Here’s an interesting take on the phone call from Ginni Thomas to Anita Hill:
Getting the FBI involved is just the height of silliness. Though it may have been a dumb thing to do, there’s nothing in that voicemail that objectively constitutes a threat. However, by doing so, Hill and her colleagues at Brandeis have found another way to embarrass Clarence Thomas, and that’s something that Anita Hill has a history of doing.
So a couple decades ago, you believe you were sexually harassed. You testify honestly and truthfully, and are smeared and attacked for coming forward. You let things go, and twenty years later there is a voice message on your office phone. The message claims to be from Ginny Thomas, and if that wasn’t odd enough, she’s asking YOU for an apology? After her husband sexually harassed YOU! After they tried to destroy YOU for simply telling the truth. Thinking no one is that stupid, you decide it must be a prank, and pass it off to Campus Security.
But in the world of Doug Mataconis, you’ve just “found another way to embarrass Clarence Thomas.” Pro-tip, Doug: Ginni Thomas was the one who found another way to embarrass her husband.
I seriously don’t understand how half this country ties their shoes in the morning.
Howlin Wolfe
I read about this in my morning fishwrap (“all the news our corporate overlords see fit to print!”) and almost spewed my post toasties all over my breakfast table. What kind of delusion leads someone to do this? What kind of monsters has our country bred?
Mattminus
I don’t know of anything but an all-night cocaine binge that can have people calling folks demanding apologies for 20 year old grievances at 7:30 AM.
Sentient Puddle
I like this quote from Ginny:
Well, you could start by, I don’t know, “forgiving her,” as you put it. Take initiative!
Oscar Leroy
I wonder if Mrs. Thomas asked Mrs. Scalia what to say in her call.
Elia
When I read this earlier this morning I said a silent curse to myself against John Cole for ever convincing me to add OTB to my google reader. Obviously Joyner is the only good one of the lot, but even he sometimes causes me to question whether I should just throw this whole Reasonable thing into the dustbin of history and join Code Pink (especially when he’s talking about how we can all disagree about whether or not the United States should systematically torture people without the conversation become rancorous).
Persia
@Mattminus: Yeah. I can’t imagine any rational human thinking anything but ‘this has got to be a prank.’
GregB
Now let us imagine that Clarence Thomas had been subjected to questions about his citizenship status, his religious beliefs, pictured as a witch doctor with a bone in his nose, as a pimp, a hustler, Hitler, Stalin, Mao……
Doug Mataconis
John,
Let’s just say you have a different view of Anita Hill than I do and leave it at that.
If you read my entire post, you’d know that I did say that Thomas’s phone call was odd to say the least so, you know it’s not like I’m defending her either.
I just didn’t think I’d wake up this morning thinking it was 1991 all over again. It made me think I was late for my morning classes at law school.
GeorgeSalt
This whole affair has me flummoxed. At first I thought that Mrs. Thomas had simply lost it and went off the deep end, but now I suspect this is a carefully crafted ploy to open yet another front in the never-ending culture wars. I reopens old wounds and plays to the rightwing’s sense of victimhood.
nevsky42
A lot of shoes have velcro tabs now.
chopper
velcro, dogg. velcro.
Culture of Truth
That wily Prof. Hill! I wonder how long she has been planning this clever scheme of hers.
Jamie
well to be fair I think they are more crazy and deluded than stupid
Alex S.
They wear paddles instead of shoes.
Omnes Omnibus
Loafers, velcro closures, crocs…
brendancalling
you’re confusing “stupid” with “lying piece of shit”.
that’s what Dougy is doing: he is engaging in what Thomas Pain called “mental lying”:
Everyone defending Ginni Thomas knows she’s in the wrong. But telling the truth is not important to human garbage like Doug Mataconis, or for that matter to the right-wing in general. They are complete liars: they lie about everything, which is probably why so many of them cheat on their wives. The concept of honesty and fidelity isn’t in their vocabulary.
Lauren
If one in ten Americans even hear about this, I’ll be a little surprised. I was too young to even remember the Clarence Thomas nomination. The only thing I know about Thomas is that he’s basically a carbon copy of any vote made by Scalia, with the exception that his opinion is about as divorced from reality as any legal document can possibly get.
Thomas has a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. He has absolutely nothing to fear from a “smear” at this point in his career. Why does anyone give a crap about this man?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This should give everybody an idea of the minds of the Thomas household.
One of the saddest choices for the Court. Chuck Fucking Robb helped make it happen–that’s another cautionary tale for a Dem acting like a Repup and then getting voted out of office in favor of Macaca Allen.
August J. Pollak
The saddest part about this is that it proves how even twenty years later the right thinks Anita Hill doesn’t have the right to speak up about being bullied.
Kay
“I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get passed what happened so long ago,” Ms. Thomas said in a statement provided to The New York Times.
“That offer still stands,” her statement went on. “I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended.”
I think it matters a lot that this statement by Thomas is demonstrably and obviously false.
The creepy message is disturbing, but this statement is more disturbing.
Odie Hugh Manatee
They wear slip-ons or have sneakers with velcro straps. If they had shoelaces they would only end up hanging themselves trying to tie their shoes.
Ginny Thomas is creepy and her hubby is a creep, no wonder they’re a perfect match.
arguingwithsignposts
@chopper:
Slip-ons, velcro too complicated.
ETA: Damn you, OHM!! beat by seconds, no doubt.
gogol's wife
@Lauren:
Because the sequence “Thomas appointed to the court despite serious questions about his integrity”–“Bush vs. Gore decision” is a rather important historical chain of events.
Steve
My very reasonable conservative colleague, who thinks Sharron Angle is an idiot and that the “Ground Zero Mosque” is utterly unobjectionable (just to give you his bona fides), came into the office breathing fire this morning, ranting about how Anita Hill is a “scumbag publicity hound, just like she’s always been.” On and on like that. This is a fairly mild-mannered guy!
I wonder if it will ever occur to conservatives that making false accusations of sexual harrassment (or even true ones) is not exactly a career-advancing move for women in the professional class.
GregB
Let us not forget that the Republican Party nominated the first African-American ever to the Supreme Court in the person of Clarence Thomas. So that means they aren’t racist.
No, that is not a typo, that is what one of those often forwarded e-mails had alleged.
Yeah, the Republican boiler room mill erased Thurgood Marshall from the pages of history to promote their agenda.
dmsilev
@Kay: That statement to the Times is arguably the creepiest part of the entire episode. Apparently Mrs. Thomas thinks that “you should apologize for lying under oath about my husband twenty years ago” is “extending an olive branch”. She’s either delusional or pathological; based on her occupation as Professional Right-Winger, I’m going with the latter.
dms
someguy
It’s a good question. Clearly, 40% of the country are violent, racist, ignorant hillbillies of one sort or another – that’s the only way to explain the Republican base. Then another 15-20% are so stupid that they can barely remember how to breath, which is the only way to explain how independents break occasionally for the Republicans. Idiocracy was a fine movie, but it wasn’t about the future.
Walker
Which makes John’s title completely apt.
Allan
The Washington Post actually cracked the code this morning, though they made sure to bury the lede ten paragraphs in to this story:
Since I can’t remember all the tricks to unbold blockquotes in order to bold something for emphasis, I’ll just blockquote it.
This was a warning shot across Ms. McEwen’s bow to expect the full Anita Hill treatment.
JohnR
Exactly – when you’re the victim, anything goes. That’s always been the mindset of the worst movements in history – they’re forced to slaughter their enemies because their enemies threatened them first. All you have to do is invent a threat and you’re off and running. This pattern (self-pity as a basis for vicious, unhinged religiously-justified hatred) was pretty clear in the GOP even before the Clinton impeachment. Human nature, I guess – ignore the threat until it’s too late to do much about it.
Steve
@Lauren: It’s not really fair to call Thomas a carbon copy of Scalia. Thomas is a lot more extreme and definitely has his own judicial philosophy.
One example: while both of them were in the conservative majority in Citizens United, Scalia supports disclosure laws and even has written that political speech is worthless if people don’t stand behind what they say. Thomas was the one and only Justice to argue that disclosure laws are unconstitutional.
Another example: in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which addressed whether an American citizen can be “indefinitely detained” as a terrorist suspect, the majority said it was okay under these specific circumstances, but that the guy is entitled to some kind of military hearing at least. Scalia actually dissented from the LEFT, arguing that if the guy is an American citizen, you either charge him with treason or let him go, period. Thomas, again, was the one and only Justice to side 100% with the Bush Administration and say that the guy doesn’t even get a military hearing with minimal due process protections.
Fortunately, Thomas doesn’t often get other Justices to join his extreme positions. But he really is quite a bit more radical than the other conservatives, even Scalia.
Culture of Truth
The story gets more bizarre, not less. Her offer of an olive branch to accept Hill’s apology for being harassed by her weirdo husband still stands. WTF.
Roger Moore
It’s also grossly unfair to describe this as “Hill and her colleagues at Brandeis” trying to embarrass Thomas. AFAIK, Hill brought it up to the campus police, and it was the campus police who decided to get the FBI involved. Anita Hill != campus police. Brandeis faculty (Hill’s colleagues) != campus police. And I’m pretty sure that when all’s said and done, the Conservatives trying to make political hay out of this will have done far more to publicize it than the Liberals will have.
C Nelson Reilly
I’m sure Darrell Issa will get to the bottom of this
Hunter Gathers
One word : Velcro.
Scuffletuffle
@Doug Mataconis: Perhaps you could elaborate on how your thoughts about Anita Hill differ? In all honesty, I cannot see how a creepy, inaccurate and completely unsolicited phone call from Ginni Thomas to Anita Hill is in any way related to Anita Hill, her thoughts, actions, career, etc., etc. Surely this is all about Mrs. Thomas and not remotely about Anita Hill?
chopper
@Doug Mataconis:
it isn’t that – it’s that you talk about how silly it was to get the FBI involved and now hill has embarrassed thomas again (cause that’s what she does).
as if hill called the FBI herself. that wily minx – reporting what she thought was a prank call to campus security. how insidious!
maya
Let’s not forget that Rushbo is also guilty of embarrassing the Bush family lawn jockey when he ditched wife #3 who was joined to him for life, in the Holiest Sacrament of Matrimony, by same said Supreme Court Justice of the Peace, Clarence Thomas. I forgot if a Las Vegas chapel was involved or not.
Walker
@chopper:
That is because Doug’s “view” of Anita Hill is from fantasy land.
Ash Can
Shorter Doug Mataconis: It’s Anita Hill’s fault that Clarence Thomas is a dick.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Doug Mataconis:
We get it: You think Hill is a liar, that Ginny is naive for contacting her and that Hill took advantage of Ginny’s naivete and reported her call just to cause trouble for Thomas. I guess Anita has just been biding her time, sitting next to her
spiders webtelephone, waiting for the victim to approach before striking.As John said above, you whiners are always the victim. Always. You never do anything wrong, it’s always the fault of someone else. All Anita had to do was erase the call and you would have been happy.
Fucking idiot.
athena
This is another teabag distraction. This morning, the Teevee kept showing Ginny T’s crackpot website to demonstrate that she is a “political activist.” Free publicity.
When we need to concentrate on the economy, unemployment, etc. and what a Republican Congress would mean for those important issues, the Right keeps finding ways to distract the ever so distractable mainstream media.
kay
@dmsilev:
She’s a prominent, powerful member of the Tea Party and that statement is false. Mrs. Thomas spends a lot of time whining about her right to political speech and free expression. She’s absolutely fair game for a question on why she left that voice mail.
She can’t have it both ways. She can’t have the deference that comes with her association with Thomas while acting independently as a lobbyist. The question should be asked.
Allan
Also too, Doug, doesn’t it occur to you that this provides an interesting preview of life in America under an ascendant Teatard Party?
We’ll not only relitigate the Obama administration’s every action, but also those of Clinton and every other liberal who ever usurped the White House, AND every touchstone of the 20th century culture wars.
Get used to partying like it’s 1991.
