October 2, 2007

Sauce For The Goose

Anita Hill takes to the pages of the New York Times to answer Justice Clarence Thomas' memoirs -- and becomes an inadvertent ironist. After waiting sixteen years to tell his side of the story, Hill accuses Thomas of throwing unsubstantiated allegations at her. Anyone who watched the Thomas confirmation process should fall into gales of laughter at this cri de coeur:

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.

Justice Thomas’s characterization of me is also hobbled by blatant inconsistencies. He claims, for instance, that I was a mediocre employee who had a job in the federal government only because he had “given it” to me. He ignores the reality: I was fully qualified to work in the government, having graduated from Yale Law School (his alma mater, which he calls one of the finest in the country), and passed the District of Columbia Bar exam, one of the toughest in the nation.

Well, let's see. I recall that it was Hill who went to the Judiciary Committee with a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears in 1991. The committee had noted the lack of substantiation and had dismissed her effort until someone leaked it to the press. Her colleagues testified that they had never witnessed any of the events or any other harrassing behavior from Thomas when they came before the committee. In fact, at the time, the other women who worked for Thomas testified to his professional mien in the office.

Hill then goes on to say this:

It’s worth noting, too, that Mr. Thomas hired me not once, but twice while he was in the Reagan administration — first at the Department of Education and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After two years of working directly for him, I left Washington and returned home to Oklahoma to begin my teaching career.

It's worth noting that Hill followed Thomas to the EEOC despite having purportedly been harrassed by Thomas at Education. Why did she do that, if Thomas made her workplace miserable? She could have stayed at the DoE when Thomas left and been rid of his supposedly creepy behavior. As she takes great pains to point out, she had plenty of other career opportunities without Thomas' assistance.

And why didn't Hill -- who takes great pains to review her CV in this essay -- ever file a complaint against Thomas at the time of the harrassment? She waited almost ten years to say anything, despite being a Yale grad who could and did make her own way in the world. She worked at the EEOC, after all, and would have had knowledge of how to address the kind of debilitating harrassment that Thomas supposedly directed at her. Yet she said nothing at all about Thomas' behavior until it became convenient for those Democrats looking to derail Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Coming forward after ten years does not build credibility. Hill, as a lawyer, should understand that evidentiary evaluation. Old, unsubstantiated allegations only have credibility among those who use them for political purposes. Contrast Hill's reception to that of Paula Jones and her allegations of indecent exposure and sexual harrassment against Bill Clinton. Unlike Hill, Jones made her complaint contemporaneously, and pursued legal action through the channels that Hill espouses in this column after the incident got publicized. All of the same people who lined up behind Hill against Thomas didn't just ignore Jones, but called her every name in the book, including "trailer trash". Hill, who thinks that she helped lead an evolution in how harrassment gets treated, somehow neglects to mention Jones as part of that evolution.

Now she wants to cry that Thomas has attacked her in his memoirs, and without what she sees as substantiation. Sixteen years still hasn't taught Hill much, apparently including the "sauce for the goose" proverb.

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Comments (56)

Posted by Micah | October 2, 2007 6:53 AM

Good post, Cap'n.
Because of Affirmative Action, there is doubt in my mind whether or not Hill knew enough about the laws to use them. Granted, she passed the DC bar, so she must of known SOMETHING. Her failure to do anything about it at the time is very strong evidence against her, and the fact she followed him to a second underling position (can I say that?) is a slam dunk against her. If there was a harrassing experience, I can't believe she would have taken the second job. Why would anyone follow an employer that is sexually abusive? Sorry, Charlie (or Anita)
It reminds me of some of those children that suddenly 'remember' sexual abuse under hypnosis, when later discoveries prove the abuse was impossible as detailed by the then-child.

Posted by mrlynn | October 2, 2007 6:56 AM

My impression at the time was that there had been some causual sexual banter in the office. The particularity of Anita Hill's stories was not likely invented. But the joking, in which she likely participated, was in no way harrassment. It only rose to that level when Miz Hill searched her memory for incidents that could be construed as damaging to Mr. Thomas's nomination.

Clarence Thomas is undoubtedly right when he says that "the elephant in the room was abortion." But of course the Left was also aghast that the space for the 'token black' on the court would be taken by a conservative. This is the kind of racist attitude that Justice Thomas now decries, and rightly so.

That he also maintains that there is no place in the Constitution for abortion is icing on the cake. Let's elect another President who will nominate a strict constructionist to replace Justice Stevens when he retires, and then watch the Court kick the elephant out of the room.

/Mr Lynn

Posted by AnonymousDrivel | October 2, 2007 7:09 AM

CE:

It's worth noting that Hill followed Thomas to the EEOC despite having purportedly been harrassed by Thomas at Education. Why did she do that, if Thomas made her workplace miserable? She could have stayed at the DoE when Thomas left and been rid of his supposedly creepy behavior. As she takes great pains to point out, she had plenty of other career opportunities without Thomas' assistance.

That right there is the biggest hair, er, fly in her ointment. That is just not credible.

Posted by Jeff | October 2, 2007 7:42 AM

Anita thinks it's still 1992. She has no idea how the mood of the country has changed with respect to the leftist media. Back then, it was possible to take her at face value, but recent revelations about the underbelly of the leftist hate-machine (the Dan Rather memo, journalist confabulation, fake photography, sock-puppeteering, etc.) make it impossible to take the girl seriously.

