Ginny Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, may be willing to forgive, but she doesn’t forget. A few weeks ago Mrs. Thomas called Anita Hill and left this message on her voicemail:
Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.
So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.
Good for her. Hill made accusations that her own actions showed were not credible (see below). While she owes the entire country an explanation for why she attempted to subvert the judicial nomination process for political reasons, Hill needs to provide a sincere apology to Justice Thomas. It may be nineteen years late, but there is no statute of limitations when you slander a man’s reputation.
For those who have forgotten why Hill’s testimony shouldn’t be considered credible, consider:
Anita Hill, a graduate of Yale Law school, claimed that Judge Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her while she worked as his assistant at the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC). Although she was a lawyer from a prestigious Ivy League school, Hill was apparently not aware of the proper ways to bring a sexual harassment complaint. (And, as everyone knows, the EEOC is the last place you’d find information on sexual harassment.)
So Hill did what any gutsy, spunky assertive women would do in her situation. She marched right in to Judge Thomas’ office and asked him to write her a letter of recommendation so she could get a teaching job at Oral Roberts University. Then she waited ten years and accused Thomas in a quiet, private forum called the U.S. Senate.
Only Hill and Thomas know with absolute certainty whether her accusations are true. But Ms. Hill’s actions certainly undermine her credibility and show that she isn’t a woman of integrity.
October 20th, 2010 | 9:22 am
In light of what transpired in the years following the Thomas hearings, i.e., Bill Clinton’s dalliance with a 22 year old intern, Hill’s accusations that Thomas told dirty jokes around her seems positively benign. Remember how we were told that men in positions of power who use that power to tell off color jokes was a form of harrassment? Then we were told, a mere six years later, that a President having sexual relations with an intern was a private matter between consenting adults….
October 20th, 2010 | 10:04 am
How does asking the boss for a recommendation show that the boss hasn’t mistreated you? And why is it hard to believe that Hill wouldn’t choose to keep silent about the mistreatment while she worked for Thomas? Perhaps she was able to ignore it and not let it bother her. Perhaps she feared for her job if no demonstrative proof could be found to validate her harassment complaint. Perhaps she felt she’d be a pariah even if the complaint was validated. Perhaps she didn’t want to gain a reputation as an “uppity” black female.
I’m not taking her side, just asking the questions.
October 20th, 2010 | 10:07 am
“While she owes the entire country an explanation for why she attempted to subvert the judicial nomination process for political reasons…”
Yes, she does owe us an explanation, even though we know her reasoning without her providing an explanation: She, along with many on the political left–including the radical feminist lobby like NOW–couldn’t bear to see a conservative African American ascend to a lifetime appointed seat on the Supreme Court. Anyone who says that it was about anything else is deeply deluded.
October 20th, 2010 | 11:01 am
Joe, I think your explanation of why you doubt her isn’t compelling. Working at the EEOC, Hill would know exactly how difficult it is to make a charge of sexual harassment stick, especially without a detailed paper trail. In the meantime, it might be impossible to keep her job. If she was harassed and stayed quiet, she made the same choice most women make when they realize the benefit from speaking up is outweighed by possible cost.
And are you really saying that, as a matter of principle, she shouldn’t have taken a recommendation if she were harassed?
October 20th, 2010 | 11:33 am
“So Hill did what any gutsy, spunky assertive women would do in her situation.”
So now you speak (facetiously) on behalf of all gutsy, spunky assertive women, Joe? That’s absurd. The Anita Hill case is credited with bringing the issue of sexual harassment into general public awareness for the first time, which means, among other things, that it was even less clear how to handle these matters in the 1980s than it is now. The term “sexual harassment” was evidently coined in the early 70s, and Hill graduate from Law School in 1980, yet you fault her for not being clear on bringing sexual harassment charges against her boss? I wonder if Yale Law School even had a sexual harassment policy in 1980. Armchair quarterbacking on sexual harassment accusations from the 1980s is particularly striking coming from a man in 2010.
While I don’t know what happened or didn’t happen between Thomas and Hill, I don’t find Hill’s testimony obviously incredible in light of her career development. He was her boss for a crucial phase of her legal career. Who else was she supposed to ask for a recommendation?
