The Sufferings of Thomas

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Feb 14 16:36:33 PST 2001


[I'm not a Dowd fan usually, but every dog has her day]

New York Times

February 14, 2001

LIBERTIES

Black and White

By MAUREEN DOWD

W ASHINGTON There is nothing like stealing a presidential election

to put a little wind in a guy's sails.

After 10 years in the shadows, after a mute decade on the bench,

Clarence Thomas had a black-tie coming-out party last night.

The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank here,

honored Justice Thomas with an award as 1,600 guests munched on red

meat at the Washington Hilton.

It was the capital's new power grid: Lynne and Dick Cheney, Karl

Rove, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Dick Armey and a bevy of

veteran Clinton-bashers. Introducing Justice Thomas, Robert Bork

said that while he thought the majority five-justice opinion in

Bush v. Gore might be debatable, he deemed the "concurrent opinion"

of three justices, including Justice Thomas, to be on "very solid

ground."

The Garbo of the Supreme Court talked. And talked. And talked. And

what Justice Thomas said was pretty bellicose. Rejecting the

president's call for compromise and harmony, he said, "Today there

is much talk about moderation," but there is an "overemphasis on

civility."

"Civility cannot be a governing principle of citizenship or

leadership," he said, adding that "though the war in which we are

engaged is cultural, not civil," one should not let principles be

"cannibalized."

The hourlong speech was so self- pitying and self-aggrandizing that

it evoked comparison to Bill Clinton's defense for pardoning Marc

Rich, when he said that it was easy to say no and took courage to

say yes.

Yesterday was bracketed with celebrations of two men who had

history's most humiliating Senate hearings over tangles with female

subordinates and sex-harassment charges.

One of these Southerners is renowned for talking, one for not

talking. But both nurse bitterness at ideological critics and the

news media, and both crave respect.

As Bill Clinton went to Harlem seeking validation from a mostly

black crowd, Clarence Thomas went to the Hilton seeking validation

from a mostly white crowd.

Many of the whites who crowded around Clarence can't stand Bill.

And many of the blacks who crowded around Bill can't stand

Clarence.

Many blacks regard the sax-playing Elvis of politics, taking the A

train to Harlem to work amid the hair-braiding salons, creole and

soul food restaurants and jazz clubs, as one of their own. "He's

black, he's blue, he's just the best of all time," Chris Rock told

Larry King Monday. They see Bill as a victim of the white G.O.P.

establishment, even as they see Clarence as a pawn of it.

As Ebony magazine recently wrote of Justice Thomas: "Why does it

appear that he consistently votes for issues supported by racists

and archconservatives, and opposed by . . . almost all blacks?"

Bill and Hillary took up the cause of Anita Hill in '92. But W. is

going to make sure that the man his father defended through that

ugliness gets treated warmly. He said during his campaign that

Justices Thomas and Scalia were his favorites.

When John Ashcroft had barely been confirmed as attorney general,

he asked Justice Thomas to hurriedly swear him in. The two were

junior lawyers in the Missouri attorney general's office under John

Danforth, Justice Thomas's Senate sponsor and most loyal defender

during the "high-tech lynching."

W., still smarting from charges that Mr. Ashcroft has been

insensitive on race, plans to appoint a Thomas intimate, Larry

Thompson, as deputy attorney general.

Mr. Thompson, a black conservative pal of Justice Thomas, played a

particularly unsavory role during the Senate hearings as the member

of the Thomas defense team designated to bolster the ludicrous

notion that Ms. Hill may have suffered from a rare mental disorder

known as erotomania the "nutty and slutty" defense.

"Strange Justice," by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, reports that,

to rebut Ms. Hill's success taking a polygraph, Senator Alan

Simpson, a Bush buddy, read a statement into the record from Mr.

Thompson, identifying him only as a former U.S. attorney in

Atlanta, not as a member of the Thomas team. The statement asserted

"that if a person suffers from a delusional disorder, he or she may

pass a polygraph test."

As the justice emerges, the former president retreats looking for

yet one more redemption, this time not for the sin of lust but for

the sin of greed. It's showtime at the Apollo.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company



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