She needs a good PR advisor to tell her to recede quietly and gracefully back into obscurity.

Posted by Lowly Knave | October 2, 2007 7:55 AM

Let me get this straight. Anita Hill Claims: "that I [she] was a “combative left-winger” who was “touchy” and prone to overreacting to “slights.” is over the top. It is laughable that she doesn't recognize that by going to that bastion of unbiased reporting, The New York Times, she opens herself up to similar charges.

For the icing on the cake, she says: "It’s no longer my word against his." How does one interpret that? "Fake but accurate", or anyone that disagrees is a Anita Hill denier?

These people are so predictable.

Posted by quickjustice | October 2, 2007 8:05 AM

Both Scalia and Thomas understand well, and in different ways, that "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Yale Law School is an excellent school, but like many other law schools, it generates mediocre alumni. Witness Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose only claim to fame is being married to a famous, talented man! Were it not for Bill, she'd be exactly where Anita Hill is now.

And affirmative action in admissions is widely practiced in the Ivy League. That doesn't mean that Clarence Thomas was admitted based solely on his race (and his subsequent, distinguished career proves the contrary), but that's the downside of affirmative action. As long as it exists, it raises a red flag among employers and others.

Hill's campaign against Thomas was a classic "borking". Efforts at "borking" subsequent GOP nominees to the Supreme Court have continued. This effort failed, and Hill was relegated to a footnote in the dustbin of history. She permitted herself to be used as a tool by the left, and that's her legacy forever.

Posted by docjim505 | October 2, 2007 8:29 AM

Good grief, not her again! Are we going to have to go through this whole mess AGAIN??? I expect the partisans to line up just as they did back in '92 all over again: the filthy dems will drag out every slur, smear and innuendo about Mr. Justice Thomas (whom they've routinely slammed as stupid almost as often as they've slammed him as "archconservative"), throwing in the Florida recount for good measure. Conservatives will point out the discrepancies in Hill's story and point to the hatchet job that the dems on the Judiciary Committee did on Thomas, with charges of racism thrown in for good measure.

Normally, I relish a fight with the libs, but in this case I just wish we could let sleeping dogs lie. Or, to coin a phrase, just move on.

Posted by Alex Bensky | October 2, 2007 8:37 AM

As a sidelight, I found it fascinating that the left, which claims to be in favor of egalitarianism and the less fortunate in our society, fell over itself to support an Ivy-educated woman whose slightest allegation was considered unimpeachable truth. Paula Jones, an authentic member of the underprivileged class, was pilloried, trashed, and insulted.

I never was much of a leftist but this was about the time I stopped considering myself one at all, in part because of this sort of antic--we're on the side of the working people unless a working person's situation makes our ideology suspect.

Posted by TimPundit | October 2, 2007 8:37 AM

Good for Ms Hill. Clarence Thomas, frequently cited as the dumbest of our Justices, does not get to revisit this without opposing viewpoints.

He doesn't get to shill for a book in a vacuum. He wants to dredge all that up, fine, let him. And she gets to tell her side again, too.

Posted by Fox Noose | October 2, 2007 8:41 AM

What's predictable is how wingers will kowtow to anything with the republican rubber stamp on it. And I mean anything , no matter how ineffective, corrupt, or inept. Good for Hill for not letting skirt chaser Thomas think he can re-write history and get away with (like so many in the GOP). The man is obviously an angry right wing goon who had no business being confirmed in the first place. But no matter, right wing cheerleaders will still raise their pom-poms in the air even as the republican machine pulls to the shoulder, sputtering, low on fuel (very low), heading for the political junk heap.

Posted by Bennett | October 2, 2007 8:46 AM

I always kind of thought that Anita Hill was a woman scorned and sought her revenge in the most public way possible when she testified at the confirmation hearings. It's the only reason that's ever made sense to me, why years after the fact she decided to make her accusations public.

Is that horribly incorrect politically? Am I making light of the very serious issue of sexual harrassment in the workplace? Yes and No.

Anita Hill should not be a role model for any woman. She chose not to make a stand when it would have counted, when the supposed harrasment was taking place. To pop out of the woodwork years later when she showed up at the hearings was hardly a profile in courage. She came across as an opportunist and a woman with an axe to grind.

It's not harrassment if you don't complain about it when it's happening.

Posted by Jeff | October 2, 2007 8:58 AM

Lefties feign outrage as if they were seriously concerned about Justice Thomas as a person, his intelligence, or his ethics. But that's not what they hate.

They hate that he's a black conservative; it obliterates the leftist narrative that the only way for blacks to succeed is under the benevolent trusteeship of the democrat party.

Can you think of a single black conservative that leftists haven't personally and brutally attacked?

Neither can I.

We're on to you, lefties. You're transparent as hell.

Posted by syn | October 2, 2007 8:58 AM

Fox Noose

You've just re-affirmed the belief that no matter what, the Left will drive the narrative that anyone not conforming to it's message is automatically portrayed 'an angry right wing goon'.

I was one who, during the confirmation hearings, bought the narrative that Thomas was 'an angry black man who sexually harasses women and doesn't deserve to be on the Supreme Court'.