October 20th, 2010 | 11:38 am
Joe, How do you know that Anita Hill “attempted to subvert the judicial nomination process for political reasons”? Thanks!
October 20th, 2010 | 11:46 am
“Then she waited ten years and accused Thomas in a quiet, private forum called the U.S. Senate.”
This is also a distortion of the events. From the history that I recall and have read, Hill was interviewed by the FBI during their background research on Thomas, the details of which appear to have been leaked to Nina Totenberg, whose writing about the leaked testimony then lead to the Senate hearings, before which Hill was subpoenaed to testify.
October 20th, 2010 | 11:53 am
She waited seven years to reveal the fact that Thomas had acted like a boor around her. She continued to contact him long after he had no authority over her. But assuming the argument of those who say he “harrassed” her . . . what then of Bill Clinton? Why the silence on the part of NOW and other feminist organizations? I thought anytime a boss had sex in the office with a employee (especially a 22 year old intern) it was de facto evidence of harassment?
October 20th, 2010 | 12:10 pm
There was an interesting phenomenon described in the wake of the Thomas hearings. People who had listened to Hill’s testimony on the radio believed her. People who saw her testify on television thought she was lying. Years later, people who didn’t hear her testimony at all – except as sound bites – tend to believe her on the theory that just the fact that she made a public claim must mean there was some basis for her complaint. Me? I watched her testify on television.
October 20th, 2010 | 12:14 pm
I remember horrifying my liberal friends in graduate school during the Thomas hearings. They would ask me if I thought Thomas was guilty, expecting me, I guess, to deny that he was and prepared to skewer my argument. I just said, “I don’t give a d**n if he’s guilty or not. I want a reliable conservative on the supreme court. Whether he played grabass with a secretary (assistant, whatever) at some point simply doesn’t enter into it.” I still feel that way. I’m awfully glad Thomas is on the supreme court whether he was guilty or not.
October 20th, 2010 | 12:23 pm
The idea that Anita Hill ran to the Senate to block Clarence Thomas’ confirmation is a longtime conservative lie. Conservatives know – but lie about – the fact that Anita Hill was asked things pertaining to Clarence Thomas’ workplace conduct by the FBI while they were conducting their background check. Anyone who has been interviewed by the FBI as part of these checks know that A) you must answer, B) you must answer truthfully and fully, C) that what you say is confidential, and D) unless you make a serious accusation against someone – and what Thomas was accused of was not considered to be serious at the time, as the Thomas hearings were what made sexual harassment a legal and workplace issue, and being an EEOC employee and Yale law grad Hill knew this – 99.9999999999% of the time nothing comes of it; it just goes in a file somewhere. So, the idea that Hill believed that she could stop Clarence Thomas from getting on the Supreme Court by telling the FBI that he made comments that she found unprofessional and offensive is incredible, absolutely absurd. Especially since in the “good old days” before sexual harassment lawsuits, sensitivity training, political correctness etc. women were frequently subjected to appalling behavior by their male employers and coworkers: it was routine. So, the idea that women could file complaints, quit their jobs in a huff, or refuse to ask for letters of recommendation … it’s absurd. (And by the way, the fact that she left EEOC in order to work at the lowly regarded – and has since gone bankrupt – Oral Roberts University Law School is actually evidence that she was trying to get away from the guy. That isn’t exactly a “career move”, especially for a Yale law grad who worked at the EEOC, but a dead-end job with low pay, little prestige and no opportunity for advancement … like Princeton hires their law professors from ORU or something.)
And Anita Hill’s testimony to the FBI wouldn’t have gone anywhere: had the Senate Democrats not been grasping at straws looking for something, ANYTHING to block Thomas. That’s right, Hill did not go to the Senate Democrats or volunteer in any way. Instead, the Senate Democrats read Thomas’ statements to the FBI and asked her to testify. What did this woman crusading to stop Thomas and destroy his career (when actually Thomas would have simply remained on the D.C. appeals court, second only to the Supreme Court in the jurist profession, for the rest of his career) do? She refused. The Senate Democrats had to subpoena Anita Hill in order to get her to testify. She had to comply or else be jailed.
