Next month here at James Madison University we are going to be going all out to celebrate the 250th anniversary of James Madison. As part of this celebration, we'll be having in as speakers, Clarence Thomas and Ralph Nader. Should be amusing if not downright bizarre. But, I won't see it as I'll be off giving a talk at the Atlanta Fed.... (on "Volatility as Social Flaring," available on my website, more creepy chaos theory stuff). Barkley Rosser rosserjb at jmu.edu http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb
-----Original Message----- From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 7:56 PM Subject: Re: The Sufferings of Thomas
>
>[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
>
>
>