Then one September morning almost a decade later I was mugged by reality and nothing has since been the same. Today I hear what you say and think to myself 'fox noose' is someone who is dwelling in a world which doesn't exist yet is desperate to make it's illusions legitimate.

Posted by zdpl0a | October 2, 2007 8:59 AM

Wingers Kowtow?

I suppose you left missed the idiotic ramblings in the Senate yesterday regarding Rush Limbaugh!

Limbaugh may be a boob to some, but the Media Matters, MoveOn.org, Harry Reid, Tom Harkin, Hillary Cinton, Cindy Sheehan, Democrat Party of 2007-2008 are marching in perfect lock step. They are marching in lock step "against the facts" of what was really said on the Limbaugh Show and what ABC News reported in a feature story 2 days before....

Don't give us "kowtow" as a descriptor. Media Matters and the KOS Kids feed up this stuff to the left and the MSM every day. Chris Matthews and Keith Obermann don't even have to do their own show prep anymore.

A point from the left looses all credibility when they scream kowtow knowing full well that the left is an echo chamber of special interests, 527's and George Soros.

Posted by Clifton | October 2, 2007 9:10 AM

Poor Anita.
I thought then (92)and still do,
Hell have no fury like a woman scorned.
Cheers

Posted by unclesmrgol | October 2, 2007 9:17 AM

mrlynn,

As the target of an unfounded sexual harassment claim, I can speak from experience.

It is certainly possible for nothing to have happened, but for a claim that something happened to be lodged. The results of such a false claim is damage to the accused's reputation.

In my case, five weeks into the quarter I took over a beginning programming class for psychology majors from a professor who had shown educational incompetence. This point was past the drop date for the class, and I naively (with the bravado only a new teaching assistant can muster) promised the class that I would cover the entire curriculum in the remaining weeks of the class. That was not what many were expecting; in addition, these were psychology majors, not computer science majors, and programming was foreign to them.

One person figured out how to drop the class after the drop date; lodge a sexual discrimination charge against me. Three things happened as a result,
a) The entire class was interviewed, all but the accuser stated that I had behaved properly (the accuser claimed no other witnesses than the class).
b) The accuser got to drop the class.
c) I was not rehired for the following year.

Of course, there were other occurrances in the class:
a) The "teaching assistant's dream", sex for a grade, was offered by two women in the class,
b) I discovered a homework cheating incident by three attendees,
c) A math professor witnessed from the back of the room two of my students cheating on the final exam, and demanded to the dean that they be disciplined; I had failed to notice that they were cheating as I proctored the exam,
d) I misgraded one student's final exam, and when I took his case before the lead professor, the professor moved the curve to keep the student's grade a B rather than an A (the student won upon appeal to the dean, with my help).

But the reason they said they didn't renew was the possibility, even though no potential witness testified so, that the sexual harassment had occurred.

This may be "proof by example", but Thomas' case parallels mine in many particulars. Anita's defenders offered hearsay testimony as to her anguished demeanor outside the office, but no "smoking gun" showing improper behavior in the office; in fact, all office workers who were witnesses offered, to a person, the evaluation that Thomas behaved in a consistently professional and respectful manner.

The Captain's point of Anita following Thomas to a new job is the crux of the matter -- you don't follow a harasser who has made you upset from job to job. Not unless whatever you are secretly complaining about is something other than harassment.

Posted by bayam | October 2, 2007 9:20 AM

Isn't this a great distraction from the war in Iraq?

Yes, that classy woman Paula Jones is a model of how to pursue a lawsuit. She followed all the steps necessary to win a big windfall, which she would have gladly accepted at any time if not for Clinton's stupid decision not to settle.

It's not unusual for sexually harrassed women to go along with the program for years. If this blog were to interview an expert on rape and sexual harrassment, you'd learn than it's not atypical for the victim to take no action.

As to the credibility of Hill's claims, the problem was that Republicans adopted a political, virulent stance instead of even pretending to fairly consider her testimony. Given all the Craigs and Foleys coming out of the woodwork in recent years, isn't it more appropriate that accusations be taken more seriously? There were many warning signs that Foley was molesting male pages long before his departure from office.

If Republicans can't learn this lesson, the gender gap wil only reappear.

Posted by Dawn | October 2, 2007 9:22 AM

I was pretty young when this occured and living in my own personal bubble yet I can say with complete and clear honesty that I didn't ever believe her.

It may have been the tipping point that would eventually affirm my own politcal views. That and of course the disastrous Carter administration.

Posted by bayam | October 2, 2007 9:27 AM

Well, let's see. I recall that it was Hill who went to the Judiciary Committee with a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears in 1991.

How was she supposed to substantiate this kind of charge? Keep the Coke bottle with its genital hair for future DNA testing?

Victims of this kind of harrassment usually don't have any way to prove it, unless the perp is stupid enough to leave a voice or written message.

Posted by Christoph | October 2, 2007 9:31 AM

I hate this woman.

There is nothing that could happen to her, or be done to her, that would not be just.

She clearly lied about Thomas after following him to another workplace after this supposed abuse... but that's not why I hate her. The reason I do is the reason she lied: to derail his nomination so as to keep abortion legal.

She lied about a man's reputation so she could help her fellow leftist Dems retain their "right" to hire doctors to cut up, suction, and otherwise puncture (brains) their babies.

These people -- and Hill -- are evil.

