Crystal Clanton

Many Prawfs readers no know know of Crystal Clanton. She has just been hired by Clarence Thomas for a SCOTUS clerkship, despite her notoriety for writing a blatantly racist text, at age 20, when she worked for Turning Point USA. Although many liberals are outraged that Clanton has gotten a series of plum jobs, I think it is unfair to pillory her for youthful bad behavior, as I explain in my article on Slate.

Here is the gist:

In a classic demonstration of punching down, the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus wrote a series of columns about Clanton—beginning when she was still in law school—that read like a campaign to make her an unemployable pariah. Thomas’ decision to hire Clanton, she said, is a “stain” on the entire federal judiciary.

Marcus got her metaphor backward. Thomas probably wasn’t intentionally channeling Joseph Welch, but he had gotten it right when he responded to the judicial ethics complaint. “We have reached a sorry state of affairs,” he said, “when a young adult can be indelibly marked with today’s ‘scarlet letter’ of defamation.”

Character attacks have been a recurrent feature of American politics since at least the time of Thomas Jefferson. They have often been effective, even if false (see: Clinton, Hillary, 2016), and they can be salutary when true (see: Moore, Roy, 2017). Office seekers know that character attacks come with the territory. But that should not be true of young people who find themselves involuntarily embroiled in controversies, and it is especially unfair when the attacks are based on youthful incidents, from years earlier, that have dubious bearing on whom they have become.

Donald Trump’s Republicans have abandoned decency as a value, with no concern for collateral damage. Liberals could set a far better example by allowing Crystal Clanton to get on with her life.

You can read the entire essay on Slate.

And as a reminder that this sort of thing keeps happening: