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Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Justice Thomas: I'm not "bitter", you "uninformed ... traitor"
Initially, I saw Justice Thomas as a knee-jerk conservative and Scalia flunky. I’ve since changed moderated my views. I’m impressed by the creativity of his suggestion to overhaul the entire “incorporation” doctrine (that the Bill of Rights, originally applicable only to the federal gov’t, were “incorporated” into the Fourteenth Amendment’s restrictions on states) by finding incorporation via the Privileges & Immnunities Clause rather than the Due Process Clause. I’m impressed by the consistency of his commitment to originalism (except for the Tenth and Eleventh Amendment caselaw, but that’s another story). And I’ve been impressed by accounts, such as that in Supreme Confluct, that Justice Scalia often follows his more-committed-to-originalism lead, rather than vice-versa, as many had assumed. In short, while I still remain of the view that his qualifications for the job in 1991 were light enough that his appointment is the most significant and questionable example of affirmative action in judicial appointments, I part company with many on the left in that I now have no doubts as to his brainpower and his competence as a Justice.
But Justice Thomas’s personal qualities are another story, and I’m not just talking about his alleged harassment of Anita Hill. I’m struck by two ugly traits on display in his new memoir. First, and just briefly, I can’t neglect to point out the the hypocrisy of a Justice who pontificates about how separate Justices must remain from politics (“members of this Court are not participants in the political process,” he states in speeches), but then who pens a tirade against decades-old political opponents that he hawks on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Second, I’m struck by his dishonesty – or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, his utter lack of self-awareness - as to the striking level of bitterness he retains about a judicial confirmation process (1) that was sixteen years ago, (2) that he won, and (3) that (unlike a politician’s scandal) hasn’t affected his job since. This dishonesty or lack of awareness extends to other matters, like his denial that his admission to Yale Law was based on affirmative action: he insists it was just socioeconomic (that in his Yale interview he’d explained how “I came from where I came from[,] . . . I'd had this misfortune[,] . . . I had overcome those odds and done extremely well”) and that “later on, all of that was converted into race” by foes whose identities he masks with passive voice.
“Rush, I don't really have the luxury to be bitter. I don't have the luxury of having negative things in my life,” Justice Thomas told Rush Limbaugh, in an interview about a book that contains striking public displays of bitterness:
• Anita Hill was “mediocre” but ambitious and “my most traitorous adversary”.
• Hill also was "stereotypically left of center and uninformed."
• He’s amazingly certain that opponents of his confirmation didn’t actually believe Anita Hill; rather, he explained to Rush, they were racists and political opportunists: “for no reasons other than people disagreed with me, or they thought that a black person shouldn't particularly have these views, they were going to set upon me and undermine, or destroy the little bit we had cobbled together.” The man who regularly gives speeches about the need for "civility" sure makes his life easy by assuming nefarious motives on the part of all his opponents.
"Thanks to God's direct intervention, I had risen phoenix-like from the ashes of self-pity and despair, and though my wounds were still raw, I trusted that in time they, too, would heal," Justice Thomas wrote of his swearing in. I think his book shows a man who, sixteen years later, remains a little stuck in the “self-pity” he congratulates himself for getting over so quickly in 1991.
I’m not on a high horse about avoiding bitterness; I’m far from perfect, not necessarily an ounce better than Justice Thomas at getting over perceived slights. But I know myself well enough to know that avoiding bitterness is one of my weaknesses, and I sure as hell wouldn’t write a sanctimonious and bitter book congratulating myself for having gotten over a sixteen year-old grudge I so clearly still carry.
Posted by Scott Moss on October 2, 2007 at 05:47 PM in Current Affairs, Law and Politics | Permalink
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» The Clarence Thomas Roundup from The Debate Link
The release of Clarence Thomas' new book has led to a spurt of interesting blogging on the quietest and most conservative Supreme Court Justice. No comments from me, just a round-up of the variety of posts out there. [Read More]
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» Clarence Thomas: An Angry Black Man from Jon Swift
It's almost as if he were auditioning for the role of the token black roommate on The Real World who ends up getting kicked out of the house. [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 3, 2007 5:23:30 PM
Comments
Scott - Funny, but I'm personally struck by your own dishonesty (or is it perhaps a "lack of awareness"?) concerning your statement that Thomas denies that his Yale acceptance was a result of AA. He clearly admits that it was - indeed, he says they called it "preferential treatment" back then. He goes on to say that "Yale claimed that it was accepting me on merit" (that is, they lied) and that "when I was accepted, I *thought* it was on those circumstances" (that is, he believed them). Later, when he says that "later on - and I did do fine at Yale - all that was converted into race, and what I blame myself for is that I should have seen it coming..." he means that although Yale claimed he was accepted on merit, and he believed it, it was quite clear to everyone else that he wasn't, and people just assumed that he did poorly (which he didn't) and was just a charity case. The situation was "converted" to race because while he first thought he was being accepted on merit (and thus would be on equal footing with/judged according to the same standards as everyone else), it later became apparent to him that he was accepted because he was black, and that nobody would be able to get past that.