Posted by MattHelm | October 2, 2007 9:37 AM

It almost seems to me, bayam, that you are saying that in sexual harassment cases there is no presumption of innocence for the accused. Surely, in the light of the Duke lacrosse case you cannot be saying that? Hill's accusations were unsupported and were made for one reason only, to tarnish the reputation of a Supreme Court nominee that those ideologically opposed to him did not want to see on the bench--how McCarthyite of the Left.

Posted by Jeff | October 2, 2007 9:39 AM

bayam, give it up. The democrats lost on Iraq.

As usual, your loons over-reached, this time with the disgraceful Petraeus ad. That was the turning point.

As a result, your democrat leaders are finally following our President. The senate today passed $150 billion for Iraq war funding.

If anyone is motivated to make the Iraq war disappear from the headlines, it's the once-great democrat party.

Posted by Fox Noose | October 2, 2007 9:46 AM

"The democrats lost on Iraq"
Posted by Jeff

Eh, whatever Jeff. The majority of the country has already figured out that it is the republicans who lost the war with their sloppy mismanagement from the get go.

"The man is obviously an angry right wing goon who had no business being confirmed in the first place."

On a tour to shill for his new book. There fixed that. How is this any different than what Limbaugh, Coulter, and O'Reilly do? Hint: There is no difference. Right wing BS is right wing BS, no matter the color of the hole.

Posted by Bennett | October 2, 2007 9:49 AM

"Victims of this kind of harrassment usually don't have any way to prove it, unless the perp is stupid enough to leave a voice or written message."

This is not the case. Employers will look to the immediacy of the accusations and investigate by talking to other employees, etc. And the whole point of complaining immediately is to stop the harrassment and to allow the employer to take prompt action to ensure a safe workplace for everyone.

This is not a criminal matter (typically) where there is a burden of proof to meet. It's more a matter of employers being in a position to see that each employee is allowed to do his/her job in a non-hostile environment. Sometimes this involves mediating any misunderstandings (I thought she wanted me to flirt), reassigning employees away from each other or, in more serious situations, taking disciplinary action against the offending employee.

Of course, none of this happened here because Anita Hill never complained at the time.

Posted by timpundit | October 2, 2007 9:50 AM

"I hate this woman.

There is nothing that could happen to her, or be done to her, that would not be just."

How much you wanna bet the author of that is proudly "Christian", too?

Who Would Jesus hate?

Posted by Christoph | October 2, 2007 9:53 AM

timpundit, I'm not a Christian.

I'm sure you're a disgusting person... probably for the same reason... and what I said for Anita Hill goes for you.

Posted by Nate | October 2, 2007 10:18 AM

You only need to have the watched the Alito hearings to know that there is no limit to how low the left will stoop, or how ridiculous they will act, to assassinate the character of a conservative Supreme Court nominee who might one day vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Remember Kennedy reading from magazines, trying to associate Alito with racism and anti-gay viewpoints? Remember his tirade at Specter insisting the committee go into executive session to issue a subpoena for records from some college organization, trying to dig up anything he could to smear Alito and derail his confirmation? Remember Specter slapping him down?

KENNEDY: Mr. Chairman, I'd appeal the ruling of the chair on this.
SPECTER: There has been no ruling of the chair, Senator Kennedy.
KENNEDY: Well what is the -- my request is that we go into the executive session for the sole purpose of voting on a subpoena for these records that are held over at the Library of Congress -- that purpose and that purpose only.
And if I'm going to be denied that, I'd want to give notice to the chair that you're going to hear it again and again and again and we're going to have votes of this committee again and again and again until we have a resolution.
I think it's...
SPECTER: Well, Senator Kennedy, I'm not concerned about your threats to have votes again, again and again. And I'm the chairman of this committee and I have heard your request and I will consider it.
And I'm not going to have you run this committee and decide when we're going to go into executive session.
We are in the middle of a round of hearings. This is the first time you have personally called it to my attention, and this is the first time that I have focused on it. And I will consider in due course.
Now we'll move to Senator Grassley for 20 minutes.

And then Specter slammed that Gavel hard.

I remember a press conferences later that same day where Specter said he made one phone call during the lunch break to the library of Congress who happily sent the records right over, and that they would have done so sooner had anyone just asked them to. And then he said something like "Well wasn't THAT a puff of smoke?" Hilarious.

That's all the Anita Hill allegations were. Just a big puff of smoke in the ongoing democrat effort to ensure women will always have the "right to choose" to pay an abortionist to kill their baby.

Its disgusting.

Posted by longwalker | October 2, 2007 10:38 AM

Anita Hill was promised by "a person or persons unknown" that no one would ever find out about her accusation. It was supposed to be a "drive-by shooting" of Justice Thomas. The Senators on the committee were shown the accusation in private and Clarence Thomas was not made aware of the name of the accuser nor of the content of the accusation.

When Justice Thomas refused to withdraw his name, the "person or persons unknown" violated the pledge of secrecy made to Anita Hill and leaked her name and accusation to the press.

Anita Hill made the original charge against Clarence Thomas in the belief that she would be protected in the "star-chamber proceeding.' Now her name was known and she was facing possible disbarment, loss of her teaching position and, in some circumstances, jail.

With the help of her friends and at least the staff of two Democratic Senators, she managed to muddy up the waters enough to avoid indictment but not enough to destroy Justice Thomas.