Now you are correct: no one but Thomas and Hill knows the truth. But it is asking a lot to think that Anita Hill needed the threat of going to federal prison in order to get her to tell lies under oath on Clarence Thomas (and thereby risk going to federal prison for perjury). Maybe you can explain to me the motivation or how it makes sense. I guess you can say that Hill had to adhere to the statements that she made to the FBI. The truth is that Hill could have recanted those statements and avoided having to testify (lie) to the U.S. Senate at any time with virtually no repercussions.
Unless your stance is that Anita Hill played the “reluctant witness” part as an act to make her testimony to the Senate more believable. If that’s your story, then go ahead and run with it. That still doesn’t change the fact that Virginia Thomas chose to leave a mocking message on the work voice mail of someone that she has had a very bitter public feud with for the past 20 years at 7:30 AM on a Saturday morning. (Claiming that her motivation was anything other than to mock Hill is absurd, as she knows that Hill could not apologize even if she wanted to, and she also knows that both she and Hill have no interest in pursuing a friendship or any sort of relationship). So “good for her” for leaving a mocking, provoking (yes, harassing) message on someone’s voice mail? Indeed …
October 20th, 2010 | 12:34 pm
You forgot to add that she followed him to another job. Strange thing to do if he was truly a sexually harrassing boor.
I have no proof, of course, but I vote for the “revenge of the woman scorned” scenario.
October 20th, 2010 | 1:42 pm
Ted Kennedy was determined to stop Thomas at all costs so he Borked him. (Kennedy couldn’t countenance a black conservative on the court, since, in Kennedy’s mind, blacks are all Democrats). Kennedy aides went digging for trash and found it, a series of stories about dirty jokes and boorish comments. And that was supposed to keep someone off the Supreme Court….. Thomas was right, it was a high tech lynching, particularly if you compare unsolicited off color jokes to leaving a girl at the bottom of a pond for 11 hours while you craft your alibi.
October 20th, 2010 | 1:45 pm
“Virginia Thomas chose to leave a mocking message on the work voice mail of someone that she has had a very bitter public feud with for the past 20 years at 7:30 AM on a Saturday morning.”
It’s also reported that Mrs. Thomas described her phone message as extending an “olive branch,” which, had Joe Carter not succumbed to the culture war temptation that this “news” story presented, he might have pointed out is a horrible abuse of language. Or does Carter actually think this is what making peace, or seeking reconciliation, looks like?
October 20th, 2010 | 1:59 pm
Look at how many women who knew Hill nonetheless testified vehemently on behalf of Thomas: http://justicethomas.blogspot.com/search/label/Anita%20Hill
October 20th, 2010 | 2:05 pm
I agree with the commenters above that asking for a recommendation in no way proves that she was lying. She probably wouldn’t have been able to get a job without it, and it’s not at all uncommon to be dependent on your abuser (ask Kathleen Willey).
That being said, my impression is that she did in fact follow him to a subsequent job (as mentioned above) and that there is a dearth of corroboration from others about anything like this sort of behavior, so I’m inclined to doubt her story. As we saw with Bill Clinton, men who behave like this don’t limit themselves to one and only one person.
October 20th, 2010 | 2:17 pm
“I agree with the commenters above that asking for a recommendation in no way proves that she was lying. ”
Not as an absolute fact, but most women who were being harassed would never want to ask their harassers for anything, both out of hatred and out of fear that if granted, the favor would be used against them. It’s not an absolute contradiction but in light of other factors, it further weakens her credibility.
October 20th, 2010 | 2:20 pm
“Olive branch” doesn’t seem like a very accurate characterization, but “mocking message” doesn’t seem to apply her Mrs. Thomas words very well, either. I suppose there is an assumption being made that the suggestion that Ms. Hill pray about the matter must be mockery? Some people actually do pray and recommend it to others, after all.
October 20th, 2010 | 2:32 pm
Ken How does asking the boss for a recommendation show that the boss hasn’t mistreated you?
As another commentor pointed out, Hill also followed Thomas from the Deparment of Education to the EEOC even though he supposedly harrassed her at the first job.
So we are led to believe that despite being harrassed repeatedly by Thomas, Hill was willing to follow him to another agency, ask him for a job recommendation, and then keep in touch with him over the following years. That doesn’t prove that her boss didn’t mistreat her. But it certainly appears to be peculiar behavior for someone who is being mistreated.