Culture of Truth
Liberals are always trying to embarras wingnuts by publicizing the things they say and do.
It’s horrible, just horrible.
Larkspur
@Doug Mataconis: You wrote
Dude, really. Maybe you’re correct to say that you weren’t defending Ginni Thomas. But you are attacking Anita Hill. After 19 years, after the Mayer-Abramson book “Strange Justice”, after David Brock’s recantation and apology, and after having months to think about the weirdness of Ginni Thomas’s political endeavors, and the best you can do is conclude with a tired old baseless insinuation about Hill’s “history”?
Visualize a pie, my friend, a soft fluffy pie: I am smushing you with it.
NonyNony
@Allan:
Ah-ha. That might be the important piece of the puzzle. Some people were suggesting that Ginni Thomas was overreacting because some scandal was about the break and she knew it. This must be what they meant.
Scuffletuffle
@Ash Can: You said it so much better than I did!
Odie Hugh Manatee
Fix’t.
Allan
@Ash Can: Well and succinctly stated. If this were a Tweet you’d still have about 80 characters left.
Scott
as if hill called the FBI herself. that wily minx – reporting what she thought was a prank call to campus security. how insidious!
Well, she should’ve known it was the real deal. I mean, it’s not a secret that the teabaggers are fucking crazy. If I got a phone call out of the blue from some crazy loon who said she was Clarence Thomas’ wingnut wife, I wouldn’t assume it was a prank call — I’d say, “Sweet merciful cobblepot, Virginia Thomas is crazy as a shithouse rat, and she’s random-calling me to make these mad kookaburra calls at my voice mail!”
And then I’d go check the attic, ’cause the calls are probably coming from inside the house…
Mnemosyne
@Doug Mataconis:
Actually, you are, since you’ve apparently decided that Anita Hill is a lying publicity hound who’s persecuting poor Mrs. Thomas just because Mrs. Thomas drunk-dialed her on a Saturday morning.
If you have absolutely no idea why Anita Hill, who’s been hounded as a liar and a nutcase for the past 20 years, would fear for her safety when she gets a weird phone call from someone purporting to be Ginny Thomas, well, I can’t help someone who has absolutely no ability to understand how other people feel.
Larkspur
But thanks, Doug. It gave me flashbacks to when my congressperson at the time got so furious at Anita Hill’s mistreatment. I didn’t actually need a reminder to vote for Barbara Boxer, but still, thanks.
Brachiator
So, does this mean that Jenny Sanford is going to call up her ex-husband’s mistress and ask her to apologize for tempting her husband to stray from the path of righteousness and instead jogging onto the Appalachian Trail (Jenny Sanford: Ex-Husband Still Seeing Lover Maria Belen Chapur)?
Then, honey, why bring it up at all? These people used to like to claim the moral high ground. But nah, they’re just high.
It’s like Obama’s election has made all these conservatives to just totally lose all their shit.
mikefromArlington
“I seriously don’t understand how half this country ties their shoes in the morning.”
You obviously don’t watch Mr. Rogers neighborhood.
Culture of Truth
If everyone drunk dials Doug, will that make us the victims too?
vtr
Yeah, I’ve probably made an unfortunate drunk call or two, but if I had done so at 7:30 a. m. I’d be seeking help.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
The Time blog has a post reviewing some of the non-Anita Hill evidence that Clarence likes him some smut (and I have a feeling Ginni is the type who likes to pray away the urges, and that Clarence spends a lot of time in his “workshop” in the basement). If this does drag on, Ginni may be canceling a lot more interviews.
Martin
@Steve: Yeah, I forget who I was watching who basically explained that Scalia is an originalist with respect for precedent, while Thomas is an originalist who believes that all prior court decisions are completely worthless toward the question of constitutionality.
That sounded about right to me.
kay
The special Tea Party Rules are invoked, yet again.
Prominent political players who are accountable to no one.
All of the benefit of political power, but none of the risk.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
So does Doug think Hill used some kind of mind control to force Thomas to call her 20 years after the fact? That’s the only way I can see this being Hill’s fault in any way, shape or form.
I realize conservatives are used to getting a free pass to, say, send horse-on-woman porn to their whole e-mail list and still get to have their run for governor of New York taken seriously by the media, so I guess that’s why they’re enraged that Hill dared to bring Ginny Thomas’ insanity to light. Don’t liberals know they’re supposed to cover for the weirdness of the right wing or this dysfunctional relationship is never going to work out?
FreeAtLast
@Larkspur: And thanks for reminding me. I think I’ll send Barbara a small donation in honor of this.
Citizen_X
@Doug Mataconis:
No, how ’bout we don’t. You claimed that Anita Hill “has a history” of finding ways “to embarrass Clarence Thomas.” Either back that up with facts or fuck off.
Brachiator
from Addam’s Family Values (1993):
Amanda: Is that your bathing suit?
Wednesday: Is that your overbite?
Gary: Now, one of you will be the drowning victim and the other one gets to be our lifesaver.
Amanda: I’ll be the victim!
Wednesday: All your life.
gwangung
I really don’t think you’re thinking it through. And I really think you’re ignoring the facts in the situation.
It’s a sloppy piece of work, at best. Brain dead hackery at worst.
Martin
@Allan: Precisely. Every failed battle can be refought. I cannot wait for 3 weeks of nonstop coverage about how Democratic tyranny has always come at the tip of a White House Christmas card list.
Ash Can
@Scuffletuffle: I’m all for debate, but there’s the point where debate is useless and moot, and all you can do is call a fucking asshole a fucking asshole. This OTB putz reached that point and blew past it by 1) not only blaming the victim, but 2) trying to pass Clarence Thomas off as the actual victim. He can go eat shit and bark at the moon.
Florida Cynic
I blame liberals. They’re the ones who propagate the whole “but I’m a victim!” thing in the first place.
Now, please excuse me while I go back to withholding my labor as a protest. (It does count as a protest even if I was laid off, right?)
brendancalling
@Doug Mataconis:
what a liar you are. anyone who read your piece of shit post knows exactly what you were doing.
typical. lying. conservative.
you guys can’t help yourselves, because you’re sociopaths.
The Moar You Know
Huh. Republicans defending a white woman who is sleeping with a black man. Now I’ve seen it all.
Doug Mataconis
@Scuffetuffle
I didn’t believe Anita Hill then, and I don’t necessarily trust her motives now.
I’m sure that will just be another excuse to fire away at me, but that’s how I feel.
And anyone who thinks I’m a conservative isn’t paying attention.
Dog is My Co-Pilot
I find it more than creepy that after 20 years Ms. Hill gets a call from Ginni Thomas asking for an apology. Three words – bat. shit. crazy.
jimmiraybob
“Hill did not need to go to the media. She could’ve just hit delete on her voicemail and left it at that.”
I haven’t read that it was Hill that went to the media. Is that fact? Secondly, when the political activist wife of a supreme court judge is making inappropriate harassing phone calls. it should be in the public record. Thirdly, is Ginny’s motivation to create a situation favorable to raising funds for her Tea Party affiliated organization?
Ash Can
@Allan: This Mataconis guy isn’t just a horse’s ass, he needs a decent editor on top of it.
Guster
Hill would only owe Thomas an apology if in addition to having the effrontery to disclose his _private_ sexual harassment in publish, she’d also intruded her face and neck in the path of his shotgun blast.
gwangung
It’s just not supported by the facts, that’s all.
Citizen_X
@Doug Mataconis: Jesus Christ, nobody gives a fuck how you feel. If you’re going to accuse somebody–of what I don’t know; vague nefariousness?–you have to back. It. Up.
Jules
Either Thomas is losing it and this is some new way to stalk Hill or Ginny needs more publicity for her PAC.
I go with stalking because the Thomas’ are obsessed with Hill…still.
He has a life time appointment to the bench, she is involved in various nutjob, but lucrative, right wing groups and they cannot move past the fact that Anita Hill had the nerve stand up to them.
Ginny Thomas was horrible during the hearings about the uppity brown women who worked for Thomas.
Just ugly.
The whole way Hill was treated was ugly and hurt the cause of women who were being sexually harassed at work. Who wanted to be treated like Anita Hill if you accused a powerful man of acts like that?
bemused
Media has a little something to do with people not being able to tie their shoes in the morning. I just heard someone on msnbc ask why Ginnie Thomas “reached out” to Hill after all this time.
Runs off screaming.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Doug Mataconis:
Who cares if you are conservative, liberal or a fucking alien? All we are pointing out is that you are a fucking asshole (and idiot) for making the victim of the harassment the culprit and the culprit the victim of harassment.
IOW, you ignore reality to push your theory. I don’t know if you are a conservative but you sure write like one. One thing I do know is that you are one big fucking asshole, that’s for damned sure.
Punchy
And to think that I read this post to find out how Sullivan ties his shoes….
Guster
@Doug Mataconis: The problem is that you have no grounds for disbelieving her and choose to do so anyway. And the fact that you see ‘motives’ here is baffling–and right-wing–on the ‘granite countertop’ level.
Ash Can
@Doug Mataconis: Look, how’s about you show us some evidence that Anita Hill did anything, anything at all, other than to report a thoroughly fucked-up voice message to the campus police?
Larkspur
@Doug Mataconis:
Her motives? Her motives in doing what exactly? Referring it to the campus police because it was creepy, and if it hadn’t been from Mrs. Thomas, it could have been from someone stalkery, and potentially threatening?
Think what you want about Anita Hill, but please, in this instance, as you are pondering motives, ponder Thomas’s.
I am wasting my time. I could be volunteering for Barbara Boxer right now! Later, Doug.
Admiral_Komack
Clarence Thomas 2012
“A pubic hair in every Coke can…and his wife will leave you a voice mail message to drink it.”
Brachiator
@Doug Mataconis:
Are you high? Anita Hill back then is irrelevant.
And if you, you know, think about it, her current motives are also irrelevant.
Did she make up the phone call from Mrs Thomas? Or Did Mrs Thomas call her? Anita Hill doesn’t need a motive to live her life. Nor does she need a motive to report what appeared to be a crank call to the Campus Police.
Oh, the irony. If you keep your feelings to yourself, nobody gives a rat’s ass. Post your feelings in a public forum and now we can all speculate on your motives.
See how that works?
Chyron HR
You can’t trust these cokehead negress gangsta hos. That’s just how I feel.
I’m sure that will just be an excuse to call me “racist”, but I can’t help how I feel.
P.S. I am a geniune Nazi Communist who hates America, just like you libtards.
Pink Snapdragon
That’s why they make shoes with velcro straps.
brent
Did Hill accuse Thomas of sexual harassment? I don’t think she did. She responded to a subpeona from congress and testified as to the facts of her time working with Thomas as she was legally required to do. Those recollections may constitute sexual harassment depending upon who you ask but that was not a charge she brought. I seem to remember her saying later that while she felt Thomas’ behavior was inappropriate, she did not believe that they rose to the level of sexual harassment. The point is, I don’t see much in the way of evidence that Hill has ever done anything to aggressively push this issue forward. Hard to see her self interest in doing so especially in the context of the public spectacle that it has become.
kay
@Doug Mataconis:
It’s silly to pretend Ginni Thomas is some naive new member of the far Right, who was “tricked” By Hill. She’s not. She was actively involved in staffing the Bush White House prior to the decision in Bush v. Gore. She’s been a prominent political force for years now.
Why shouldn’t she be held responsible for her own actions?
singfoom
@Doug Mataconis:
So, because you didn’t believe her, that makes her motives suspect when a crazy person telephones her to ask for an apology that she has no right to ask for 20 years after the fact?
I don’t give a shit how you feel either, or whether you’re a conservative or not. I care that you’re intellectually lazy and not even trying to think this one through.
Mrs. Thomas called her. Anita Hill reported it because
A)It was really fucking creepy.
B)It was out of line to ask for an apology.
C)She couldn’t be sure it was Mrs. Thomas. In the case of it being a prank, better to be safe than sorry.
I just don’t see how her motives come into this. I’m more interested in Mrs. Thomas’ motives. She’s the one who instigated this action.