Posted by fouse, gary c | October 2, 2007 10:52 AM

We may never know the truth behind Hill's charges. I remember clearly though that she had virtually no corroboration. In contrast, Paula Jones had much more corroboration. She had the admission from the state trooper that on the request of Bill Clinton, he approached her and escorted her to Clinton's hotel room.
Yet, the Dems treated Hill like a heroine while calling Jones "trailer park trash".

Posted by Carol Herman | October 2, 2007 11:07 AM

Anita Hill's performance, at the Clarence Thomas hearings "took the cake." However, to this day, John Dean milked his own performance for more than it was worth.

Dean's claim to fame? He got to add the "final touch" to the media take-down of Nixon.

Anita Hill?

Well, someday, when people want to find out why affirmative action failed to produce leaders, you could start with her. She was a twit. Who had her own baggage, now. Since students who had to take courses with her, claimed she'd sometimes return their papers with her own pubic hairs, attached.

Seems, Hill actually has a pubic hair fetish.

But Clarence Thomas is vindicated by the fact that affirmative action was meant to demean Blacks. And, keep them in their places.

While it gave INCOMPETENTS, like Hill, better jobs than anything they actually qualified for!

Of course, if Hillary (ha ha), makes it into the White HOuse; and she nominates Anita Hill for a job that needs senate confirmation:

LET. THE. FIREWORKS. REALLY. BEGIN!

Code Pinko's wouldn't shine a candle to what happens when people feel cheated. Since Hillary "wins" only when her teams of lawyers can steal enough votes, in enough States, to ram her nomination through.

So far? We've got the Internet. And, Hillary's "enemies lists" grow by leaps and bounds. Someday, I hope that old cow chokes on her own bile.

The affirmative action crowd, if you haven't as yet figured this one out: LACKS LEADERS!

You can't lead anybody around if that's the skills your team is lacking.

Heck, if this were a band? Nobody would be stepping in the right direction. You'd be falling over, laughing, at what the screw-ups would look like! Heck, some of those band people are carrying heavy instruments. When they tumble, so do their tuba's.

Posted by Mike M. | October 2, 2007 11:33 AM

Wow, between the Clintons running for the Presidency and this sad, obliging tool of the Democrat party trying to desperately get another 15 minutes of fame, it really is like it's 1992 all over again. I'm almost expecting Michael Jordan to come out of retirement!

But unlike in '92, the whole country has access to the internet now and the left wing media can't control the entire narrative the way they used to be able to, so baseless smear jobs aren't nearly as easy to pull off as they used to be. And as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas proves, they often failed even back then.

Posted by NahnCee | October 2, 2007 11:33 AM

Normally, I relish a fight with the libs, but in this case I just wish we could let sleeping dogs lie.

If there's any chance that Kennedy could be revealed as the Wizard behind the curtain manipulating that confirmation proceeding, I say let's rehash it all over again.

Although I'm not sure at this point exactly what it would take for Kennedy to be forced to resign in disgrace since he's already killed someone, been involved in a rape, and demonstrably broken every single one of the ten commandments, except for possible toe-tapping in a public toilet.

Posted by ERNurse | October 2, 2007 11:42 AM

Well, Bayam and the other liberal brown-sky twits have certainly got their panties in a twist. They still haven't gotten over the fact that nobody bought their BS sixteen years ago. And when one considers that Anita Hill was stupid enough to be trotted out yet again, one can only conclude that the broad got what she deserved: nothing.

This "rape victim syndromes" talk by these liberal snorks is hooey. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Hill was stalking Thomas, and when he didn't give her what she wanted, she became determined to ruin him.

Typical liberal whore.

Posted by essucht | October 2, 2007 11:46 AM

Ah yes, Anita Hill.

I think it is pretty well established that Hill's claims to friends about being sexually harrassed originally occured before she started working for Thomas. One of her left wing extremist friends misremembered the details, and got the whole ball of wax rolling. The far left was looking for anything to go after Thomas with and they thought they had found the hammer to do so.

Amusingly though it was only after Metzenbaum and Totenberg (one of those unbiased MSM reporters) decided to leak Hill's claims to the public that they gained any traction.

And so we got to see the left claim that asking an underling for a date and telling dirty jokes in the office should invalidate a man for higher office. That the claims were almot certainly false wasn't even overly worrisome to the MSM -
it was the seriousness of the charges after all!

Then a few years later several women came forward to claim that Clinton had sexually harrassed them - not jokes but unwanted touching and exposed sexual organs. Then the left wing line became...so what? Of course powerful men are going to come on to women they work with! And Jones was lower class with big hair so who cares?

And when the claims of rape became public the MSM tried desperately to spike the story - again another working class southern woman so who cares? She probably enjoyed it anyway - Bill Clinton is such a stud!

And who can forget Clinton's initial response? He sent his lawyer out to claim that the president 20 years ago had not raped anyone. Of course a logical reading of the lawyer's statement was that he was denying Carter was a rapist...not Clinton.

One can certainly argue that the varied sexual charges against Clinton did not reach the level that the MSM should have given them much coverage, or at least one could have if not for the MSM's Thomas-Hill spectacle.

There has been perhaps no greater proof of the MSM's biases then a comparison of the Hill-Thomas fiasco and the later Clinton scandals.

Posted by mrlynn | October 2, 2007 12:00 PM

unclesmrgol, I did not mean to suggest that claims like Miz Hill's could not be invented, but that my impression at the time was that they had an origin in fact, probably just incidental office banter.

That Miz Hill filed no complaint at the time, followed Mr. Thomas to another job, and remained silent for 10 years, argues as well that there was no slight and no perceived 'harrassment' at the time.

But what a misadventure of a teaching assignment you describe!

/Mr Lynn

Posted by Robert Bell | October 2, 2007 12:25 PM

"And why didn't Hill -- who takes great pains to review her CV in this essay -- ever file a complaint against Thomas at the time of the harrassment? "

The problem with this line of reasoning is that as unclesmrgol so vividly explained, people can file complaints whether or not they are legitimate. Conversely evidence on whistleblowers suggests that they often face severe career reprisals for even legitimate complaints. Therefore, many legitimate complaints are not filed. Hence she didn't file because she feared reprisal (although she later filed to stop an alleged sexual harasser from getting onto the Supreme Court), or she didn't file because she didn't have a complaint.

Hence it seems that for the doubt you raise in this question to serve as evidence for the hypothesis that Justice Thomas was telling the turth, you would also have know whether he was telling the truth already.

You could, of course, argue about how likely frivilous complaints are versus non-filed legitimate complaints, assuming
a) that there are reliable measures of those (how they measure someone's true intent I don't know)
b) that those background probabilities of the relatively likelihood of one versus the other apply to this case in particular

Posted by Robert Bell | October 2, 2007 12:28 PM

Also, I would think that what Clinton did or didn't do with Paula Jones is not relevant for determining whether or not Ms Hill is telling the truth, though it *is* evidence of Democratic hypocrisy.

Posted by carol h | October 2, 2007 12:34 PM

Women can and have been fired for making sexaul harrassment complaints, and this was even more common 16 years ago. An ambitious woman had much to lose and little to gain for making such a complaint. Witness the Anunca Brown Sanders case agains the Knicks and Isiah Brown just decided in her favor. She complained about sexual harrassment and was fired for it. It was a chance Anita Hill was not willing to take.

Signed,

Carol H, not "Carol Herman", just to make sure I'm not accused of trying to decieve.

Posted by ss396 | October 2, 2007 12:47 PM

But what about the "inadvertent ironist" part of this? For me, the money quote for the entire article is Ms. Hill's statement "I was fully qualified to work in the government".

After a line like that, how on earth can we take the rest of this seriously?

Posted by hunter | October 2, 2007 12:58 PM

Hmmmm....
we all have problems with how to treat sexual harrassment. From the casual professor-undergrad to the older woman teacher going after the young boy, to the exec getting after an intern to co-workers trading double entendres, it is an ugly and lucrative business for today's lawyers and endless fodder for political types. And, needless to say, for our parasitic media.

Posted by jr565 | October 2, 2007 1:21 PM

bayam wrote:
Given all the Craigs and Foleys coming out of the woodwork in recent years, isn't it more appropriate that accusations be taken more seriously? There were many warning signs that Foley was molesting male pages long before his departure from office.

If Republicans can't learn this lesson, the gender gap wil only reappear.
All the Craig's and Foleys? THere was just Craig and Foley. And hate to disabuse you of the notion, but Foley didn't actually molest any pages. The charge appears to be he waited till they left the page program before attempting to have relationships with them and by then they were of age. Not to excuse the behavior, and he was still forced to resign, but only pointing out that your assertion is incorrect. Compare that with say Gary Studds who was not forced to resign, but censured, turned his back on those censuring him (after having an actual affair with a page who I believe was underage at the time) then went on to serve 3 more terms and was then rewarded with a cushy post by clinton for his service in the senate.And Craig had no sex whatsoever, with either an underage page or an of age gay guy.

And what do Craig and Foley have to do with a gender gap? Absolutely nothing. I think the example there you're looking for is Clinton and his yanking down his trousers in front of Paula, and his bj from Monica and his rape (?) of Broderick. Those may or may not have something to do with a gender gap but Foley and Craig do not.

Posted by doubled | October 2, 2007 2:24 PM

Jeff asks: Can you think of a single black conservative that leftists haven't personally and brutally attacked?

Also the corollary: can you think of a single black liberal that leftist's have personally and brutally attacked? A certain hymie-town reverend comes to mind, also the reverend of shit-covered false accusations comes to mind.

To further the thought, how about the President who exhibited well known sleazy behavior to an UNDERLING, no problem. But a republican canadate for Senate from Illinois was buried with brutal attacks for just wanting to have sex with his WIFE.

Posted by bayam | October 2, 2007 3:30 PM

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Hill was stalking Thomas, and when he didn't give her what she wanted, she became determined to ruin him.

That's an interesting point and one reason that I found Hill believable- an attractive woman making a claim against a very less attractive man is plausible to me. But it's pretty stupid to suggest that a goon like Thomas was being stalked by someone who's out of his league.

If you want to attack Hill without sounding hypocitical, you'd better come up with a substantiated flaw in her character or past.

Foley didn't actually molest any pages.... And Craig had no sex whatsoever

Right, both are real standup guys and since neither was caught acting like a pervert, you can safely assume nothing ever happened.