And why is it hard to believe that Hill wouldn’t choose to keep silent about the mistreatment while she worked for Thomas? Perhaps she was able to ignore it and not let it bother her.
If that is the case then it wasn’t sexual harrasment. The legal definition is that it occurs when such behavior “creates a hostile or offensive work environment.” If it bothered her enough to fit the definition (as she claimed in her testimony) then she should have mentioned it while she was working for hem.
Perhaps she feared for her job if no demonstrative proof could be found to validate her harassment complaint.
Let’s keep in mind that she worked for the very government agency which oversees workplace discrimination, including discrimination for bringing a charge of harassment against a boss. For Hill to claim that she would have suffered consquences for bringing up a claim of sexual harrassment is ludicrous.
Leah @ Unequally Yoked Working at the EEOC, Hill would know exactly how difficult it is to make a charge of sexual harassment stick, especially without a detailed paper trail. In the meantime, it might be impossible to keep her job. If she was harassed and stayed quiet, she made the same choice most women make when they realize the benefit from speaking up is outweighed by possible cost.
Nonsense. Anyone who worked for the governement during that period can tell you that an accusastion of sexual harrassement would hurt the accussed much more than that accusor. Besides, her subsequents actions prove that she clearly did not believe that Thomas had created a hostile and offensive work environment.
And are you really saying that, as a matter of principle, she shouldn’t have taken a recommendation if she were harassed?
Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. If you follow him to another job, ask him for a job recommendation, and then call him several times over the following years, it shows that you didn’t take the “harrasment” too seriously.
Charlie Collier The Anita Hill case is credited with bringing the issue of sexual harassment into general public awareness for the first time, which means, among other things, that it was even less clear how to handle these matters in the 1980s than it is now.
Good grief, Charlie, be serious. The relevant law had been in place since 1964. Are you really claiming that no one understood how to handle these matters over the previous 16 years?
I wonder if Yale Law School even had a sexual harassment policy in 1980.
I don’t know if Yale Law School did but the EEOC certainly did. We’re not talking about something that happened in the 1950s. We’re talking about 1980!
Dan Deeny How do you know that Anita Hill “attempted to subvert the judicial nomination process for political reasons”
I don’t know for a fact that she did. But that certainly seems to be the logical conclusion based on her actions.
Charlie Collier From the history that I recall and have read, Hill was interviewed by the FBI during their background research on Thomas, the details of which appear to have been leaked to Nina Totenberg, whose writing about the leaked testimony then lead to the Senate hearings, before which Hill was subpoenaed to testify.
Not exactly. Hill had talked to Senate staffers before being interviewed by the FBI. After the initial interview, she was investigated again—and her story changed. She then faxed a statement to the Senate committee. When she appeared before the committee, though, she made claims that had not been in any of her previous statements.
D) unless you make a serious accusation against someone – and what Thomas was accused of was not considered to be serious at the time, as the Thomas hearings were what made sexual harassment a legal and workplace issue, and being an EEOC employee and Yale law grad Hill knew this – 99.9999999999% of the time nothing comes of it; it just goes in a file somewhere.
During the FBI investigation, Hill never claimed that Thomas sexually harrassed her. That charge was only made at the hearing.
So, the idea that Hill believed that she could stop Clarence Thomas from getting on the Supreme Court by telling the FBI that he made comments that she found unprofessional and offensive is incredible, absolutely absurd.
Then why did she have so many private discusssions—including with Senate staffers—about the issue? Why didn’t she just tell the FBI her story and let it speak for itself?
… like Princeton hires their law professors from ORU or something.
Amazingly, she now has a job at Brandeis University. I wonder how many other ORU professors that school has hired.
October 20th, 2010 | 4:37 pm
“Good grief, Charlie, be serious. The relevant law had been in place since 1964. Are you really claiming that no one understood how to handle these matters over the previous 16 years?”
I’m sorry to cause you grief, Joe—well, not really—but I am serious. I’m not a lawyer, but from what I understand, while Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the basis for subsequent sexual harassment jurisprudence, it hardly has it all worked out in detail. Laws must be interpreted, and sexual harassment jurisprudence in light of Title VII is a case in point. The 1964 law itself bans discrimination on the basis of an “individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The Act was subsequently interpreted—as in, over the course of several decades—to prohibit what we now refer to as sexual harassment—a phrase nowhere to be found in the Act itself. The Supreme Court doesn’t appear to have endorsed the “hostile work environment” interpretation of the Act—the only one that might have applied to Hill’s situation—until 1986.