Posted by: Guest | Oct 2, 2007 9:03:18 PM
"Guest" (consistently, all the harsh comments come from anons...): Read the whole Limbaugh excerpt; I didn't post it b/c Thomas was long-winded and borderline incoherent in responding to Rush's surprisingly straightforward question, "Now, is it true, once and for all, that you got into Yale because of affirmative action?" But b/c you accuse me of dishonestly excerpting, I'll post the whole response (and Rush's futile effort to get a clearer answer in a follow-up). I report, you decide.
JUSTICE THOMAS: Oh, well, they didn't call it that back then. It's kind of interesting. What I attempt to deal with in the book is those of us who went to school back then, and certainly only Yale in my case, the program they had at the time, they called it "preferential treatment." It was kind of odd, because at the time, Yale claimed that it was accepting us on merit. They'd had, apparently, some difficulties, and the way I applied was the way I had applied to every place else, and that was: I came from where I came from. Earlier in the interview, you'd said that I'd had this misfortune, and that's what I basically said. I had overcome those odds and done extremely well at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, done extremely well at Immaculate Conception Seminary, and then at Holy Cross. And my hope was to have the same opportunity to do extremely well at Yale. And when I was accepted, I thought it was on those circumstances; but then later on -- and I did fine at Yale -- but later on, all of that was converted into race, and what I blame myself for is that I should have seen that coming. If I had --
RUSH: Who converted it into race? Your enemies?
JUSTICE THOMAS: Well, no.
RUSH: Did Yale say it?
JUSTICE THOMAS: Yale never said it when I was there. What happened was, when I attempted to get a job after Yale, it was clear from the law firms that their assumption was that I had no business at Yale. So I could not get a job after Yale Law School. I tried Atlanta; I tried New York; I tried Washington, DC. And the reason I wound up in Jefferson City is the only person who would look me in the eye and say that he would give me an opportunity, the same opportunity as anybody else to do my best, was then-Attorney General Danforth. As a result of that, I wound up in Jefferson City, Missouri.
RUSH: So the criticism here that you, in your later life, somehow oppose affirmative action and thus deny other minority students the advantages or the opportunities you had, is not true?
JUSTICE THOMAS: Oh, absolutely not. . . .
Posted by: Scott Moss | Oct 2, 2007 9:28:25 PM
Scott, although I didn't accuse you of selectively excerpting before, now you clearly have. Why didn't you post the rest of the response (following the "absolutely not")? It's clear from the text that follows that what he meant by "absolutely not" is not that he wasn't an AA beneficiary, but rather that what he's absolutely not doing is trying to deny anyone certain advantages or opportunities; it's just that he thinks that one's access to such opportunities shouldn't be based on his race. Hence his statements that:
"One of the things that we were all for, even then, was to help disadvantaged kids. I mean, who's against that? You know, I don't care what color you are -- the white kid from Appalachia, the Hispanic kid, the mixed-race kids. I don't make those false distinctions and have never made those sorts of distinctions. You help kids in the places that they are if they're suffering from disadvantage"
and:
'That was my grandfather's point, and rather than sort of make it all racial, just simply say, 'Look, give these kids a chance and see how well they do. Let them perform.'"
and finally:
"...it doesn't have to be based on race. I think virtually any fair-minded person understands that. What I attempt to do in my own life...is to help others -- no matter what their race is, no matter what their sex is -- who are having difficulty, other people who are demonstrating that they want to do well and, if given a chance, they will do well."
Posted by: Guest | Oct 2, 2007 10:13:20 PM
Scott, from the excerpt in your comment, it appears that Guest is clearly right. I don't see how he is in any way in denial that he was admitted to Yale based on affirmative action--only that "they didn't call it that back then," and he believed Yale's claim that the decision was based on merit, but it later became apparent that it didn't matter because employers assumed it was affirmative action anyway. Your claim of dishonesty seems like a big overreach.