But go ahead, blame the victim, regardless of your political position…
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Doug Mataconis:
“motives”? She was minding her own business when the pervert’s crackpot wife decided to stir up some shit in a creepy, stalkerish way. And if you didn’t believe Anita Hill, and the other women who told the truth about Judge Longdong, the kindest thing to say is you weren’t paying attention.
chopper
@Doug Mataconis:
what are her ‘motives’ now? do you honestly think that in reporting what anybody else in her shoes would clearly consider a prank call to campus security, she was deliberately aiming to embarrass clarence thomas? if so, you’re a loon.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Conservative activist Ginny Thomas for taking us all back to 1991. Now an entire group of young voters (and soon to be voters), who grew up assuming that women belong in the workplace and were too young to experience the hearings, are learning how conservatives really feel about working women.
Violet
@Doug Mataconis:
Whether you believe Hill or not, it’s horrible that Ginni Thomas contacted her in that manner. If Ginni Thomas truly was looking for some kind of reconciliation or apology or closure on the issue, she could have contacted Hill behind the scenes, out of the limelight. Intermediaries could have made overtures, etc.
But no. She not only contacts Hill herself, she doesn’t even get her in the phone and leaves a voicemail. It’s so amateurish it’s ridiculous. Which means there’s got to be more to it than actually trying to bury the hatchet.
What “motives” are you talking about? It’s not like she’s running for political office or something.
Guster
@kay: Thomas is a victim. Now Mataconis is, too. If only there were a rule …
Tancrudo
Yeah, Hi, Ginny, it’s Anita. I’d just like to say I’m very sorry. Very sorry my good name was dragged through the mud by a bunch of sexist bullies in the Senate, Very sorry I got the third degree instead of your sexual offender of a husband. Very sorry indeed that your dirtbag moron of a husband got elevated to the highest court in the land instead of being disbarred and doing community service. I am truly sorry that instead of making a concrete contribution to society as he might after rehabilitation he is instead taking giant craps on this country and our constitution from his perch atop a judge’s chair in Washington. Soorrryyy!!
soonergrunt
@Doug Mataconis:
What motive do you ascribe to Anita Hill for Ginny Thomas calling her?
…
I feel all sorts of things all the time, but I try to stop and think before I say something monumentally stupid out of a rush of emotions. You might want to try that.
…
I think you’re a dumbass for posting what you did. I think you post at a conservative site. 1+1 = 2.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Doug Mataconis:
So do you think she’s lying this time too?
People like you frighten me. You’d all be happier living in North Korea.
John PM
@Doug Mataconis: #72
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think that you are a piss-poor writer and, by extension, a piss-poor lawyer. I am basing those thoughts on a) your column, b), your responses at OTB, and c) your responses on this post.
Also, on OTB you describe yourself as a libertarian, but in reality that just means you are a conservative in sheep’s clothing.
morzer
@Doug Mataconis:
And you wonder why decent people despise glibertarians.
sparky
my guess would be that some person from outside the US ties their laces and a think tanker then writes and publishes a blog post about how they manage it in spite of their wealth, after which time they fire the lace-tyer for not being in the country legally.
ps: the Sully is looking through the wrong end of the scope at class warfare post & thread were pretty good.
pps: i am not and never have been much of a party person, so i am prolly never gonna exhibit the rah-rah it requires, nor am i likely to keep my dissent private in every forum. still, it is possible to criticize Obama and Congress (moreso the Senate than the House) and (yes, and) think it somewhat better to vote and do some GOTV for the Ds than sitting home with one’s thumb buried somewhere or other.
thomas Levenson
@Doug Mataconis: You write “I don’t necessarily trust her motives now.”
There’s a word for that kind of locution. You’re weaseling. Actually, weaselling squared. You don’t “necessarily” trust her…which means you don’t feel required to trust her but you might anyway (weasel * 1).
And then you don’t trust her motives “now.” Trust is your business, I guess, but if you are making the implication that someone is acting in malice, you have to generate some evidence for this, else you are writing not out of knowledge but pre-existing assumptions. To use such an assumption to justify the claim that someone, Hill, performed an action for a reason is to state as your conclusion an assumption not in evidence. That’s weasel*weasel or weasel squared.
And finally, with a quick check of the videotape, there’s the fact that Hill simply reported what lots of people would have concluded was a prank call to the immediate agency to which you report such things, the dread Brandeis campus police. Pretty damn efficient way of ensuring that Clarence Thomas and his crazy, grifting wife get harmed, don’t you think?
Finally, just a word of advice from a writer and a teacher of writing: “That’s how I feel” is not a persuasive argument.
Bad faith is the kindest thing I would write in the margin of anyone turning in a paper with what you’ve said here included.
To my colleagues, I might add (channelling the late great Herb Caen), “The wheel’s spinning, but the hamster’s dead.”
All of which to say that, yes, you are getting slammed, and you deserve it. I don’t know or care if you are a conservative, (or rather, a radical, as the movement actually is), but I can say you are, as John has said, pretty damn whiny; I’d add that I cannot decide on the evidence to date whether you are more knave than fool, but it seems clear to me that you partake of both.
thomas Levenson
This is a place holder to avoid the shame of double click posting.
Barb (formerly gex)
At least he is honest and admits that he is writing from his feelings about Anita Hill. You know right wingers – they hate uppity women.
kay
@Guster:
Thomas just canceled an interview she booked to promote her work as a lobbyist for the Tea Party.
Interesting timing, that cancellation.
They’re incredible, ya know? All the upside of being powerful political actors, but none of the accountability that goes along with it. She lobs a grenade at Hill then runs and hides.Typical Tea Party cowardice.
Doug Mataconis
I can see exactly where this is headed.
The people who hate Clarence Thomas have rallied around Anita Hill and are convinced that Virginia Thomas was either stalking or threatening Hill. Based on the content of the voicemail as reported, that just strikes me as absurd.
If you think of Anita Hill as a “victim” that probably makes sense. But, not all of us think of her in that manner.
The people who love Clarence Thomas are rallying around Virginia Thomas.
I’m somewhere in the middle.
There was no rational reason for Virginia Thomas to call Anita Hill at 7:30 on a Saturday morning 19 years after the hearings ended.. That’s just odd, as I said in the post.
At the same time, to the extent this must turn into a discussion of a twenty year old controversy, my opinion of Anita Hill today is influenced as much by my opinion of her honesty during those hearings as yours is. Obviously, we differ on that point and no amount of yelling is going to change that.
Ash Can
And what is the deal here anyway? This is the second OTB guy this week who’s come in here all butthurt after getting his ears pinned back for writing something asinine. Is OTB running a butthurt Olympics? Is it blogwhore sweeps month?
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Doug Mataconis:
You don’t like Anita Hill because you’re a conservative. End of story.
Face
And John’s post title is proven once again.
Barb (formerly gex)
Also interesting is the instinct to delete what could be evidence. What a douche.
You can’t have honest discourse with anyone on the right at all it seems. Up is down.
Anita Hill aggressively and with malice continued to exist and have various forms of electronic communication. She obviously did so to makes sure that Ginny Thomas would be able to reach her. Thanking the sweet lord for voicemail, Anita laid her trap. Then she insidiously reported aharassing call to campus police, insisting that it be escalated all the way to the FBI.
My head wants to explode – if “smart” and “reasonable” people can be taught to think this way and not even notice it, we are fucked.
daryljfontaine
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
If he won’t accept the conservative label, I’d be willing to compromise on “asshole.”
D
Michael Scott
And what’s truly sad is the fact that there were at least three other witnesses whose sworn statements were taken but that you never heard about (thanks so much, Joe Biden!) corroborating Anita Hill’s version of events:
http://tinyurl.com/2ddswej
This left the utterly false impression that Anita Hill stood alone with her accusations — exactly the propaganda the GOP wanted to be accepted, in place of the truth.
John PM
@thomas Levenson: #104
As a lawyer and previously a TA in legal writing, I second this statement. Of course, law schools don’t do a good job of teaching legal writing, so perhaps Mr. Mataconis can blame George Mason for poorly preparing him for the real world. This would have the double bonus of allowing him to claim the victim mantel again.
soonergrunt
@thomas Levenson: lol
Shade Tail
@Doug Mataconis #108:
No, you can’t. You’d like to say that, because you’re whining about being called out, but you’re just inventing a new black-and-white “us vs. them” narrative to satisfy your silly ego.
Anita Hill stood up when nobody knew either her or Clarence Thomas and told a story about what happened to her. Immediately, people like you started viciously smearing her and, without any justification, saying that she was lying.
20 fucking years later, you’re still at it.
It’s little wonder my gender is more democratic than yours. You condescend to us just like you used to back in the good-ol-boys era, and then wonder why self-respecting women refuse to vote the way you do.
Culture of Truth
What could possibly motivate Anita Hill, after all of these years, to still own a telephone???
Cackalacka
@kay:
Wow, that’s weird-
I was listening to the begging of On Point on the way to the bank/lunch earlier this week, where they promoted this, and then wondered to myself why they were talking about something unrelated when I came back from the ATM.
I should have known it was flakey-teabagger syndrome.
different church-lady
(comment obliterated because I can’t do reading comprehension today, apparently…)
The Republic of Stupidity
The Right Wing’s dirty little secret: Birkenstocks…
Allan
@brent: Ding ding ding! We have a winner.
Doug Mataconis is accusing an American citizen of perjury without citing any evidence. That’s just how he rolls.
morzer
@Doug Mataconis:
Show us one place in her testimony where Hill was caught lying – based on real evidence.
singfoom
@Doug Mataconis:
I usually try to stop at name calling, but you’re really a fucking idiot on this one.
You question Anita Hill’s motives for going to security and the FBI but never even stop to think about Mrs. Thomas’ motives for calling Hill.
You think Hill is being whiny and awful for going to security and she could have just deleted the voicemail and gone on with her life. Why did she have to drag the media into this?
Hey asshole, ask yourself a quick question:
Who profits from this publicity?
Which one of these women is currently involved with fundraising for a political group.
Here’s a hint: It’s not Hill.
Fuck off.
chopper
@Doug Mataconis:
fail. utter fail.
no, ginny thomas wasn’t threatening hill. i wouldn’t call it stalking either, though i would call it creepy and full of chutzpah.
the reason we’re rallying around hill is that she didn’t do anything wrong. she got what anybody in her shoes would consider a prank phone call and reported it to the campus police. that’s all she did.
singfoom
@Doug Mataconis:
I usually try to stop at name calling, but you’re really a fucking idiot on this one.
You question Anita Hill’s motives for going to security and the FBI but never even stop to think about Mrs. Thomas’ motives for calling Hill.
You think Hill is being whiny and awful for going to security and she could have just deleted the voicemail and gone on with her life. Why did she have to drag the media into this?
Hey asshole, ask yourself a quick question:
Who profits from this publicity?
Which one of these women is currently involved with fundraising for a political group?
Here’s a hint: It’s not Hill.
Fuck off.
EDIT: I can haz question mark.
Gordon Schumway
@Lauren: My Dear Lauren! You are missing out on two great additions that the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings added to the American phraseology:
“Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?”
and
“large-breasted women having sex with animals”.
soonergrunt
@Doug Mataconis: I’m just intensely curious as to what motive you ascribe to Anita Hill in regards to Ginny Thomas calling her?
Doug Mataconis
@soonergrunt:
You have an opinion on Hill’s veracity in 1991. I have a different opinion. You can call me all the names you want, but you’re not going to change my mind and I’m not going to change yours.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Doug Mataconis: I guess when you’re a moron, you have no idea of what a moron you are.
wasabi gasp
Can’t wait to see the creativity of the “Anita Hill Should Apologize” protest signs at the next Testes Dunk.
Citizen_X
@Doug Mataconis: In the name of L. Ron Hubbard, man, stop fucking digging!
