There is something, I don't know, endearing about the story of Virginia Thomas calling Anita Hill and asking her, as sweet as can be, to apologize to her husband and explain why she did what she did. I also think there is something precious about Ms. Hill's reaction - she called the cops. These two sides reflect what is, in sum, the very different ways the entire Hill-Thomas episode is seen by those who still sit on opposite sides. Thomas' supporters consider Ms. Hill's accusations lies cooked up by the connivance of liberals and a vindictive staffer to smear him before the nation. Ms. Hill's supporters, on the other hand, consider the entire episode a miscarriage of justice.
I do not have a "side". From the moment in the summer of 1991 when Pres. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas as "the best qualified" candidate to fill the vacancy created by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement, I saw trouble. Issues of race would swirl around the entire process, and supporters and opponents on all sides would bungle it. That is exactly what happened. Thomas was so adept at playing on issues of guilt, his single three-word phrase - "high-tech lynching" - managed to move many, many people (including an otherwise skeptical African-American professor of mine at Wesley Seminary). The accusations of sexual harassment, I should note, were soaked with white fantasies of black male sexuality (in turn, Ms. Hill's various attackers on the committee also managed to fall in to the trap of white fantasies concerning black women's sexuality).
The entire thing became a ridiculous farce, in which the simple issue of whether or not, in his capacity of director of the office on Civil Rights, Clarence Thomas engaged in practices considered harassment under the law, became impossible.
Once it became clear this was the case, I stopped paying attention. Several years later, though, I came across the best study of the entire affair, Strange Justice. Among the many details the authors managed to reveal - and with an ease that seemed to escape the entire panel of Senators and their staff members - was that Clarence Thomas lied under oath when he claimed not to be a habitue of pornography. Having lied under oath on this peripheral issue makes sense; like Bill Clinton insisting he never had sexual relations with "that woman", why in the world would anyone admit they regularly view pornography?
All the same, this went directly to the whole issue of sexual harassment, and Ms. Hill's claims that Clarence Thomas often referred to pornography in a way that was, to say the least, inappropriate. So, it wasn't just a "private" matter. His denials was more than just a denial rooted in personal embarrassment. It was a lie that undercut a central claim Anita Hill had made. Since the press, and it seems the Senate committee and staffers, seemed to think it impossible to untangle the mess of he said/she said, the expedient matter of actually going to the video rental store in Clarence Thomas' neighborhood was never considered.
The authors did just that. Since such information isn't confidential, it became easy enough to discover that Clarence Thomas did, indeed, rent adult movies.
OK. So. Does that mean that he went on to reference them in ways that created a hostile work environment for Ms. Hill? Did he, in fact, engage in acts that are easily defined as "harassment" under the law? The actual and overwhelming evidence seems to be that yes, he did. It has been set forth in a straightforward matter in an account that should have been nothing more than a transcript of the actual hearing before the Senate committee.
Now, two decades later, Mrs. Thomas - bless her heart - wants Ms. Hill to apologize. She wants Ms. Hill to explain. Ms. Hill, on the other hand, not only refuses to do so, she considers the very notion offensive. As well she should. She did not lie; she was not, in David Brock's infamous phrase, "a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty." On the contrary, a quiet, retiring, devout Christian woman (she attended Oral Roberts University and served in the Reagan Administration; this isn't the cv of a Marxist), Ms. Hill was hesitant about coming forward, not because her story was false, but because the entire episode was embarrassing in any number of ways.
I have no doubt this will become a bit of a cause celebre among the minions of the right who still believe, despite the evidence, that Ms. Hill made the story up, or was perhaps a prop for a secret cabal of lefties who wanted to block Thomas' nomination at all costs. Dragging this particular bit of history in to our current political climate is not a good thing, because if anything the right has become even more unhinged on any number of matters, race, gender, and sex being among them.
When I heard the story on the radio, I thought, "Oh, Lord, here we go." I offered on FB the idea that maybe Hillary Clinton can sit down with Mrs. Thomas and discuss the matter frankly, perhaps over a Vodka Collins or Gin Ricky or something, to help ease the pain. While offered partly in jest, it is also serious. Someone who understands the realities should, indeed, inform Mrs. Thomas that Ms. Hill did not "do" anything to her husband. Clarence Thomas did all of it to himself.