Posted by: JP | Oct 2, 2007 10:21:07 PM
Well, it's a known fact that some people can at times be traitorous. Saying so is not per se evidence of bitterness. Teachers still teach their students that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, and I don't think that means America's history teaches are all bitter people nursing a 250-year-old grudge.
As for Scott Moss's assertion that Thomas denies "that his admission to Yale Law was based on affirmative action," he hasn't denied it as far as I know. And who's being dishonest here? The quotes above from the Rush Limbaugh show begins with an answer, and omits the preceding question. The question was: "RUSH: Now, is it true, once and for all, that you got into Yale because of affirmative action?" And Thomas immediately answered: "Oh, well, they didn't call it that back then." The implication being that, yes, he did benefit from affirmative action, even though they called it something else. And then Thomas says, "Yale claimed that it was accepting us on merit." Again the implication is that Yale was not being entirely truthful about that.
So who's dishonest or unaware?
Posted by: Andrew | Oct 2, 2007 10:22:18 PM
I think it's pretty clear that Thomas's answer was a combination of (1) evasion, (2) saying it was socioeconomic rather than racial preference, and (3) saying people misconstrued his admission as racial affirmative action. Thomas's sheer longwindedness and evasiveness leave room for y'all to disagree, but I think you'd have to strain to dispute this three-part summary of his answer.
And "Guest": Far from selectively excerpting in my comment, I gave a ridiculously long excerpt of Justice Thomas's filibuster of a straightforward question. I suppose you could fault me for not pasting in more & more & more, but at some point you're just looking like a dittohead straining for ways to blast me.
And Andrew: My comment above DID include Rush's question, the one you accuse me of omitting. You're free to disagree with me, even strongly (e.g., eding with your snarky rhetorical question), but before you blast my comment, you should read it carefully to make sure you're not obliviously criticizing me for omitting something I didn't omit.
Posted by: Scott Moss | Oct 2, 2007 10:40:05 PM
Scott, you're right that I could have been more precise. You inserted two entire sentences between the question and answer. Juxtaposing them (as they were in the original transcript) much more blatantly shows that Thomas implied he did benefit from affirmative action.
And as far as Thomas being guilty of "hypocrisy" for appearing on the Rush Limbaugh show, did he take any political positions on the Rush Libaugh show?
Posted by: Andrew | Oct 2, 2007 10:52:54 PM
Scott writes:
First, and just briefly, I can’t neglect to point out the the hypocrisy of a Justice who pontificates about how separate Justices must remain from politics (“members of this Court are not participants in the political process,” he states in speeches), but then who pens a tirade against decades-old political opponents that he hawks on the Rush Limbaugh show.I'm puzzled by this comment. I haven't read the book yet, but I don't understand why it is hypocritical to say that a) a judge, in his judging, should not try to be a participant in the political process, and b) a judge, outside of his judging, can make his ideological orientation clear (even while not taking policy positions, I gather).
To be clear, I much prefer the Justice Harlan model. After becoming a Justice, Harlan refused to vote for the Presidency on the ground that it could bias him for or against whoever won. But Thomas's views about the role of politics in judging are that judges should not try to legislate in the course of their decisions; that is, he rejects Justice Breyer's view that the Justices should try to come up with what they believe are workable answers to major socio-political problems and deem them what the Constitution requires (For a good explanation of this approach, see Jeffrey Toobin's new book, which seems to be based in relevant part on extensive interviews with Justice Breyer -- I think it's a helpful illimunation of Breyer's approach.) This is "politics" in the sense of legislating, and Thomas has long been opposed to it. Of course, we can debate whether he is consistent or not, but that is his position.
I guess I don't understand why a judge can't have that view of the proper role of courts and yet also appear on politically-oriented radio shows *outside* of his judicial role. Is the idea that Justices are not permitted to distinguish between their official roles and their unofficial roles? If so, why not? For example, Justice Kennedy often gives speeches in which he argues against mandatory minimum sentences and in favor of less imprisonment in society; Is it "hypocritical" of him to express these views of policy, or is it okay because his jurisprudential views are different from those of Justice Thomas? I don't understand.
