Ms. Hill & Mr.
Tom
No one who watched the Clarence Thomas confirmation
hearings can forget the dignity and conviction with which
Anita Hill answered crass questions involving Thomas's
clumsy and childish--but monstrously insulting--sexual
overtures to her. Nor can anyone forget the stuffed,
insincere look on Thomas's face as he denied the allegations.
Now, author David Brock, who led the pack in denigrating
Ms. Hill's reputation, has repudiated his own accusations
against her and branded them contrived lies to shove Thomas
into the Supreme Court. In his new book, "Blinded
by the Right," Brock asserts his collusion with Thomas's
representatives, to deny charges about Thomas that he
knew at the time to be true but that Thomas swore under
oath were not. This development should not surprise
anyone. The whole matter of Thomas's appointment
was fraught with deception and contempt, from the time
Bush Sr. appointed him to replace one of the giants of
the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall. The appointment
of an idiot like Thomas was an effrontery not only to
African Americans but to all Americans. For years,
there he has sat, Clarence Thomas, often dozing off with
that enduring stuffed look, constantly following doggedly
whatever the rabid Antonin Scalia (increasingly looking
like a figure out of the Spanish Inquisition) upholds,
never voicing an opinion of his own. (What is between
these two gentlemen?) Now Thomas seems to have found
a voice, a pitiful voice that now and then mouths right-wing
platitudes. Why emboldened? He got the opportunity
to thank Bush, Sr., for his dubious appointment to the
Supreme Court by helping to elect the son of a Bush to
the presidency. No satirist--not Swift, not Bunuel--could
outdo the reality of the present political situation:
a mealy-mouthed jester tripping over his own words in
the White House, a man who has had three heart "procedures"
as vice president claiming to be in excellent health,
a silly justice who can't speak for himself, and several
ranting right-wing ideologues in the Supreme Court, unmasked
as politicians when they pushed Bush Jr. into the White
House despite the fact he had not been elected--all backed
up with a cast of clowns, like Ashworth, in powerful positions
that allow them to jettison the very laws they're sworn
to assert. It is far from inconceivable that time
will reveal that the Bush Sr. forces had an early assurance
from one or another of the men on the Supreme Court (Rehnquist,
Scalia seem likely candidates) that, whatever happened
in the election, the matter MUST be maneuvered at all
costs into the Supreme Court, where a coup was guaranteed.
John Rechy
Los Angeles, California
July 2001

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Original material by John Rechy appears
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