Violet
@Doug Mataconis:
You are not addressing the “I don’t necessarily trust her motives” statement you made upthread. What in the world do you mean by that? Anita Hill didn’t initiate that phone call; Ginni Thomas called her. She reported it so it could be checked out. What do you “not necessarily trust” about that? What “motives” are you suggesting she has?
It would freak me out if the wife of a man I accused of sexually harassing me phoned me up many years later asking me to apologize. I can imagine why she felt the phone call should at least be checked out to see if it was legitimate.
chopper
@Barb (formerly gex):
obviously it’s hill’s fault, for having a telephone.
PurpleGirl
@Mattminus: And at their office on a Saturday. Leave a surprise for Monday morning… oh boy.
soonergrunt
@Culture of Truth:
@chopper:
Manipulative Bitch! {/mataconis}
morzer
@Doug Mataconis:
Show us one place in Anita Hill’s testimony where she was caught lying – based on real evidence.
thomas Levenson
@Doug Mataconis: OK, I get it. Much more fool than knave.
What a number of us have been trying to tell you is that someone’s opinion of either Hill or Thomas doesn’t bear on this situation. What V. Thomas did and what Hill did in response are the only relevant issues at this point.
Just to try once more: V. Thomas made the grown-up equivalent of a 4 a.m. drunk-text. Hill, reasonably enough, believed that the real V. Hill, a presumptive grown up with whom she had had no contact for decades, would never have done such a thing, and reported to the pertinent authority the possibility of a crank or harrassing call. It turns out the V. Thomas was as crazy as Hill assumed she wasn’t, and is now embarassed, with cause, at the public revelation of her looniness. This has the collateral effect of embarassing her husband, who is in this instance at least, as far as anyone knows, genuinely the unknowing victim of a delusional woman, his wife.
So, just to get it into words of few syllables, suitable for the meanest intelligence, your opinion of Anita Hill’s personal integrity is irrelevant to any discussion of what happened here. The facts are on the record, and they contradict your conclusion.
Hill did not set out to embarrass the Thomases. They embarrassed themselves. And now you (and who knows who else) are trying to blame that fact on someone who has already taken an enormous amount of public criticism on the matter of Clarence Thomas — and who on the record now has done nothing to earn that blame.
Which is why you should be ashamed of yourself. And more, if it is your “feelings” that cause you to believe that Hill is and was a lying scumbag, and that Thomas was a blameless, sexually continent paragon of moral and judicial virtue…then the fact that the record here shows that Hill behaved properly and V. Thomas brought the crazy just might suggest you need to revisit those “feelings.”
Trust me, grasshopper: reality is much more comfortable than the padded walls of the self-built asylum in which you now dwell.
Doug Mataconis
@Allan:
I am saying I did not find her testimony credible.
Again, rehashing a 19 year old argument really strikes me as stupid.
Guster
@Doug Mataconis: Okay Doug, I’m trying to be polite here, and encourage the non-yelling, but:
1) You’re claiming that Anita Hill lied twenty years ago, without evidence. That’s either incredibly slipshod or pretty slimy.
2) You seem unwilling to acknowledge the fact that Hill acted, in this case, perfectly sensibly. The fact that you seem unwilling to acknowledge that, but instead are ascribing nebulous ‘motives’ to her, makes it pretty clear that you’re grinding a fairly repellent axe.
(And I’m not sure what the legal definition of ‘stalking’ is, or if this rises to the level of a less-rigorous definition, but this is more than ‘just odd.’)
Larkspur
@Doug Mataconis:
Only you can see it, then. You are the one who is making this into a good vs. evil vengeance drama.
Ginni Thomas, a right-wing political activist who is married to a Supreme Court Justice, made a strange, inappropriate, ill-timed, and extremely imprudent call to Anita Hill, regarding an event that occurred 19 years ago. This is the topic.
What is not the topic are your feelings as expressed by insinuations about Hill’s “motives” for announcing that she was “threatened” or “stalked”. This is your fiction. You are trying to create a chunk of reality and make everyone act in it. You lose. I am reality-based, and have been for many years.
Doug Mataconis
@thomas Levenson:
Did you bother to read the part where I said there was no rational reason for Virginia Thomas to make that phone call ?
The Republic of Stupidity
Doug Mataconis
Are you serious?
Ginny Thomas makes a phone call to Anita Hill NINETEEN years later, asking for an apology… and anyone who speaks up for Hill is a HATER… and objections to Thomas’ behavior are absurd?
YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING US!!!!!!!!!
Culture of Truth
Doug isn’t calling Hill a liar, he simply doesn’t trust her motives in telling the truth.
Which makes sense, since conservatives often wonder what would motivate someone to do that.
Corner Stone
@Doug Mataconis: I can also see where this is headed.
From one of your replies at OTB:
Or shorter Doug: “Lie back and take it. Again.”
Cackalacka
@Doug Mataconis:
“Again, rehashing a 19 year old argument really strikes me as stupid. ”
Well then, son, get on the horn and call up Ginny Thomas.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Doug Mataconis: You are a conservative.
Who here made this a rally against Thomas? Few, if any. Mostly you got called on your attitude, your up is down view on things. You have not addressed at all our concerns about how you twisted the facts.
She called campus police. End of story. What the fuck motives are there to question?
I see that now you are a victim too, as is Clarence Thomas. Who knew that Anita Hill could hit Clarence and Ginny Thomas, and you, by basically doing what is reasonable by any sane measure.
Chyron HR
@Doug Mataconis:
Help! Help! I’m being high-tech lynched, just like Clarence Thomas!
The Republic of Stupidity
@Doug Mataconis:
And yet here… you… are…
Ironies abound…
Doug Mataconis
@Guster:
I am saying I didn’t find her to be a credible witness. That’s a matter of opinion.
And unless you believe the “Anita Hill as victim” meme — which I do not — taking this to campus security strikes me as an over-reaction.
soonergrunt
@PurpleGirl: It’s the telephonic equivalent of the poop in the burning bag on the front porch gag.
Jay in Oregon
@Sentient Puddle:
When Ginny Thomas says “forgiving her”, she of course means “making that bitch suffer and feeling vindicated”.
RedKitten
Exactly. I’m guessing that Anita Hill has a wealth of experience in being on the receiving end of threatening phone calls — can you blame her for taking them seriously?
Allan
@Doug Mataconis: It’s funny how you keep harping on not wanting to relitigate the hearings, while continuing to insist she’s a perjurer contra any evidence other than that your spidey-sense tingles when Anita talks.
This is what makes you an asshole.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Doug Mataconis: “I can see exactly where this is headed.”
You let your preconceptions lead in your writing. You aren’t interested in the facts, period. Anita Hill did nothing wrong but you insist that this whole episode is her fault. Ginny did something wrong (and stupid) and you go out of your way to impugn Hill and question her motives while dismissing Ginny’s making the phone call as “naive”.
You completely ignore the fact that if Ginny hadn’t made this call (and you weren’t such a fucking asshole) then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. No, with you it’s ‘damn that Anita Hill!’ for her wanting to ruin your good buddies Ginny and Clarence.
I would say that as far as your writing goes, you must have Peter Principled out quite a long time ago. Glibertarian indeed.
ETA:
@Doug Mataconis: “I am saying I didn’t find her to be a credible witness. That’s a matter of opinion.”
And I am saying that I don’t find you to be a credible writer. While that is a matter of opinion I feel quite safe in saying that this seems to be pretty much the consensus over here.
morzer
@Doug Mataconis:
You don’t have anything here except rabid prejudice against Anita Hill, do you? You still haven’t offered any evidence that she was lying – and that means you are simply taking an unsupported personal opinion and using it to smear her. Some lawyer you are!
Corner Stone
It all makes sense to me now.
Anita Hill, sometimes referred to as “Hill”.
Hillary Clinton, sometimes referred to as “Hill”.
Both hated with the heat of a thousand suns by conservatives, glibertarians, or whatever the fuck they are hiding behind today.
Teh light, I haz it nao.
Face
You could feed an entire farm with that much straw.
J.W. Hamner
@Doug Mataconis:
Just because you differ with the Tea Party on the awesomeness of Sarah Palin and whether homosexuals should burn in hellfire does not make you some sort of independently minded even handed commentator. The distinction between libertarian and conservative is one without difference on 95% of issues.
Doug Mataconis
@Barb (formerly gex):
Yea it’s really nice how everyone jumped to a conclusion about what I thought about this story based on one paragraph.
I’ve said what I think, I don’t feel the need to re-state it and since it’s obvious that most of you disagree with it there’s really no point in going back in forth over this like it was a 1991 Usenet flame war.
Jules
@Doug Mataconis:
Then why are you here discussing it?
thomas Levenson
@Doug Mataconis: Methinks I strike a nerve. Again, for the slow among us: It doesn’t matter that you said V. Hill is not rational. The question before us is your claim that Hill’s actions were intended to embarass Clarence Thomas.
That’s what you have to deal with, and it is the fact that you can’t that is making your visits to this thread so painful to watch. It’s like watching the Mary Tyler Moore show and waiting for Ted to say the next bonecrushingly dumb thing. You know it’s coming, and you just can’t wire his jaw shut in time.
My suggestion: say that you need to think this one through a little more, and slink away.
Cheers
Bob L
@Doug Mataconis:
Again, Ginni Thomas was the one that called Hill and Ginni Thomas confirmed it, You would have your point if Hill was talking to Ginni Thomas first.
As for you personal trust in Hill, we care, why? You’re here in a Liberal site, you’re job is to convince us, not for us to convince you. The Right says Hill is wrong, beyond the typical conservative hacky of “she’s liberal so she just HAS to be wrong what ever the facts are” there has been no argument for that.
Anton Sirius
@Doug Mataconis:
Doug, how many extra donations do you think Liberty Central has received in the last 24 hours, after the name ‘Anita Hill’ became newsworthy again?
The fact that you even wrote your piece without mentioning Liberty Central at all struck me as, well, let’s say naive. Ginny Thomas is not a bored housewife placing a call after one too many glasses of sherry.
chopper
@Doug Mataconis:
so this current news is really just a cover, right? for you to rehash what happened 20 years ago and hate on hill for it.
what hill did now doesn’t matter. what ginny thomas did now doesn’t matter. what matters is that you don’t like hill for her testimony in front of congress 2 decades ago.
jesus, you sound like homer simpson talking about ned flanders.
Doug's Boss
Son, take the rest of the day off. Start fresh in the morning.
fasteddie9318
Are people familiar with the South Part episode when the Mormon family moves to town and narrates the story of Joseph Smith along with theme music? Some people should have that same tune attached to them.
“Doug Mataconis made a blog post, dum dum dum dum dum…”
daryljfontaine
@Doug Mataconis:
Leave aside the motives of Anita Hill in 1991, you prevaricating waste of carbon.
A person who claims to be the spouse of someone you gave testimony about 19 years ago calls you up and strongly suggests you apologize for the nature of your testimony.
(1) If this person is not the person they claim to be, then the call is a prank with overtones of harassment.
(2) If this person is the person they claim to be, then the motivations of the caller come into question, revisiting an issue left dormant for well over a decade. The call can easily be seen as a form of harassment.
Reporting the call to campus security is the prudent option, not the Evil Scary Motives option. Whether it is a politically motivated prank or a sincere “strong suggestion” from the caller, the call is inappropriate in 100% of circumstances. She did not report the call to the media. She did not report the call to the FBI. She reported the call to the first line of defense against phone related harassment.
Most importantly: Anita Hill did not force Ginni Thomas to call her.
Read that sentence again until it sinks through that thick, thick skull of yours.
There is no situation in which Ginni Thomas is the goddamn victim here, and your pretense that there is, is what makes people label you an asshole. Deservedly.
D
chopper
@Doug Mataconis:
but that’s your whole argument, rehashing a 19 year old argument. you’re viewing what happened just now at complete odds with 1) reality and 2) basic reasoning because you can’t focus on anything but what happened 19 years ago, and even then your reading of what happened back then appears to be fundamentally flawed.
seek help.
Jay in Oregon
@JohnR:
Which reminds me of this article:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201002/victim-identity-im-not-okay-youre-more-not-okay
Cackalacka
Note to self: never visit ‘outsidethebeltway.’
Trolling professionally demeans the audience, asshole.
Ash Can
@Doug Mataconis: So you’re using this current news item to rehash just how much you hate Anita Hill for saying bad things in 1991 about your hero/someone you like/a fellow member of the male gender, and it’s everyone else’s fault in the universe — especially Anita Hill’s — for making you rehash it because you oh-so-hate to rehash it?
Citizen X is right: STOP DIGGING.
thomas Levenson
@Cackalacka: Word.
Midnight Marauder
@Lauren:
You answered yourself.
morzer
Why do I strongly suspect that Mataconis is going to slink off into the darkness without ever offering anything more than his obvious personal hatred of Anita Hill as a defense for his idiotic attack on her attempt to ensure her personal safety after being harassed by an obsessive kook? Is there now a Mataconis Rule that makes black women ineligible to ever be harassed or to ensure their safety?
What might be the basis for such a rule? Hmm?
jibeaux
I’ve said it before, but “conservatism” isn’t a political philosophy anymore, it’s something meriting an entry in the DSM-IV. Maybe someday, in more enlightened times, it will replace transsexual identity as an identifiable mental disorder.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Doug Mataconis:
Oh yes, what could this hysterical female have been thinking? unleashing The Hounds of Hell that I’m sure make up the Brandeis University Campus Police, the baddest ass bunch of em-badged outlaws this side of the A-Team (and I mean the real A-Team, from the TeeVee, with Mr T, not that pussy-assed remake). I’m sure Ginni took to her fainting couch when she heard some rent-a-cops five hundred miles away were on the case (actually, I suspect Ginni was face down in a puddle of puked up creme de menthe by the time Anita Hill called Paul Bart)
A Conservative Teacher
I’m sure you all think that Thomas is guilty, but just because a guy is black, doesn’t mean that he harbors secret thoughts of raping women. To think that is pretty racist. And in the absence of any proven evidence at all (repeat- there is zero evidence to support Hill’s accusations), to think otherwise is to condemn people and find them guilty without any evidence at all. Liberals are supposed to assume people are innocent until proven guilty, so quit being hypocrites.
Doug Mataconis
@Ash Can:
And the left is using it to rehash how much the hate Clarence Thomas, and throwing in hatred for the Tea Party movement to boot.
Same story, different day.
It’s really getting quite boring actually
Corner Stone
@RedKitten:
Yeah. We’re talking about a group of people who hounded a 12 year old boy to the point of inspecting his kitchen counter tops. Just for saying “thanks for helping my family”.
I imagine this is not the first call Ms. Hill has received from people with that kind of mentality.
Guster
@kay:
I’m pretty sure that, the way they see things, the upside _is_ the lack of accountability.
ChrisS
I find it odd that there are very few conservatives in the right-wing blogosphere.
“The people who hate Clarence Thomas …”
Why is it always personal with the right-leaning ideological warriors? Hate is a strong, emotion. I disagree with 99% of Thomas’s legal opinions and think that he was largely appointed as a token. Don’t hate the guy and it really has very little to do with why his very politically active wife makes creepy phone calls demanding apologies.
The battle has been over for nearly two decades, but she fires a shot across the DMZ as a peace offering?
Ash Can
@A Conservative Teacher:
Aaaand BOOM, we have the race card. Who’s going to Godwin this thread and hit the trifecta for us?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@A Conservative Teacher:
Go back to your home school, fool.
walter sobchak
@Doug Mataconis:
And in my opinion, you’re a right-wing hack, locked into tribal hatreds irrelevant to the current discussion, who lacks even the courage and self-awareness to admit that you are right wing.
The difference, of course, is that on this thread, there’s evidence supporting my opinion.
fasteddie9318
@Doug Mataconis:
Says the guy who’s devoted two days to the story.
morzer
@Doug Mataconis:
Still refusing to provide evidence? What is it with people like you, who think they can deny black women the right to ensure their personal safety?
daryljfontaine
@Ash Can: If it weren’t for the site behind that commenter I would have pegged the comment as a DougJ spoof troll.
D
different church-lady
If I’ve got this right, then Hill didn’t go to the media. She went to the cops.
And she went to the cops because she thought someone might be pretending to be the wife of a supreme court justice.
And the reason she assumed someone was pretending was because the damn message was too whackadoodle to be for real.
So, you know, yes, you’re perfectly right: Hill shouldn’t have done the thing she didn’t do.
dhd
It’s always a good time to post this, but especially when the subject of Clarence Thomas being embarrassed comes up.
jibeaux
@Corner Stone:
Well, no, but if she’d just provide the requested countertop details, that would be the end of it.
Culture of Truth
Hill owning a telephone is like gays being in the military – sure they act all innocent, but really they are out there, tempting conservatives with their irresistibly seductive ways, and then, when conservatives resistance is finally overcome, the liberal pounces and exposes the hapless conservative, victimized yet again by his or her own naivete, innocence, and trusting ways.
So sad.
Corner Stone
@Doug Mataconis: Good God man.
Ginny Thomas is a powerful political operative who by the by happens to be married to a SCOTUS.
How is this incident, which was completely and utterly sparked by Ms. Thomas, to be understood without knowing these key components?
Baffling that you somehow don’t find these things important.
Cackalacka
@A Conservative Teacher:
Oh, good. Another troll pimping their site.
Fuck off, asshole. This isn’t about Mr. Thomas, but his flaky wife, her drunk dialing, and conservatism’s perpetual victimhood.
Lemme guess, a conservativeteacher.blogspot.com probably doesn’t allow dissenting comments to be posted. Am I right?
fasteddie9318
@A Conservative Teacher:
Conservative Teacher, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this forum is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Shade Tail
@A Conservative Teacher (#176):
You mean besides this?
Jules
@A Conservative Teacher:
WTH?
Tom Levenson
@Doug Mataconis: Can I just say that you are a coward as well as a craptastic writer and thinker?
You’ve had your ass handed to you by many people here, starting with John. You’ve “defended” yourself by saying how much you dislike Anita Hill, and that the fact that others here (myself included) think ill of Clarence Thomas shows that any criticism of your argument is just a tit for tat.
Read what has been said above. It’s OK if your lips move while you do so. Take your time.
While I admit that on the evidence it is unlikely, self-education is always possible, if you apply yourself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@A Conservative Teacher:
other than the (at least three) other women who report similar behavior from Justice Wanksalot, including one who’s about to release a book, and the many self-ID’d friends and supporters who say that the wound-up old perv likes porn and dirty jokes, exactly as Anita Hill reported?
brent
@Doug Mataconis:
And unless you believe the “Anita Hill as victim” meme—- which I do not—- taking this to campus security strikes me as an over-reaction.
Reply
But Doug, you are not accusing her of “over-reacting.” That would be a stupid enough accusation in and of itself, but you went a bit further than that, didn’t you? You accused her of calling campus security to embarrass Clarence Thomas. There are no facts that can be marshalled to support this accusation and you clearly realize it. Yet you persist. This is an extremely unconvincing argument you have put forth.
different church-lady
@Doug Mataconis: Yes, Doug, that’s the genius of Virginia Thomas’s little outreach program here. Two days ago nobody was thinking about what Clarence Thomas may or may not have done 3 decades ago. And now everyone is! Brilliant, Ginni, just brilliant!
Cackalacka
@Doug Mataconis:
And yet, you’re still here.
I want to take a moment to commend the readers on this forum.
Nobody replied to this troll until his second vapid trolling.
That’s good discipline. Not great, but still solid by any measure.
RedKitten
You, sir, are an imbecile.
Even if you believe that Anita Hill was a lying McLyingpants back in ’91, are you really so stupid as to believe that she got this call from Ginny Thomas and immediately thought, “Hm…this is a great opportunity to embarrass that bastard! Imma call Campus Security! Yeah, that’ll show that Supreme Court Justice! I’ll sic Campus Security on his ass, and then Campus Security will call the FBI, and then they’ll get the media involved! After all, there’s NOTHING I want more than to have that period of my life dragged through the media again!”
I mean seriously. Wake the fuck up. Whether you believe her ’91 testimony or not, the fact of the matter is that Anita Hill would have received a metric shit-ton of threats to her person for a very long time afterwards. And you think that she overreacted by calling Campus Security when she receives a weird-ass phone call from someone claiming to be Ginny Thomas?
You’re an embarrassment.
gogol's wife
@A Conservative Teacher:
“there is zero evidence to support Hill’s accusations”
Her sworn testimony was credible. She had no reason to lie (the consequences for her life and career were difficult and could have been devastating). There were other witnesses to corroborate her story who were not allowed to testify. One of the people who conspired to smear her has since confessed.
Tom Levenson
@Ash Can: I will! The conservative trope of the big lie (Hill harms Thomas!) is exactly what Goebbels set out to do as conscious strategy when he first took up the post of Gauleiter of Berlin in 1927.
Good enough?
Midnight Marauder
@Citizen_X:
This would be pretty awesome at the top of the site. Just sayin’.
Brachiator
@Doug Mataconis:
Wrong on all counts. Your motive detection system is seriously defective. Virginia Thomas’ phone call was freaking creepy. This does not imply either stalking or a threat. Further, that she should make this call because she believes that either she or her husband is due an apology is delusional.
This would be the case even if the call was made to the ex-wife of Tiger Woods by any of his alleged mistresses.
The call and Mrs Thomas’ explanation about why the call was made are bizarre without regard to politics.
chopper
@A Conservative Teacher:
lol, you must think hill is a liar, but just because a woman is black doesn’t mean that she’s a liar under oath. to think that is pretty racist. what’s up with that? why are you such a racist?
Guster
@Doug Mataconis:
If you think she lied–as you clearly do, because you think that being harassed is a ‘meme’–that’s not a matter of opinion, that’s a matter of fact.
Thinking she overreacted by taking this to campus security is an opinion. It’s groundless, but it’s an opinion.
RedKitten
@daryljfontaine: Nicely said.
Tancrudo
@Violet: I’m guessing that Clarence is still yelling out “ANITA!!” during sex when he bangs his old lady. Wouldn’t you be pissed off too?
Mnemosyne
@Doug Mataconis:
What does your opinion about Anita Hill’s testimony have to do with the fact that Virginia Thomas called her 20 years later to demand an apology? You keep saying that like it’s relevant in any way whatsoever.
Thomas made the call. She admits she made the call. Why are you trying to throw up dirt and somehow imply that Hill is lying about the call since (in your opinion) she lied 20 years ago?
morzer
Has Doug Whataclownis finally buggered off?
soonergrunt
@A Conservative Teacher: I hope to hell you don’t teach logic and critical thinking, or anything approaching science, because there was a distinct lack of logic, critical thinking, or evidence gathering/testing/etc. in that little drive-by you just did.
For my part as a whiter-than-white whitey-mcpaleface, it was probably the three other sworn statements that backed up what Hill was saying in her sworn testimony under the the penalty of perjury that convinced me that she was telling the truth.
Try harder.
Paris
Uppity negroes are not supposed to go running to authorities everytime an angry whitey drunk dials at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday insinuating something. Its nothing I want to worry my beautiful mind about.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cackalacka: “Lemme guess, a conservativeteacher.blogspot.com probably doesn’t allow dissenting comments to be posted. Am I right? “
Like most conservative sites, there is no
dissentcommentary allowed. It’s hard work to blog and they don’t need anyone messing up their perfectly good story with things like facts.It seems that Dougie has the same problem with facts in his story. Also.
Too.
morzer
@Paris:
Certainly not in Old Virginny, land of Confederate History Month and Doug “Call me Boss Hogg” Mataconis.
Shade Tail
Shorter Doug Mataconis: This is dumb and boring! So I’m gonna keep doing it anyway!
Cackalacka
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I always find it ironic whenever I see the Jim Treachers of the world, trolling websites of different persuasions, getting all accusatory. Yet, allow no such reciprocation.