Posted by: Oirn Kerr | Oct 2, 2007 11:16:21 PM
Scott, I agree with you that Justice Thomas's answer was (1) somewhat evasive, but I think it's a stretch to claim "dishonesty"--imagine the headlines paper if he had simply answered "Yes" or "apparently so." As for (2), he's clearly saying he originally thought he was accepted in part because of his socioeconomic status, and moreover, he's saying he thinks that would be a better system than AA. As for (3), he's saying that people construed his admission as AA--"misconstrued" is entirely your own imputation.
Posted by: JP | Oct 2, 2007 11:25:30 PM
What was Thomas' class ranking/grades at Yale?
If he did wellagainst the other students,
wouldn't that make the issue of how he got there irrelevant?
Posted by: Guest | Oct 2, 2007 11:30:49 PM
Also, while Justice Thomas may or may not be dishonest/un-self-aware about his current bitterness re: the confirmation hearings, I disagree with your claim that it "hasn't affected his job since." I understand that he obviously hasn't been booted out of office or anything, but clearly the allegations made in the confirmation hearings are always there for any critic looking for low-hanging fruit and unwilling or unable to argue on the merits.
Posted by: JP | Oct 2, 2007 11:39:03 PM
This dishonesty or lack of awareness extends to other matters, like his denial that his admission to Yale Law was based on affirmative action:
Let's go back to basics for a minute here, before letting fly with accusations of dishonesty. Was Justice Thomas indeed admitted to Yale solely because of an affirmative action program of the sort that lets in particular races with much lower test scores and grades? You seem to think he was. How would you know? Can you identify: 1) his college GPA; 2) his LSAT score; and most importantly, 3) how those first two figures compared to the average admittee at Yale Law circa 1970?
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Oct 2, 2007 11:45:30 PM
Whether Justice Thomas is in fact "dishonest" or "strikingly . . . bitter," it seems like much semantic jujitsu is being performed on his words to justify those characterizations, rather than reliance on clear statements that would justify those damning allegations. That's disturbing.
Posted by: andy | Oct 3, 2007 4:37:14 AM
I think it is a bit reckless to charge Thomas with dishonesty or lack of self-awareness on the subject of affirmative action based on one ambiguous radio interview, particularly when there are many other sources from which one can discern Thomas' views on the subject.
Thomas has often acknowledged that affirmative action may have played a role in his admission, and apparently repeats this in his book. From the Washington Post:
Thomas has been a sharp critic of affirmative action and the use of racial classifications in schools, but he acknowledges in the book that he was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971 partly because he was black. "I'd graduated from one of America's top law schools -- but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value."[Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/09/29/ST2007092900506.html?hpid=topnews
Whether Thomas would have been admitted to Yale absent its affirmative action (or "preferential treatment") policy is something we cannot know for sure. Thomas had a strong academic record before attending Yale, and did reasonably well there, and former Yale Law School Dean Guido Calabresi has consistently maintained that the affirmative action practiced by Yale when Thomas applied did not result in the admission of otherwise under-qualified applicants, and that Thomas was fully qualified to attend Yale.
JHA
Posted by: Jonathan H. Adler | Oct 3, 2007 9:18:06 AM
Scott, I tend to agree with others that whether or not Justice Thomas was long-winded, the words don't strongly indicate that he was either dishonest or unaware. However, let me add a word of praise: Unlike many of his critics, you focus on this point primarily, if not solely, for the purpose of questioning his honesty or self-awareness; NOT because you think it would somehow be wrong if he benefited from affirmative action and then argued against it on the Court. I take it you would agree that whether or not he benefited from affirmative action at a private university is not especially relevant to his much later views on its constitutionality as a matter of state action; and that, indeed, there is nothing hypocritical about having received an affirmative action admission and having subsequently decided that affirmative action is, as a matter of policy rather than constitutionality, more likely to be harmful than beneficial to the interests of African-Americans. I take it, then, that your charge is that Thomas is dishonest or un-self-aware; not that he is a hypocrite, or that he owed anyone a superseding debt to maintain affirmative action's constitutionality once he reached the Court.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Oct 3, 2007 9:25:56 AM
At the risk of beating a very dead horse, two things ought to be noted.
First, as far as I know, Thomas's Supreme Court opinions have not opposed the legal right of private educational institutions (e.g. Yale) to use affirmative action. The Equal Protection Clause only applies to public educational institutions, like the University of Michigan for example, though the issue admittedly gets murkier when you consider that some private universities accept government funds.
