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In an October 9 column for Slate, Dahlia Lithwick explained that historically, it's been very hard to be the wife of a Supreme Court justice. According to Lithwick, earlier generations of women, subjected to the forced anonymity traditionally expected of Justices' spouses, have been driven to drink, illness and despair. Some feel that explains why the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas felt compelled to leave a voicemail message on the office telephone of Anita Hill, the law professor who accused him of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearing. According to the New York Times, who said Hill played the recording for them, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas said that through prayer, Hill might be led to offer an explanation and apology "for what you did with my husband."
Of course, Ginni Thomas is no cloistered spouse. She is a longtime conservative political activist who currently heads a Tea Party group called Liberty Central. She worked for former Republican congressman Dick Armey, and for the Heritage Foundation. Critics have questioned whether her political involvements raise conflicts of interest for Justice Thomas. Those concerns are heightened because Liberty Central is organized under tax rules that allow them to keep their donors secret. Law professor Sherrilyn Ifill sees a big problem here:
"As Mrs. Thomas continues to escalate her political activities and rhetoric on matters likely to come before the court, the justices of the court and commentators who study the court's practices should perhaps focus less on the individual free-speech rights of the privileged wife of a Supreme Court justice and more on the collective right of the American public and the litigants who appear before the court, and assure us that our highest court not only is impartial but also looks impartial."
Since Ginni Thomas is a political veteran, it's hard not to infer an element of calculation in the content and timing of the phone call. Of course, some critics, such as egalia from Tennessee Guerrilla Women, figure Thomas is just plumb loco. I can't pretend to know what Ginni Thomas is thinking, but I'm willing to take her at her word, that she believes her husband's professions of innocence, and she thinks Anita Hill owes them an apology.
Still, it's hard to imagine anything more offensive to Hill, who is now a professor at Brandeis University, since she continues to insist on the truth of her testimony before he Senate Judiciary Committee. Indeed, according to news reports, "offensive" was exactly the word Hill used in characterizing Ginni Thomas' message, saying, "she can’t ask for an apology without suggesting that I did something wrong, and that is offensive."
Hill was an unlikely and reportedly reluctant witness against then-Judge Thomas back in the fall of 1991. She was the child of a conservative Baptist family in Oklahoma who distinguished herself academically and ultimately graduated from Yale Law School. As she would tell then Senate Judiciary Chairman Joe Biden, she was only a year out of law school when she came to work for Clarence Thomas.
At the time of the hearings, Hill was a law professor at the University of Oklahoma. Over the course of three days in October, she was called everything from scorned to delusional as she maintained that while she worked for Thomas at the US Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he first tried to date her and then periodically made crude sexual jokes and comments. Here's a handy timeline of the events of that weekend. Clarence Thomas famously declared the hearings "a high-tech lynching," and he was ultimately confirmed by a vote of 52-48.
I had already been watching the Thomas confirmation hearings in the fall of 1991, just as I had watched Robert Bork's failed confirmation effort four years before. When sexual harassment allegations surfaced against Thomas from Hill and others who were not called to testify, I was asked by Emerge magazine to assist veteran reporter Sylvester Monroe in gathering interviews for their coverage. As a result, I interviewed a Harvard Law professor who specialized in civil rights, a Harvard psychiatrist, a sociologist who was an expert on the experiences of black women in the workplace and a corporate diversity trainer who did workshops on sexual harassment law.
I mention this because not one of the witnesses who appeared before the Judiciary committee during those hearings had any professional knowledge of these issues. As