Thanks for checking into what undoubtedly is a sewer.
different church-lady
@Doug Mataconis:
First off, we don’t necessarily hate Clarence.
Second, we’re not convinced of what you said: we’re convinced that Hill thought she MIGHT be stalked or threatened by someone she assumed WASN’T Virginia Thomas.
WASN’T Virginia Thomas. What’s it gonna take to get that thru your skull?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cackalacka:
Yes, it is a sewer and there are some real ‘gems’ floating in it. I like to rubberneck crash sites as I drive by but I left that place without a second look.
chopper
i’m just wondering why the dougies of the world seem hell bent on making sure everyone knows they don’t trust anita hill. do they not believe that she actually received the phone call in question? do they not believe that she reported the message to the campus police?
Midnight Marauder
@Doug Mataconis:
Is that why you wrote the following statement in your original post, then?
Because that’s what people are focusing on with your incredibly poor display of logic and reasoning today. You claim not to want to rehash 19 year old arguments, except for the fact that you clearly found it necessary and pertinent to explicitly state that Anita Hill is the catalyst for embarrassment in this situation.
That’s a pretty terrible way of avoiding rehashing two decade old arguments.
Culture of Truth
I, for one, hope her motive was to embarrass Ginny Thomas and her horrible husband. They have more than earned it and richly deserve it.
The Republic of Stupidity
@A Conservative Teacher:
Uh?
What are you teaching… how to put up easily recognizable straw men?
Ash Can
@Tom Levenson: LOL! You rock!
Crusty Dem
I don’t know who this new “Doug Mataconis” troll is, but stop feeding him. He’s obviously a moron and won’t listen to reasoning. Or he’s another one of DougJ’s spoofs (in which case he’s doing even more work than usual to fool us all).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different church-lady: I hate the fact that an unqualified loon like Thomas sits on the USSC, but the man himself? I kind of feel sorry for him, he’s obviously a psychological mess. As I recall, he was physically abused as a child, like Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan and I think a whole bunch of other rage-aholic right wingers.
YellowDog
I am baffled by the whole thing. Why after so many years would Thomas contact Hill about an apology? And who would be stupid enough to leave a voice message? (At least there no photos involved!) Is this part of an effort to erase this episode, to polish Justice Thomas’ legacy? Is he considering a political career, but knows he has to get rid of skeletons? So many questions, because so much about this doesn’t make sense.
Stefan
My very reasonable conservative colleague, who thinks Sharron Angle is an idiot and that the “Ground Zero Mosque” is utterly unobjectionable (just to give you his bona fides), came into the office breathing fire this morning, ranting about how Anita Hill is a “scumbag publicity hound, just like she’s always been.” On and on like that. This is a fairly mild-mannered guy!
See, you thought he was very reasonable, but let this be a lesson: there’s no such thing as a “very reasonable conservative.” There’s always one thing or another that they’re completely and utterly bonkers about. Sure, they manage to hide it, but every so often the mask slips off.
JoyceH
@Doug Mataconis:
Wow. Just wow. How OLD are you, anyway? If you don’t recall what all the right put Anita Hill through 19 years ago, I sure do. My now-deceased mother was in her 80s during the Clarence Thomas hearings. She’d been a lifelong Republican up to that point, but the treatment the right doled out to Hill turned her into a Democrat.
Hill did absolutely the right thing calling campus security. I would have done the same thing. Anyone would have. That call was DERANGED. And while you’re admitting the call was strange, you’re still using it to take the opportunity, over and over again, to somehow blame HILL for it!
Midnight Marauder
@Doug Mataconis:
Are you daft, man?! Ginni Thomas is a fucking self-identifying Tea Party activist! THAT’S WHAT SHE FUCKING DOES ALL DAY, EVERY DAY! And somehow “the left” is throwing in hatred for the Tea Party movement?! So we can’t talk about the Tea Party when discussing people who identify themselves as Tea Party activists?!
This has got to be the most unserious cameo from a libertarian this site has seen in a long time.
John Bird
Blinded by the Right, by David Brock.
You want to know what you need to know about Hill and Justice Thomas? Want to see an on-the-ground explanation for why Mataconis can advance to his readers that Mrs. Thomas calling Hill out of the blue with an almost unbelievable request for Hill to apologize shows how Hill will do anything in her power to embarrass Justice Thomas?
Do you want to see how O’Keefe came to the conclusion that luring a woman into an isolated setting and making unwanted sexual advances constituted an expose on the liberal media that would be lauded by his peers?
Blinded by the Right, by David Brock.
brendancalling
@Doug Mataconis:
oh cry cry cry.
how’s your wet diaper doing, lying conservative?
soonergrunt
@Cackalacka: The top post at that shit-bird’s site attacks the VFW for endorsing a veteran over a non-vet in Oregon.
The shit-bird ‘teacher’ (I’m still not convinced that he’s an actual teacher) is trying to tell vets how to be good decent Americans. The mind boggles at the chutzpah.
There is/was a controversy within VFW over the VFW PAC endorsing republicans and only republicans, many times against actual vets in 2006 and 2008. It got worse when many of those endorsed winners went on to vote against veterans’ issues in the house and Senate. That controversy caused the VFW PAC to implode as the conservatives fought hard to prevent the PAC from supporting non-republicans. Rebuilding the VFW into something useful will take years, and may fail with the rise of organizations like IAVA and VoteVets.
Cris
I appreciate that you implicitly cede that virtue exclusively to us.
I’ve seen this stated before, but is it really true? I don’t really have the fortitude to explore most conservative sites, but the big ones I know of (Malkin, RedState, LGF) are all about the comments.
gwangung
Have you ever been stalked before?
This reaction strikes me as astonishingly insensitive and stupid. Particularly since she’s received verified death threats before.
Mnemosyne
@Midnight Marauder:
She’s not just self-identified, either. She runs a Tea Party organization. She makes her living from running that organization.
I do love how the way Thomas is currently earning her living is totally irrelevant, but Hill’s (alleged) actions of 20 years ago are totally relevant at this very moment.
Frank
As a woman who was trashed for testifying about sexual harassment Anita has learned the hard way the value of documenting the harassment. So that the likes of Doug Manicotis wont be able to have serious doubts about such an absurd claim that a wife of a supreme court justice left such a message if it were to be brought up at a later time.
Angela
@Culture of Truth: Most sensible point I’ve read in this thread.
nancydarling
@Doug Mataconis: Actually Doug, it’s not boring at all. I just read this thread laughing all the way. I love these guys at BJ when they are filled with righteous indignation at all the stupid out there, including yours. This is not about Justice Thomas or what happened 20 years ago, it’s about his wackdoodle wife. For what it’s worth my niece was a law student at OU just before this happened, and she said no one on the law school faculty or in the student body had any doubts about Anita Hill’s integrity. Also, too, I think you are handicapped by being male and never experiencing the same kind of shit from a superior at work that Hill put up with. Almost every woman has her own story to tell.
Sorry we bore you. I take that back. I don’t really think you are bored, but you sure are bloodied.
Shade Tail
@Crusty Dem (#224):
Mataconis is the fellow who wrote the off-site blog post that Mr. Cole was replying to in the first place. Just scroll all the way back up to the top and you’ll see Mr. Cole’s link to Mataconis’ blog. Apparently, Mataconis is so thin-skinned that he can’t take it when other bogs rip his idiocy to shreds.
So now you know who he is. And you’re quite right, he *is* a moron who won’t listen to reasoning.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frank: great point
Bullsmith
I think Doug likes to have sex with roadkill. That’s just my feeling and arguing about it isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.
John Bird
I also just wanted to remind everyone that A Conservative Teacher is the idiot who read this story from McSweeney’s and:
a) believed it was true and written by actual parents, and
b) wrote a strident and 100% serious defense of the “parents” on his blog.
A Conservative Teacher deserves not our scorn, but our super-scorn. The sort of out-loud peals of laughter that will shame the shameless. He is a living example of “beyond parody”: he read a parody of his own views, and instantly believed it to be true.
ed drone
@Doug Mataconis:
Yes, Did you?
Because you seem to miss the point. A phone message, left “for no rational reason” on the answering machine of Anita Hill, results in Ms. Hill alerting the campus police that such a message has been delivered and may be a threat, of stalking, in any case, and then does nothing else, and your response is “I distrust Anita Hill’s motives.”
Which motives? The ones 19 years ago when she answered questions about Clarence Thomas’ behavior toward her? Those motives are not in question. You believe and I believe different things about those motives then. So be it. But the motives now? An out-of-the-blue, “no rational reason” phone call from a woman she hasn’t had anything to do with for all that time, a call she can’t be sure is actually from Mrs. Thomas, and her only action is to ask campus authorities (NOT the FBI — they were notified by the campus police, not Anita Hill) to check it out? Those “I’m not sure about this weird phone message; I’ll have the rent-a-cops check it out” motives?
Those motives bother you? And you don’t acknowledge that her actions are perfectly normal?
When people here called you an idiot, it was unfortunate. They were maligning idiots. I apologize to the idiots.
But not to you.
Ed
fortygeek
@Allan: Thank you. Now Ginny Thomas’ motivations for drunk-dialing Anita Hill are clear. Shot across the bow, indeed.
John Bird
@Bullsmith:
Look, I don’t want to bring up this boring, thousands-of-years-old argument again, but isn’t it wrong for Doug Mataconis to have sex with animals?
I hope Doug returns to address the current issue that his endorsement of bestiality has raised. Otherwise, he may as well be admitting guilt.
Midnight Marauder
@Mnemosyne:
What I really love is Doug Mataconis insistence (both over here and in the comments at OTB) that the reason Anita Hill shouldn’t have turned the voicemail over to campus security is because the literal content of the voicemail was unworthy on involving law enforcement.
Right. Because I’m sure that’s the only factor Anita Hill based her decision on. The literal content of the voicemail. Which most definitely included a demand for an apology for testimony that Anita Hill delivered, implying that she’s still a dirty fucking liar after all this time. Well, okay, I guess if you want to overlook that incongruous detail, that’s all right.
But what about the fucking larger context that the voicemail WAS EVEN LEFT IN THE FIRST PLACE?! That’s not a reason to get security involved? Are you fucking kidding me?! I struggle to fathom just how deluded and disconnected from reality someone must be to not understand how straightforward and rationally Anita Hill handled this situation.
Must be a mighty white sausagefest up in that ivory tower Mataconis hangs out in.
Cris
@John Bird: Good times.
John Bird
@ed drone:
To be fair to Brandeis’s men and women in blue, they are probably real cops, whose real job is to protect Anita Hill from all the crazy and potentially dangerous people out there who are hung up on the Thomas hearings (Virginia Thomas, Doug Mataconis, etc.)
Ajay
.. But why did Anita had to tell others about the call? Anything a conservative does is always OK. Shaming them with truth is what makes them a victim.
burnspbesq
@Doug Mataconis:
Even if Professor Hill is still a public figure, accusing her of perjury is libel, plain and simple. Would be interested in hearing about the vetting you and your lawyers did before you published this charge.
Cris
@John Bird: Not just any animals. Roadkill.
WereBear
It’s more than just “odd.” It’s deranged. If we had a heated argument 20 years ago, and then, out of nowhere, you leave me a voice mail message saying you are ready to forgive me for this two decade old incident, I’d report it to someone, whether I knew it was you, or not.
Because it’s an act of malice, completely out of nowhere, and it would lead me to believe you either need your meds or have gone off of them. It would be different if a true apology was being offered; I forget what step of the twelve it is, but it’s legitimate.
This was ripping open a 20 year old wound appropo of nothing. And that’s not soothing, or normal, behavior.
burnspbesq
@Midnight Marauder:
Exactly. In the current political environment, with the landscape full of heavily armed and emotionally overwrought people, for Professor Hill NOT to involve local law enforcement would have been utterly foolish.
SRW1
@Doug Mataconis:
Doug,
how did Anita get Ginni to cooperate and leave that phone message?
Culture of Truth
@Angela:
Thank you. Frank above makes an excellent point too.
jonas
What’s next, Monica Lewinsky calls up Hillary Clinton at 7 one Saturday morning and says she’s willing to discuss ways in which Hillary can apologize to her for having wrecked her career as a White House intern a few years back?
If she did, and Clinton notified the secret service, Doug Mataconis would complain about how “petty” Clinton was being by once again airing her dirty laundry for all to see.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Doug Mataconis: What you have failed, repeatedly to do, how Anita Hill has victimized the Thomases in this particular instance. She did not initiate it.
You keep speaking in disgust how what happened 19 years ago need not be rehashed, but you are the asshole that brought it up, and you insist it bears on this instance. No matter what allowances you make for the propriety of Ginny’s call, that does not change the fact that you are blaming Anita Hill for simply receiving the call. In fact, if this had been a stalker, how would your “delete the evidence, don’t notify authorities” make sense?
If you feel you are being called names, perhaps it is because you come off as a three year old with your fingers in your ears screaming “I can’t hear you” over and over.
Bullsmith
@John Bird:
The sex with animals thing is pretty old hat by now, it’s the man’s obsession with death that makes me not necessarily trust his motives.
John Bird
@Cris: Thank you for the specifics.
I can’t say that Doug Mataconis’s endorsement of bestiality is irrelevant to this conversation. It may seem tangential, but I think that if people feel about it for a little while, feel really hard, they might conclude that it is relevant that Doug Mataconis once said that animals are able to consent to sexual relations with humans.
Cackalacka
@soonergrunt:
Jesus.
Thank you for your service, and for paying attention.
Citizen Alan
@different church-lady:
I hate Clarence. I don’t care who knows it. If his crazy wife calls me at 7:30 in the morning, I’ll gladly tell her why.
LanceThruster
Ginni Thomas has got electrolytes!
Barb (formerly gex)
@Doug Mataconis: Fucking coward. This entire thread was a rebuttal to you and not a referendum on Clarence Thomas.
You know how we can tell the people of conservative temperament who actually are persuadable by reason and facts? They are folks like Cole and Kain – unable to keep spewing the shit the right has required them to spew in their “real” versus “non-real” Americans war. And yes, the right is the group that speaks in those terms. If you find that civility is hard to come by, maybe these unhinged attacks about current news stories – flavored by your feelings from 20 years ago, but not at all about what happened 20 years ago – don’t help.
One question keeps getting asked over and over. How did Anita Hill’s motives cause this situation? You accuse her of some sort of campaign against the Thomases when really all she did was report a suspicious voice mail to campus authorities.
Don’t bother replying, I got it for you
You know what we like best as a follow up to non-existent arguments? A call for a civil tone in discussion as you insist up is down. Recipient of call is the instigator.
Judas Escargot
@morzer:
Still refusing to provide evidence?
Meh, evidence is so pedestrian, so Socratic, so so– boring.
It’s just how I feel.
ed drone
@John Bird:
Agreed. My “rent-a-cops” was just a shorthand for how someone might refer to the campus police, not a statement of their worth.
Ed
soonergrunt
@John Bird: do you have a link to that shit on his blog or did he memory-hole it?
The Republic of Stupidity
Sheesh…
What a great thread…
This is what we need more of here…
Inane right wingers showing up to defend their ill-conceived, irrational cacklings against all comers…
Kinda like an on-line ‘Death Match in the Steel Cage™’…
Barb (formerly gex)
@Stefan: Also, you’ll find all kinds of “reasonable conservatives” who have really fucked up attitudes about women. Especially competent successful high earning women. Uppity, even.
Cris
@soonergrunt: The fact that I didn’t recognize this as a joke just proves how devoted an Objectivist I am
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Doug Mataconis:
People who think you’re a conservative should know better. It’s very clear that you’re just a hack.
soonergrunt
@WereBear:
It’s not just that. It’s that if somebody left a message for me about a 20-year-old event saying that they are ready for me to apologize for said event, I’d be creeped right the fuck out, and I’m fairly sure I could deal with most things that most people would want to do.
Mnemosyne
@Midnight Marauder:
I used a hypothetical over at OTB asking Doug to think about how he’d feel if he’d had an affair with his friend’s wife and his ex-friend suddenly called him out of the blue 20 years later demanding an apology.
Not surprisingly, Doug somehow took it as a claim that Anita Hill was not lying and refused to actually address the hypothetical so he could go off about the events of 20 years ago and avoid answering the question. Again.
John Cole
You don’t even have to think Anita Hill is a victim. What is so fucking crazy about going to campus security thinking some creep is leaving voice messages pretending to be the wife of a Supreme Court Justice? How on earth is taking the mild step of alerting the authorities about this an “over-reaction?” She’s been harassed for two decades by pinheads who have decided she was a liar? Why is it so crazy for her to alert security? What are they there for if even THIS is an over-reaction.
Cripes.
themann1086
I think Doug Mataconis needs to deal with the fact that people here don’t necessarily trust his motives in driving around town; he has found a way to find roadkill to have sex with, which he has a history of doing. That’s just how I feel about it.
Bullsmith
@Mnemosyne:
I went through the comments over there and was gratified to see the guy getting almost as badly trashed as here. Why someone so incapable of using words to exchange meaning would have his own blog is a mystery to me.
Doug Mataconis
@burnspbesq:
If you don’t understand the difference between saying someone lied and saying that you don’t believe them, well then I don’t know what to say.
Have fun kids, I’m done with this for today
Cris
Oh I get it. He’s not saying she lied. He’s saying he believes she lied.
O_o
chopper
@gwangung:
likewise, this creepy message didn’t show up on her home phone, it was her office. which means that 1) the university is definitely going to be interested since it happened in a professor’s office, and 2) the university probably has some policy requiring employees to report such things.
likely hill, even if she thought the call was stupid, was just following school policy.
SRW1
@Doug Mataconis:
Hey daddy, take that ass you have been handed with you.
Mnemosyne
@Doug Mataconis:
And yet you still can’t quite explain why your belief that Hill lied 20 years ago means we’re not supposed to believe her now despite the fact that we have the evidence and the confession, can you?
chopper
@Cris:
just like i’m not saying dougie is retarded, just that i believe he’s retarded.
AB
@Doug Mataconis:
So, uh, just to cut through all the background music… you suspect Hill’s motives because she referred the voicemail to the campus police instead of deleting it?
If you got a voicemail like that… your idea of a suitable response is to shrug and delete?
Bullsmith
@Doug Mataconis:
Doug, if you think there’s a substantial difference between saying you don’t believe what someone said in sworn testimony and calling them a liar, I guess you are pretty much are the lump-of-clod you seem to be.
Have a good time away from the threads. Sorry, we tried to get you a clue to take home with you, but apparently they don’t make them in your size. Maybe try a children’s site?
soonergrunt
@Cris: Oh dear. This guy is dumber than a bag of wet mice.
Thanks for the link.
themann1086
@Doug Mataconis: You’ll be back. Thin-skinned tone trolls always have to get the last word.
Crusty Dem
@Shade Tail:
I guess that joke needed a smiley face emoticon or something..
Midnight Marauder
@Doug Mataconis:
…wait…what? What?! I am…so overwhelmed with confusion. So Anita Hill isn’t a liar, you just don’t believe anything she’s ever said on this subject? What on Earth…?
That has got to be one of the most moronic “distinctions” I’ve ever encountered.
@AB:
Yes. That is exactly what he maintains.
Cris
To be fair, the clues were delivered in a jar full of razor blades.
Bullsmith
@Cris:
The razor blades only intended in the Halloween spirit, of course.
fasteddie9318
Doug Mataconis, defended his blog post, dum dum dum dum dum…
TuiMel
@Doug Mataconis:
Sorry, Skippy, it outstrips odd by a country mile. And, it DOES sound exactly like a drunk dial. Ginny Thomas is experiencing a little dying by what she appears to live by. That said, I am impressed by the massive amount of pub that Anita Hill is constantly garnering to herself (not).
fasteddie9318
For the record, I’m not saying that Doug Mataconis is obsessed with German fecal pornography. I’m just saying that I believe he has an extensive collection of Scheiße videos.
Shade Tail
@SRW1 (#282):
…and don’t bring it back, Mataconis, or we’ll carve it off you a second time.
= = = = =
@Crusty Dem (#289):
Ah, my bad. :(
RedKitten
@Doug Mataconis:
Obviously you don’t know what to say, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Please explain to me the difference between saying that someone lied, and saying that you do not believe their sworn testimony. Do you think that Anita Hill was deluded? That she hallucinated the entire thing? Or that it was just a giant misunderstanding and she read the entire situation all wrong?
Jules
So in the end this is Hill’s fault…probably Obama’s too.
You know what?
Fuck you Doug Mataconis.
Women understand creepy messages from wives of men they dissed.
We get it.
We know why, no matter what Thomas may or may not have done to Hill, Anita called the campus police.
aimai
@Doug Mataconis:
I read every single one of these comments and boy its the best twenty minutes I’ll spend all day. Fantastic thread. And what makes it especially worth it was to get to this last one by Mataconis:
What is the difference, Doug M, between “saying someone lied” and “saying you don’t believe them?” Its like the difference between standing on solid ground and throwing yourself off a cliff you fucking moron. If you *don’t believe they lied* then, well, you “don’t believe they lied.” Its not really a gray area. If you “don’t believe somene lied” then you must believe “they spoke the truth” –you don’t have to accept what they said *as the truth* but you have to accept that they believed it was the truth. In other words: you don’t have to say that they were *factually correct* but you absolutely can’t say “you don’t believe them.” “Believe them” refers to the statement they made, not the underlying facts. In fact you have “no reason to disbelieve them” because you aren’t using reason at all.
Oh, DIAF.
aimai
soonergrunt
@chopper: Even if she wasn’t following school policy, she’s probably been getting threats off and on over the years and forwards anything even remotely connected with the Thomas confirmation hearings to campus security.
As a matter of fact, it may be a condition of her employment to do so because that’s a huge, specific, and easily identifiable liability tort right there. Some nutcase takes a shot at Hill and kills a student walking by…
Catsy
Well, looks like I was late to the high-tech lynching party. I have to admit that there’s a part of me that almost feels sorry for Doug Mataconis in this thread: he clearly wasn’t expecting pushback against his inane assertions, and he’s just as clearly in way over his head here. This is quite obvious from the way he repeatedly retreats to argument by assertion, arguments he repeats with slightly different verbiage in comment after comment. It’s not really surprising–he’s written quite a few replies, and with no ground to stand on it must be difficult to keep coming up with new ways to repeat the same tired bullshit.
Since I don’t care about OTB and I’ve never heard of this Mataconis clown before, I thought I’d do a little digging to find out who we’re dealing with. So I checked out the about page at OTB, and was immediately struck by several things in his bio.
The first thing that jumps off the page to me is “commercial debt collection”. Not quite as parasitic a field as consumer debt collection, but still not making a good first impression.
The second thing that strikes me is the list of degrees. Specifically, the fact that he acquired them at all despite what appears to be a debilitating lack of ability to form and support arguments based on the facts before him.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a libertarian. Plenty of people still believe in the Tooth Fairy, after all, so believing that a society as large as ours can function with a minimalist government and little or no taxes isn’t too far into the realm of the Red Queen. But it’s not something I’d generally admit in public or put in a bio, unless I was being asked to name some notable lapses of judgment I’d had in my life.
A winning resume, that.
And if they’re paying him for idiocy like this, they may want to consider recouping costs.
All of the above, of course, is all good fun, largely tongue in cheek and for the most part bereft of actual argument. I’d expend some time and energy writing a rebuttal to the parade of horseshit Mataconis has displayed in this thread, but others have already amply demonstrated–for example–the fact that whether or not Hill’s testimony was truthful is completely orthogonal to the question of whether or not Hill was correct to quietly refer what she believed to be a prank call to the campus police. That Doug’s responses can be fairly summarized as “I don’t care about the facts or the context, I just don’t like her” is unfortunate, as it really leaves no opening for discussion or rebuttal beyond the level of “that’s because you’re a fucking moron”.
