? Where is her humility? And shouldn’t matter more what God thinks than what the world thinks or Anita Hill. There is much hypocrisy going on here. It seems they are Christians in name only and not in deeds. And yet sadly, many GOP are Christians in name only, not all, just most!
Tom Q
@BR: Just to show you how bad things were during the Thomas confirmation hearings — that number you guessed as the percentage of female Senators (18%) was wild fantasy in 1991. I believe at that point there were only TWO female Senators: Dem Mikulski and Rep. Kassebaum. There were four (Boxer, Feinstein, Murray and Moseley-Braun) elected the following year, partly in response to the spectacle.
Poopyman
@Ross Hershberger:
Sarah Palin.
Granted, she may be the exception that proves the rule, but I think on the wingnut side the WTF-ery is a feature, not a bug.
Ross Hershberger
@Poopyman:
There I go thinking the Right is sane and logical. I’ll never learn.
Poopyman
She called Hill’s office at 7:30 on a Saturday morning to guarantee that the call would be recorded. It also minimizes any possibility of having to directly interact with Professor Hill.
cleek
i prefer the “emboldened by her teabagger activism”, she overestimated her power” explanation. it fits with the overall teabagger mentality (“I iz powrful revlooshunareey! my opinnyun matter! screeeeeech!”)
Ross Hershberger
As stated elsewhere: a call at 0730 on Saturday isn’t to start a conversation. It’s to leave a horse’s head in the bed. If this was two men the recipient of the call would regard it as a challenge and a threat.
Ella in New Mexico
@Peter:
Nailed. It.
The bitch is not crazy, or drunk, or menopausal: she’s doing the equivalent of becoming the big, glowey Wizard of Oz face to distract everyone from the real story behind the curtain, over there…
Heck, she probably even believes Anita Hill’s story by now–you think his weird sexual proclivities never came out in their own relationship?
Please. This was her last-ditch attempt before the Feds invade their lives to maintain that McClean, Virginia high society lifestyle and collect some dough for her Swiftboat Campaign in the process.
Allan
I know this story is dribbling out, and that the WaPo keeps intentionally burying the lede in every story that they write about this incident, but they stumbled across the fact that Lillian McEwen, who dated Thomas in the 70s and 80s, having held her tongue all these years, recently retired and is currently writing her memoirs.
There’s the answer to “Why now?”
There’s another woman coming forward telling the truth about Clarence, and so Ginni needs to pre-but her by getting the RW media to re-slander Anita Hill to vaccinate the public from McEwen’s revelations.
kay
@Allan:
It’s so clumsy and ham-handed, though. No average person reading that transcript would ever take that message as well-intended.
The average people listening to it (the security people) thought it was threatening and creepy.
And it is.
I hope she’s training the multitudes of young conservative hit men coming up. She’s not even very good at this.
Original Lee
@Dennis SGMM: Exactly. With the added benefit of reminding older voters about the whole Anita Hill mess (bonus points for racism and misogyny with a side of revenge).
Allan
@kay:
But this message wasn’t intended to mobilize “average persons.”
It’s Teatard Christianist dog-whistling.
You might as well have said, “No SANE person…”
Martin
@HRA: Depends a LOT on the state. In California, it’s much easy to stop it than in most other states – the laws are very much on the side of the victims.
In California, supervisors can be held liable for the behavior of their subordinates if it’s shown that they knew about the behavior and didn’t take action. If you call their boss and complain, and it doesn’t stop, then you have a complaint against the boss, and you file it with that person’s boss. Any halfway responsible employer will shut it down FAST, because that lawsuit will grow very large, very quickly.
And the laws cover anything that constitute ‘hostile workplace’. It’s very broad and covers all classes.
KevinNYC
Thanks Allan, for saving me having to look that up.
morzer
Isn’t it time for Doug Mataconis to show up and have a major sad because he doesn’t believe Anita Hill, despite the fact that the evidence is massively on her side – and always has been?
Seriously, if Clarence Thomas had an iota of decency he would at least put out a statement making clear that The Gin Princess Thomas had acted on her own initiative and he had nothing to do with this sordid escapade.
PurpleGirl
@Ross Hershberger: Given that Professor Hill probably continues to get crank calls and mail, she probably hoped it was a prank but was taking no chances that it wasn’t possible harassment.
Note that Road Runner had a poll regarding people believing Professor Hill’s testimony 19 years ago. Not a poll to find out how people saw Mrs. Thomas’ actions but how many NOW believe that Professor Hill told the truth 19 years ago. Mrs. Thomas must really want to take the spotlight off her own political activities, which I believe should be a conflict of interest for him. As his attendance at political meetings should be.
PurpleGirl
(Sorry for a second post, but sometimes I’m not able to edit a previous post.)
ETA: I did not vote in the Road Runner poll and am annoyed with the idea of them doing it.
burnspbesq
@angellight:
“It seems they are Christians in name only and not in deeds.”
Ya think?
::faints::
dcdan
Should check out an obscure book ‘blinded by the right’ for more insight to this battle.
The guy who coined the phrase ‘a little nutty, and a little slutty’ (aimed at hill) admits that he just made it all up to win the argument. The book is a confession, over the right wing wars — from an old player.
I would add, ‘check it out’ of the library. Don’t buy it.
Aaron Baker
I don’t really find “why Ginni Thomas made that weird phone call” a terribly puzzling question. She evidently believes that Anita Hill lied, and this belief still pisses her off. I think she’s probably wrong; but, given what she does believe, why is her seeking an apology surprising?
Nor am I especially perturbed at her doing so twenty years later. If you believe a terrible injustice was done to you or a loved one, there’s nothing remarkable about resenting it twenty years later–or forty years, for that matter. Should you continue to fume over it? Probably not–but it’s not terribly high on my list of bad behavior.
So: Ginni Thomas–probably deluded–but that’s all.