The other Carol H. has it right about where sexual harassment accusations took you 15 years ago... not sure what Bennet is smoking when he starts talking about 'coporate procedures'.

Posted by Del Dolemonte | October 2, 2007 3:35 PM

essucht said:

"There has been perhaps no greater proof of the MSM's biases then a comparison of the Hill-Thomas fiasco and the later Clinton scandals"

Not just the MSM, but also people like NOW...

Posted by viking01 | October 2, 2007 4:19 PM

Putting the predictable Lefty tantrums spewed earlier aside... the question to ask is what has Anita Hill done with her relationships or lack of them since? Has she succeeded in finding someone willing to put up with her egotistical nonsense or is she still flying solo and blaming others for it? Is she repeating the pattern of moving about to follow current or previous employers? Or has she followed the typical trend of burned out Leftists and become a hack college (sic) perfesser?

Clarence Thomas was married at the time Anita Hill became a disposable pawn / minstrel of the lunatic Left yet Justice Thomas remains happily married all the while. What about Anita Hill? Is she still playing the same vanity game blaming other men for finding her unworthy of their time? That's the question about Anita Hill I'd like answered. Justice Thomas' wife's perspective on Anita Hill as the reappearing stalker of her husband would also be instructive.

Anita Hill was and remains an indicator of the corrupting influence of given or demanded preferential treatment. Those given a pass or a handout or a TV camera based upon a presumption of their victim status tend to use that as a crutch throughout all aspects of their lives. Like the typical Liberal her existence is comprised of seeking to blame others for her personal failures. I'm surprised she hasn't tried to blame Karl Rove or FEMA. Yet.

Posted by Bennett | October 2, 2007 4:40 PM

"The other Carol H. has it right about where sexual harassment accusations took you 15 years ago... not sure what Bennet is smoking when he starts talking about 'coporate procedures'."

15 years ago I was working in a corporation and that corporation had procedures to deal with issues of harrassment well before Clarence Thomas was nominated to the USC. It didn't take Anita Hill for companies to recognize hostile workplace concerns, as fashionable as that belief has now come.

"That's an interesting point and one reason that I found Hill believable- an attractive woman making a claim against a very less attractive man is plausible to me. But it's pretty stupid to suggest that a goon like Thomas was being stalked by someone who's out of his league."

It is almost unbelievable that someone would base the credibility of a witness claiming sexual harrassment on how attractive the commenter found the witness to be.

I guess this means we should never believe an ugly woman when she says she's been harrassed? And that a good looking man can never be a predator? Unbelievable.

Posted by Micah | October 2, 2007 4:43 PM

Bayam and Carol H.,
you still haven't addressed the FACT that ms. Hill followed Thomas to another job, as his underling once again. That is the all the proof you should need about who is lying. You must be very, very, very dense not to get that.

Posted by essucht | October 2, 2007 5:17 PM

Bennett wrote:

I guess this means we should never believe an ugly woman when she says she's been harrassed? And that a good looking man can never be a predator? Unbelievable.

I do believe that this is what the Left ended up reverting to. One can only wonder at how Clinton's flunkies got away with dismissing his victims based in large measure on their social class and perceived looks.

Feminism died the day most leading feminists decided to stand by their man Bill.

Posted by suek | October 2, 2007 5:32 PM

>>But it's pretty stupid to suggest that a goon like Thomas was being stalked by someone who's out of his league.>>

Oh my stars. Un.be.lievable.

Posted by AnonymousDrivel | October 2, 2007 6:20 PM

RE: bayam (October 2, 2007 3:30 PM)

"a goon like Thomas"

Um, Credibility, meet Toilet. Toilet, Credibility. Actually, I think you two know each other quite well already. ;)


"Right, both are real standup guys and since neither was caught acting like a pervert, you can safely assume nothing ever happened."

Is that the new legal standard? Innocent until assumed guilty? Is that the bar being lowered again? Unless and until either admits publicly that he committed a crime or is proven in court to have committed a crime, he is innocent of your assumptions no matter how seriously assumed. We can all make judgments in our own minds as to the likelihood of an event occurring even if we are grossly misinformed and ignorant of facts, but as it stands, they are innocent despite your A.Hill-ish smear.

Posted by patrick neid | October 2, 2007 9:07 PM

To all the Anita Hill supporters, Juanita Broaddrick must really be causing you heartburn.
Raped by Bill Clinton with a contemporaneous medical witness who refused to file a rape charge so her husband and family would not find out.

The story: In 1978, 35-year-old Juanita Broaddrick--a Clinton campaign worker--had already owned a nursing home for five years. Since her graduation from nursing school she had worked for several such facilities and decided she wanted to run one of her own. It was that home that Attorney General Clinton visited one day, on a campaign stop during his run for governor. He invited Juanita, then still married to her first husband, to visit campaign headquarters when she was in Little Rock. As it happened, she told him, she was planning to attend a seminar of the American College of Nursing Home Administrators the very next week and would do just that. On her arrival in Little Rock, she called campaign headquarters. Mrs. Broaddrick was surprised to be greeted by an aide who seemed to expect her call, and who directed her to call the attorney general at his apartment. They arranged to meet at the coffee shop of the Camelot Hotel, where the seminar was held--a noisy place, Mr. Clinton pointed out; they could have coffee in her room.

