The Low-Tech Lynching of Clarence Thomas

The Low-Tech Lynching of Clarence Thomas

By Jerome Doolittle

Created Sep 30 2007 - 11:20pm

As Justice Clarence Thomas flogs his million-dollar memoir, sound bites from

his 1991 nomination hearings have been surfacing in the news - fragrant

bubbles from the swamps of George Herbert Walker Bush's administration.

The saddest of these golden oldies was the nominee's anguished cry that the

hearings were "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks." Is it even remotely

possible that Justice Thomas actually imagines himself to be an uppity

black? Can he be unaware that he was the least uppity black that Poppy Bush

had been able to find in all the land?

Of course it's possible, and of course Thomas is unaware of it. All of us

lie to ourselves, and most of us lie to others. But only a few of us get the

chance to lie to the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath. Clarence Thomas

is one of them. The Pubic Hair Test proves it.

Fans of political theater will recall that Professor Anita Hill had charged

her former boss at the Department of Education with a pattern of sexual

harassment which included showing her a Coke can with a pubic hair stuck to

it.

But Judge Thomas swore, no doubt truthfully insofar as the truth is

vouchsafed unto him, that he had never in his life done such an

ungentlemanly thing.

How could we, the millions of spectators at this morality play, have known

what to think? Was it the stern federal judge who was telling the truth, or

was it the demure law professor?

Only the Pubic Hair Test could settle the question:

Could Professor Hill could have made up a story so peculiar? In other words,

was there anything in the accuser's much-investigated background to suggest

that she was a pathological liar? Did she suffer from hallucinations? Was

she "creative?" Perhaps even an aspiring novelist?

And if she were such a fabulist, as the Republicans pretended to think,

would the Coke can invention do more damage to her enemy than any other lie

she might have dreamed up?

No to the first question. Professor Hill seemed depressingly literal and

humorless. It was hard to imagine her engaged in a flight of fancy. (The

only suggestion to the contrary came from a young black man who seemed

principally interested in reciting his resume on national TV.)

And no to the second question, too. The tale of the pubic hair and the Coke

can was so meaningless and bizarre that it could not have been an invention.

If Professor Hill wanted to destroy the nominee with lies, she was certainly

smart enough to have stuck to such old standbys as indecent exposure,

groping, and dirty pictures.

The Pubic Hair Test therefore indicated with zero probability of error that

this particular woman could not and would not have invented this particular

senseless, incomprehensible story.

God knows whose pubic hair that was, or how it got on that Coke can, or what

message the future Supreme Court justice thought it conveyed, or what made

him imagine that his weird brandishing of it might be seductive - but the

incident plainly happened pretty much the way Professor Hill said it did.

And Uncle Thomas had been lynched long, long before the Senate Judiciary

Committee ever heard of him. He had slung the rope over a branch at an early

age, poor man, and then hoisted himself all the way up to the Supreme Court.

_______

Jerome Doolittle

Bad Attitudes

http://badattitudes.com/MT/ [1]

About author Jerome Doolittle blogs at Bad Attitudes [2]. Former

newspaperman and diplomat; speechwriter for President Carter; author of the

Tom Bethany mystery series.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson