WASHINGTON - Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had a really bad idea. She asked for an apology from Anita Hill, the woman whose dubious allegations stigmatized her husband, set off a national debate over sexual harassment in the workplace and turned the Senate confirmation process into a late night comedian's dream.
The result of Thomas' mistake was utterly predictable. Hill, as she has in every instance, capitalized by making the request public, even turning a non-threatening telephone message into a police matter, referring it to the campus police who handed it over to the FBI, whose agents during an initial investigation of her original charges all those years ago laughed at them. Oh yes. She also took the opportunity to play the appeal to the national press.
Are you surprised? This a woman who stretched the normal 15 minutes of fame into years of iconic imagery as the champion of the downtrodden female -- a household name for millions of her fellow sisters seeking to redress the grievances of male dominance. And she did so on probably the thinnest of "he said-she said" evidence. Throughout it all she maintained a steely resolve and level of outrage that usually is reserved for a woman scorned, which she may have felt she was.
Hill was, of course, a tool in the hands of those who were appalled that Thomas, her longtime friend and mentor and benefactor, had been chosen for the court by President George H. W. Bush in the first place. The conservative Yale law graduate did not fit the norm for African Americans on such issues as affirmative action. In a pattern that has been repeated frequently in these confirmation processes, if you can't stop them on qualifications find something in their personal lives no matter how small and go from there.
Suddenly there was Hill, who had complained to a friend in California about being sexually harassed by someone in a law firm where she no longer worked. The friend thought she was talking about Thomas. The female friend contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee and the fat, as they say, was in the fire.
The story got leaked, and despite urging from some of his colleagues and a negative FBI report, Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden, who some may recall is now vice president of the United States, reopened the Thomas hearings and summoned Hill to testify. She went on to glory, or lasting ignominy depending on one's point of view, on accusations of tainted Coke cans and pornographic discussions of the lamest, sleazy variety. Among the embarrassed senators in this tasteless nationally broadcast spectacle were those whose reputations could hardly stand the glare of a 20-watt light bulb let alone a spotlight, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Missing from any of the allegations by Hill was the serious charge of physical contact with Thomas. In his years of friendship and helping her, he apparently had made no pass at her and never asked her out on a formal date. Whether he could have avoided her wrath if he had or if he had not married a white woman instead is the subject of pure speculation.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/content/thomasson-anita-hill-still-craving-spotlight#comment-29111"My brain...hurts!"