The second thing that I'd like to note is that --- even assuming Thomas's pre-Yale grades and test scores would not have been enough to get him into Yale (which I'm not sure about) --- still Thomas may well have deserved entrance to Yale based on the socioeconomic hardships that he had faced, regardless of the actual reasons that Yale may have admitted him. In that sense, Thomas has not sought to "deny other minority students the advantages or the opportunities" that he had, even at public institutions like the University of Michigan, because he favors giving a leg up to those minority students and others who have had to deal with great hardship.
Posted by: Andrew | Oct 3, 2007 9:35:04 AM
On another note, Jon Stewart played an interesting clip from Thomas' Dateline (or 60 Minutes or some other news show - I get them all confused) interview. The interviewer asked him whether he thought he would have had such public difficulty with the Anita Hill accusations if he and the accuser had been white. He said he didn't think it would have raised the same attention and added that, after all, there have been no such cases. Jon Stewart appropriately showed images of Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and Paula Jones. You'd think Thomas would be a bit smarter about this topic.
Posted by: David S. Cohen | Oct 3, 2007 9:45:49 AM
On reflection, I do concede two points:
(1) It isn't really improper or hypocritical for Justice Thomas to go on Rush Limbaugh, and more broadly (which is what I was thinking about) to decide to interact outside the Court primarily with like-minded conservatives (in contrast to Justice Scalia, who will speak anywhere there is a microphone and willing listerners/questioners, which I've always admired about him). I don't think he really keeps his politics out of his judging, and I think his politics are clear from those with whom he associates (Limbaugh, Regent Univ) -- but on reflection, my beef is not with the fact that he doesn't "hide" his politics, but with his failure to keep his politics out of his jurisprudence like he insistently claims he does. So I'll concede that I rushed to judgment about his Rush appearance.
(2) Having heard more about his take on his Yale Law admission, I really think the problem is that he's been all over the place about it: (a) at times he's said race played a part in Yale Law's admissions back then; (b) but in a conservative forum like Rush's show, he felt compelled not to say that, and instead circumlocuted in a way that's frankly unworthy of someone as smart and eloquent as he usually is.
(3) As for those not seeing "bitterness" in his comments: well, I suppose emotion and demeanor isn't provable, but I think you'd really have to strain not to see him as bitter in his book quotes and media appearances.
Posted by: Scott Moss | Oct 3, 2007 10:03:09 AM
Scott -
In relation to point (2), I am curious how many extended, unedited media interviews you have done, and whether you have read unedited transcripts afterwards. As someone who has done this quite often -- before I was an academic I worked for a think tank and often did several radio interviews a week -- I tend to adopt more charitable interpretations of apparently inconsistent or ambiguous statements from extended interviews. In my experience, inartful or inarticulate phrasings are usually just that.
JHA
Posted by: Jonathan H. Adler | Oct 3, 2007 10:52:36 AM
Guest writes:
What was Thomas' class ranking/grades at Yale?
If he did wellagainst the other students,
wouldn't that make the issue of how he got there irrelevant?
It is absolutely relevant how he got into Yale, no matter how he did once he was in. Lots of people who otherwise did not get a chance to go to Yale would have done wonderfully there, but they did not get the opportunity that Justice Thomas did. The law school reputation matters to its graduates for a long time, and for some people, throughout their entire career. For Justice Thomas specifically, if he went to a Joe Schmo law school, chances are, he would not be on the Supreme Court today. So, let's not pretend that it doesn't matter how Thomas got into Yale. It matters a whole lot.
Posted by: Marianna Moss | Oct 3, 2007 10:56:43 AM
I watched the 60 minutes interviews with Thomas last night online and from those stories, one learns that a) Thomas had excelled in school at Holy Cross and in earlier educational environments, and b) landed somewhere in the middle of the class while at YLS. These interesting tidbits seem utterly irrelevant to assessments of his performance as a Justice or, as Paul notes, any relationship between his having benefited from AA of either a race- or class-based orientation on the one hand and his views of the constitutionality (or even the normative desirability) of AA today. This is a way of saying, contra Marianna, that this information actually doesn't matter a whole lot if we're interested in judging Thomas's performance today or, I think, his character more generally.
There's still the tawdry business of what actually happened between CT and Anita Hill, as well as the rather lurid coverage of the matter; assuming AH spoke the truth, it reveals CT to be a lout and a cad, and unfit for appointment to the SCT, but we don't KNOW what happened (do we? with proof BRD?), and so we should direct our attention to, in the end, those aspects of life which we can determine to be true and actually relevant to a serious assessment of Thomas. I might add a few more cents worth of observations later today in a separate post. I'm almost finished the Toobin book and I think his treatment of Thomas is unbalanced as well, especially in discussion of Thomas' finances.