From Dateline:

Myers: "Did you have qualms at all about him coming to the room?"


Broaddrick: "I was a little bit uneasy. But, I felt, ah, a real friendship toward this man and I didn't really feel any, um any danger in him coming to my room. I sort of ushered us over to the coffee — I had coffee sitting on a little table over there by the window and it was a real pretty window view that looked down at the river. And he came around me and sort of put his arm over my shoulder to point to this little building and he said he was real interested if he became governor to restore that little building and then all of a sudden, he turned me around and started kissing me. And that was a real shock."

Myers: "What did you do?"

Broaddrick: "I first pushed him away and just told him 'No, please don't do that," and I forget, it's been 21 years, Lisa, and I forget exactly what he was saying. It seems like he was making statements that would relate to 'Did you not know why I was coming up here?' and I told him at the time, I said, 'I'm married, and I have other things going on in my life, and this is something that I'm not interested in.'"

Myers: "Had you, that morning, or any other time, given him any reason to believe you might be receptive?"

Broaddrick: "No. None. None whatsoever."

Myers: "Then what happens?"

Broaddrick: "Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip (she cries). Just a minute... He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. (crying) And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him 'No,' that I didn't want this to happen (crying) but he wouldn't listen to me."

Myers: "Did you resist, did you tell him to stop?"

Broaddrick: "Yes, I told him 'Please don't.' He was such a different person at that moment, he was just a vicious awful person."

Myers: "You said there was a point at which you stopped resisting?"

Broaddrick: "Yeah."

Myers: "Why?"

Broaddrick: "It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to 'Please stop.' And that's when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip."

Broaddrick also says the waist of her skirt and her pantyhose were torn.

Juanita Broaddrick: "When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door he says 'You better get some ice on that.' And he turned and went out the door."

Myers: "On your lip?"

Broaddrick: "Yeah."

Broaddrick estimates Clinton was in her room less than 30 minutes.

Myers: "Is there any way at all that Bill Clinton could have thought that this was consensual?"

Broaddrick: "No. Not with what I told him, and with how I tried to push him away. It was not consensual."

Myers: "You're saying that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted you, that he raped you."

Broaddrick: "Yes."

Myers: "And there is no doubt in your mind that that's what happened?"

Broaddrick: "No doubt whatsoever."


Her friend Norma Rogers, a nurse who had accompanied her on the trip, found her on the bed. She was, Ms. Rogers related in an interview, in a state of shock--lips swollen to double their size, mouth discolored from the biting, her pantyhose torn in the crotch. "She just stayed on the bed and kept repeating, 'I can't believe what happened.' " Ms. Rogers applied ice to Juanita's mouth, and they drove back home, stopping along the way for more ice.

For some time to come, Mrs. Broaddrick relates, she chastised herself for agreeing to coffee in a hotel room. "But who, for heaven's sake, would have imagined anything like this? This was the attorney general--and it just never entered my mind."

That's the man you want to send back to live in the White House.

Posted by j | October 2, 2007 10:38 PM

There's a reason Anita Hill is dean (I think) of a women's studies program - this department is the playing field for feminists who would have a hard time making it anywhere else. Here they can whine, moan and complain about men all they want; often at taxpayer expense; and never have to worry about making a real contribution to society.

She had a name, got tenure and is doing just fine.
Pathetic, disgusting.

Posted by Gregory | October 2, 2007 11:23 PM

Justice Thomas is a goon? Victims are victims because of their good looks? What are you going to tell us next, women in sexy outfits deserve to be raped? Sexual Harrassers are just like rapists (hmmm) it's about power, not sex. A sexual harrasser doesn't just do it once, to one woman. It is a pattern of behavior. Show me ONE other woman who was harrassed by Justice Thomas.

Posted by ERNurse | October 3, 2007 6:00 AM

Bayam wrote (rather lamely): If you want to attack Hill without sounding hypocitical, you'd better come up with a substantiated flaw in her character or past.

It's interesting how Bayam trots out the term substantiated.

As in, substantiated claims of sexual harrassment.

Bayam, if you want to attack Thomas' character, you'd better come up with something better than the unsubstantiated claims of a liberal hag like Anita Hill.

Bayam is just another limpwrist liberal she-male.

Posted by ERNurse | October 3, 2007 6:03 AM

And besides that, Bayam: Anita Hill us double-ought, three-bags Ugh-leeeeeeee. Just your type, eh?

Posted by bingo | October 3, 2007 11:59 PM

Hey everyone... no party is all good or all bad. I am disappointed at how many of you simply adhere, having found some "final straw" at some point, and never evaluate your positions again. The only way we're all going to come out on top is by *constantly* evaluating what's going on. THEY can be partisan, fine, but we - the voters - should stick to the issues and the future. That is our responsibility, ours alone.

Re Clarence Thomas' stupidity: I've read a lot of SCOTUS opinions. Justice Thomas is not stupid. I very much doubt there have been *any* stupid Justices on that bench. We may not always agree with them, but it's completely ridiculous to pronounce someone stupid when you haven't studied their logic carefully. It's even more ridiculous to say so if you have - law is not the place for "stupid."

(Yes, they have a good staff. But yes, they are very bright. And yes, sometimes they seem downright perverse. The last Scalia opinion I read was a masterpiece of sophistry. But they *always* have a good argument.)

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