So I’ll settle simply for mocking him and pointing out the fact that he’s a fucking moron, and that if his writing at OTB is on a volunteer basis he’s clearly being overpaid by an order of magnitude.
kc
@Doug Mataconis:
I never believed Clarence Thomas. ‘Specially not after he perjured himself about his porn-watching habits.
That’s just how I feel! Now go ahead . . . crucify me if you must . . .
maus
Her husband is shameless. She’s only embarrassing herself.
Tom Q
Okay, here’s a thought ( pretty late in the game, I know).
Maybe Doug has to frame this as Hill doing something wrong/publicity-seeking because it’s the only way to stick to his original diagnosis that Hill was a liar back in ’91.
Because, as I see it, if Hill got this call, and knew in her heart of hearts that she’d lied all those years back, what would lead her to give over this tape to campus security, knowing there was even the slightest chance it would re-open this horribly unpleasant period of her life? Whereas, if she’d been telling the truth, and had suffered serious harassment from the right-wing minions for it, she’d have reluctantly concluded she had to deal with it before it got out of hand again. (And, it’s important to remember: for all she knew, this message possibly– even likely — came from someone obsessive/deranged)
Doug keeps saying he doesn’t want to reargue 1991, but I think that’s exactly what he’s doing, because telling the story this way (Hill’s a publicity-seeker) is the only thing that keeps his long-held tribal opinion in place.
Persia
@Scuffletuffle: I liked this bit from Doug’s comment thread:
ruemara
May I just say, you guys are so full of awesome, there’s now an awesome deficit on the other side of the planet and we’re about to hurled out into the sun because there’s too much awesome concentrated into this thread. Proving once again if you’re gonna spout bullshit, do not show up in a balloon juice thread to defend it, no one here will let you slide.
Barry
Thanks to you Oh Mighty Velcro, Savior of the conservative movement, without which we would spend our days tripping over our feet.
Shade Tail
@RedKitten (#297):
Haven’t you heard? Mataconis has taken his ball(s) and gone home. (I wonder how long that promise will last?) But if he were to answer your question, then it would be nice for him to also (finally) explain what the fuck this has to do with the issue of Hill forwarding a bizarre and threatening phone call to the campus cops.
Seriously, even if Hill did lie 20 years ago, how does this change the fact that Thomas *did* make that phone call and that it *does* come across as creepy and threatening by any reasonable measure?
kc
Geez, that Doug fellow is still digging a bigger hole in his comments section over there.
Maybe 19 years from now John Cole can call him, really early in the morning, and suggest that he apologize for what he posted today. And that he pray.
KIDDING! But, you know.
TooManyJens
Wow, this Mataconis dude is not a deep thinker.
Somebody stop me from continuing to engage over there. Maybe I should go vote or something.
Bullsmith
@Shade Tail:
He’s kept going at his own place (linky up top), even making the magnanimous concession that
I think that must have taken the fight out of him, although he did put up a few final, fading “20years….20….” before he declared defeat, in his own special way, on his own special blog.
300baud
@Allan:
Allan, this is a great find:
According to Wikipedia, Thomas was married from 1971 to 1984, although he separated in 1981. Hill worked with Thomas 1981-1984.
So once again we have a conservative icon who can’t keep it in his pants, but thinks he knows how to run everybody else’s business. Maybe somebody should start a website highlighting conservatives who aren’t total hypocrites, just so we can find them in all the clutter.
Corner Stone
I think the most outstanding part of this whole debacle, and it really speaks for itself I guess, is that Doug Mataconis was so fiercely wrong in his assertions that no one here even bothered to shred his ass for that Yankees cap he’s wearing at OTB.
When you have 300 comments and the people here are too busy delivering an ass whuppin that no one even tossed out a casual FTFY? That’s old school right there.
abscam
@Doug Mataconis: (aka Scuffletuffle) Thanks for the response, but here’s my point again. Even if she lied 20 years ago, a point on which we decidedly disagree, how is it anything to do with her now that Ginni Thomas, who presumably is in some kind of control of her own feelings and actions, calls her–out of the blue–suddenly demanding an apology and exhorting her to prayer. Surely even you can see that nothing Anita Hill has done brought this particular phone call at this particular time from Ginni Thomas, this is ALL about Ginni Thomas and whatever weird thought train is going on in her mind. How is it that you do not see this–it should have nothing to do with your political point of view
Mark S.
@Doug Mataconis:
Nobody gives a fuck if you’re a libertarian.
Crusty Dem
@TooManyJens:
Not a chance, I’m enjoying it over there almost as much as over here…
shortstop
Well, I could only make it a third of the way through this thread. This Mataconis fellow seems to share Ginni Thomas’s complete inability to shut up and stop digging.
The last time I met someone who actually thought these were effective arguments…
1. “That’s just how I feel”
2. “There’s no point in rehashing this argument [hey, I thought I could just snipe and run, but you’re viiiiiiiiiiiiictimizing me by expecting me to back up my statements]”
3. Repeat #2 a dozen times
4. “You have your opinion and I have mine”
5. “You’re not going to change my mind and I’m not going to change yours”
…I was talking to a high-school student with a substandard IQ and more than her share of emotional problems. This poor guy is in way, way over his head.
Crusty Dem
@TooManyJens:
There’s something oh so right about him getting his ass kicked in his own comment thread for this absurdity. Kind of a cross between “All your base are belong to us” and “I am in your base killing your d00ds”.
Bullsmith
I guess it’s bad enough that Doug’s a
practicing lawyerdebt processor, but heaven help the accused who gets this guy as a juror. Likely to spend the whole trial just sticking his fingers in his ears and sticking to his first impression. Trying to find a joke in that….Note: I’m simply not able to make myself believe that a guy this is really getting paid by clients to practice law. I’d require substantial evidence.
TooManyJens
@Crusty Dem: He seems to have given up trying to defend himself, which I suppose is a rational response, though it deprives us of entertainment.
LanceThruster
@John Cole:
I think she should send her private security force over to club or taze anyone even asking what the big deal is.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Well, it wasn’t in this thread, but there is this.
Carrie
This was a fantastic thread, i haven’t been this entertained in a while.
“Quick, get me a drink, someone’s making an ass of himself on the innernets!”
Allan
I need a cigarette.
Have I told you guys how much I love you?
Looking back, the thought that loops through my mind as I lovingly re-read each missive from Mr. Mataconis is I keep forgetting this guy is a lawyer.
Larkspur
Anyway, even if it were a Ginni Thomas imposter, that would mean someone – a possibly deranged someone – was pretending to be the wife of a Supreme Court Justice, which I think the campus police might reasonably think worth mentioning to the FBI. You could ask Jodie Foster for an opinion on that.
Furthermore, is it so inconceivable that Doug Mataconis might find it possible to write something like, “Upon further review, I acknowledge that I was conflating two issues here. One: I don’t like or believe Anita Hill. Two: Ginni Thomas left Anita Hill a strange phone message. I see now that the two topics are unmixy, and I shall deliver unto Tunch something delicious, and hope that will suffice as recognition of my douchetastic behavior.” But in his own words, of course.
Ella in New Mexico
I think this whole phone call affair has turned into one giant Rorschach test for the rest of us, when in fact Ginny Thomas was
A. merely trying to gin up some more big dollar donations for her propaganda machine organization
and,
B. on a MASSIVE bender of anti-anxiety meds and Bloody Marys after finding a big stash of Viagra hidden in Clarence’s travel bag.
Mayur
@Allan: I think he went to George Mason. We should just stop counting that as an actual reputable institution for any discipline already, whether it be economics (McArdle) or law.
morzer
@Larkspur:
I suspect Tunch would take one gulp, chew up Mataconis and spit out the bones in his litterbox.
asiangrrlMN
Man. Late to the party. I love love love this thread. Y’all kept it focused and kept it brutally efficient.
Bottom line, for me, is that as a woman, had I gotten that call in those circumstances, you’re damned right I would have called at least the campus cops. Anita Hill did not contact the media or the FBI. She has responded with grace and class.
I couldn’t believe DM kept coming back for more when it was so clear that he was outclassed and outflanked on every side. I really think so many of this asshats have gotten used to spouting off their shit with little-to-no repercussions, they don’t know what to do when called upon their idiocy.
Bottom line: Thomas (the missus) fucked up. Hill did the right thing. Mataconis and other libertarians/conservatives can’t stand that and have to make up shit to throw at Hill. Got it.
xian
@Doug Mataconis:
Count me in on the not paying attention to you.
psychobroad
@Culture of Truth: Lots of great comments, but I think you win the internets with that!
xaneroxane
@ruemara: Man-oh-man–seconded!
maus
@Doug Mataconis:
Plenty of liberals and libertarians can be assholes on a particular issue while not self-identifying as conservative, sure.
Admiral_Komack
@Doug Mataconis:
Translation: WAHHHHHHHH!
Dude, Anita Hill did the right thing in reporting Ginny Thomas’s voicemail message.
And you are an ignorant fuck.
Dumbass.
arguingwithsignposts
I only regret that I was not around to personally engage in the awesomeness that has been the B-J community taking down a self-righteous victim prick in this thread.
Well done, folks. Well done.
A Conservative Teacher
Oh, I guess I didn’t realize that hearsay and ‘other people also said it’ are enough evidence to convict people of crimes in a liberal court of law. It shouldn’t surprise me though- liberals believe in making up the law as they go and judging based on what they think should be the law, so go ahead and convict a guy because of a couple people said something. To me, it sounds like faulty logic that leads to dictatorships and tyranny, but I guess that’s just because I’m a conservative.
bozack
@A Conservative Teacher:
This is made up in your brain, and is not true. Please note that the first mention of “convict” in this thread is in your comment. This indicates that the words that you type come not in response to the arguments made in this thread, but rather as a result of some psychological issues of your own at which we can only guess.
No, it’s because you’re a moron. No need to drag the name of a centuries-old philosophy into the gutter owing to your inability to comprehend or formulate arguments– we’ve already got a political party in this country dedicated to that!
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@A Conservative Teacher: You didn’t know that people can be convicted based on sworn testimony?
You couldn’t teach a monkey to jerk off if it already had his dick in his hand.
JG
I am soooo late to this show, but I had to read the entire thread; I needed a good laugh.
The one thing that sticks with me is that he doesn’t believe Anita Hill circa 1991 because she had no evidence of her claims. And yet, he thinks the solution to potential harassment here is to delete the voicemail (aka evidence) and pretend it never happened.
If this is the kind of advice he provides to clients, I hope his professional liability insurance is paid up.
Mnemosyne
As I said over at OTB, it’s pretty clear what’s going on: Doug Mataconis agrees with Virginia Thomas that Anita Hill should apologize to her. He realizes on some level how weird it is to still be so angry about this 20 years later so he does a lot of handwaving to try and pretend that he thinks Thomas did the wrong thing, but that’s what it is. He thinks Anita Hill lied and should apologize to the Thomases for what she did.
It explains his weird insistence that Hill should have deleted the voicemail, too — since she’s a lying liar who lies, if she wasn’t planning to apologize, she should have deleted the voicemail to cover her shame rather than brazenly going to the campus police to complain about it.
Tehanu
You’re not going to change my mind …
… no matter how many facts contradict every word I’ve said. Yep, that’s a conservative speaking. What? You say you’re not a conservative? Jeez, a conservative AND a liar.
fasteddie9318
@Doug Mataconis:
This is incredibly late, but I can’t resist asking to what it is I’m supposed to have been paying attention. I didn’t even know you existed until earlier today and, frankly, I’m tempted to brain myself with a hammer to get back to those halcyon days when I was blissfully unaware of you.
“Hasn’t been paying attention”? The fucking ego on you.
Binzinerator
@jibeaux:
Word.
A Conservative Teacher
Juan Williams.
Tattoosydney
@A Conservative Teacher:
… is a bit of a dick.
What’s your point?
A Conservative Teacher
Seriously? You can’t figure out my point? You’re not that bright.