Posted by: Dan Markel | Oct 3, 2007 11:51:17 AM
Following up on my earlier comment, Mr. Moss claims that if Thomas denies that his admission to Yale was due to affirmative action, it can only be because of dishonesty or a lack of self-awareness.
If you go to pages 257-58 of this file, you can see the letter that Guido Calabresi wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Among other things, he says, "As to Judge Thomas himself, I cannot say whether he would have been admitted apart from this program. This is because admissions among people of top ability are always highly subjective and so, unless I could speak to those who actually read his files (some of whom are dead), I could not give an answer to the question. Frankly, even if I could, I would not. It has long been the policy of the Law School not to divulge information with respect to admission of particular students."
If Guido Calabresi didn't know how Thomas was admitted to Yale, and if Yale would never disclose that information anyway, how could Mr. Moss conceivably have come by this information? And if Mr. Moss doesn't have this information (which seems awfully likely), wouldn't it be rather more prudent not to accuse Thomas of lying?
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Oct 3, 2007 7:17:18 PM
It's not a great secret that in general, through at least the mid-90s and Prop 209 elite law schools that practiced affirmative action took the public position that they were not engaging in meaningful racial preferences, but just using race a tiebreaker. (Just e.g., he president of AALS and dean of Boalt said this on national tv in 1995, and the dean of G'town made the same claim in a Wash. Post op-ed a few years earlier). Thomas, meanwhile, has reason to think he deserved a leg up for overcoming obstacles--besides his poverty, English wasn't even his first language, and the man who raised him was illiterate. So Yale likely told him or at least intimated that they were admitting him based on his proven ability to overcome obstacles and without regard to race, and he likely believed them. He later discovered that they were lying, and that they (and everyone else) thought he was there to fill affirmative action goals. He resented it, whether justifiably or not.
What's mysterious to me is that he couldn't get a job despite being in the middle of his class. Maybe his lack of "polish" and "pedigree" hurt him in interviews?
Posted by: GC | Oct 3, 2007 10:11:56 PM
Stuart,
"And if Mr. Moss doesn't have this information (which seems awfully likely), wouldn't it be rather more prudent not to accuse Thomas of lying?"
I think that's what we're all wondering.
The strangest aspect of this whole conversation is that it actually vindicates Thomas's position. He argues that AA stigmatizes minorities because people will always assume they got to where they were due to racial preferences and not to merit. And now, we have a blog post from a law professor accusing Justice Thomas of either outright dishonesty or willful blindness for failing to recognize that he got into Yale only because he's black.
I can't imagine what would happen if a black student at a law school today argued that s/he got in on merit, only to have a professor declare that the student was showing "ugly traits" on account of her beliefs.
I can't stop scratching my head when AA supporters blast Thomas for being an alleged hypocrite, since he "obviously" got to where he was because of his skin color. Isn't it clear that they are actually proving his point, not refuting it, by making that allegation? (I don't mean to suggest that that was the import of Mr. Moss's post, but am just commenting on criticism of CT generally.)
Posted by: andy | Oct 3, 2007 11:30:19 PM
Being liberal means never having to say you're sorry.
Posted by: mjs | Oct 4, 2007 7:26:14 AM
Andy: As Jonathan Adler pointed out, Justice Thomas in his book admitted that he benefitted from racial aff'v action, but when asked a question on a conservative radio show that appeared to invite him to deny the role of racial aff'v action, he engaged in something between circumlocution and denial. I suppose you can read his Rush answer with a sympathetic eye as not flatly contradicting what he'd previously admitted, but I stand by the view that Thomas said one thing about aff'v action in one context but something different in another. More broadly, though, I absolutely stand by my characterization of Justice Thomas as either dishonest or completely non-self-aware if just based on his repeated, forceful denial of any lingering bitterness/self-pity at the same time he rehashes his long-dormant feud with Anita Hill with new insults directed at her.
MJS: Based on the empty dittohead-ness of your comment, you probably should leave behind law blogs and stick with simpler fare like Rush's show, where somments like yours pass for clever.
Posted by: Scott Moss | Oct 4, 2007 11:29:56 AM
For an alternative treatment of the same issue:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/10/08/clarence_thomas
Posted by: Steve | Oct 11, 2007 6:03:53 PM
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