The idea that everything was clear as daylight in 1980 when Hill graduated from Yale Law School, because the law was established in 1964 and, by 1980, available for 16 years of study and digestion, is simply false and you ought to admit that. Moreover, who said anything about “no one” knowing how to handle these matters? I never claimed such a thing. You, however, presume that *everyone* did; hence your claim that Hill obviously and clearly discredited herself.
“I don’t know if Yale Law School did but the EEOC certainly did. We’re not talking about something that happened in the 1950s. We’re talking about 1980!”
According to this chronology of sexual harassment law (www.calstate.edu/hr/SHLaw.pdf), the EEOC first issued guidelines establishing sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination in . . . 1980.
October 20th, 2010 | 4:39 pm
Some mighty strong answers there, Joe.
October 20th, 2010 | 4:47 pm
Ken Some mighty strong answers there, Joe.
I know I’m being overly emotional about this issue, but I take integrity and reputation very, very seriously.
Also, I just don’t understand the defenses that people make in regards to Hill. Consider the best case scenario for her defense: Thomas did all of the things she said he did. That means he is a liar and a creep and deserving of our opprobrium.
But that still means that Hill was willing to turn a blind eye to sexual harassment when it furthered her career and only thought it was worth mentioning when it could destroy someone else’s career and reputation.
So either way she lacks integrity and should be considered a woman of low character.
October 20th, 2010 | 6:30 pm
Anita Hill is currently a professor of ‘social policy’ at Brandeis University, a position for which she is not minimally qualified by education or scholarly research. Prior to that she spent 10 years on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma Law School. Her preparation for that position consisted of an embarrassing year in private practice, a few years as a government lawyer, and a brief run teaching at an unaccredited law school. She had, at the time of her hiring, produced no legal scholarship. The woman is an academic patronage baby of an unusually pure sort, and she is not likely (if she lied in 1991) ever to admit it. She has been dining off it for too long.
October 20th, 2010 | 8:47 pm
Leah @ Unequally Yoked:
Anyone working at EEOC knows it’s actually quite easy and common to make harassment claims. There is simply no need for a ‘paper trail’. You must be thinking of some other type of legal claim. One’s own sense of “reasoned comfortableness” is the only factor considered. And the downside you imagine simply doesn’t exist, whether the claim is true or false. Life goes on as normal for the claimant, regardless.
Miss Hill knew that or was grotesquely incompetent. To have not made a claim until seven years later, and in the interim to have maintained at any level a long-distance business relationship speaks to either Miss Hill’s naivety or worldliness, or the earlier lack of Thomas’ offensive and/or boorish behavior. I, too, watched on TV and saw “tells” that convinced me of her untruthfulness.
Miss Hills political beliefs speak for themselves, and I’d say there are zero chances for the truth to ever be divulged. Besides, all Thomas has to do is become a progressive and all would be forgiven, anyway. He’s only “guilty” to liberal feminists because he’s conservative, instead of being “cool” like Clinton, et al.
October 20th, 2010 | 9:34 pm
Ken Some mighty strong answers there, Joe.
I know I’m being overly emotional about this issue, but I take integrity and reputation very, very seriously.
Just to be clear, that was a compliment on my part. By “strong” I meant “good.”
October 21st, 2010 | 9:58 am
So at the end of the day, Joe, your position boils down to this: even if she is a victim, we should still blame her. Nice.
October 21st, 2010 | 12:46 pm
At the end of the day, you have to go with presumptions. The operative presumption here is that a self-respecting person who considered herself mistreated–indeed abused–by a lecherous boss would not ask that boss for a professional recommendation. It is a presumption based on an idea of personal integrity. In this case, that doesn’t prove that Ms. Hill has been a liar all along, just that, in the absence of firm proof, no one should assume she isn’t. For saying something like this fifteen years ago, I got myself banned from social relations with a boyhood pal and his Harvard Law School-trained wife. Some people just don’t like the truth–which again is not that Justice Thomas is clearly innocent of wrongdoing but that there is no good reason to think he is guilty of sexual harrassment.
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