FOX News contributor Juan Williams takes to the WSJ to write a paean to Justice Clarence Thomas entitled “America’s Most Influential Thinker on Race“. It’s true in the same way Hurricane Katrina was America’s Most Influential Hurricane on Race.
Justice Thomas, who has been on the court nearly a quarter-century, remains a polarizing figure—loved by conservatives and loathed by liberals. But his “free”-thinking legal opinions are opening new roads for the American political debate on racial justice.
His opinions are rooted in the premise that the 14th Amendment—guaranteeing equal rights for all—cannot mean different things for different people. As he wrote in Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), he is opposed to “perpetual racial tinkering” by judges to fix racial imbalance and inequality at schools and the workplace. Yet he never contends racism has gone away. The fact that a 2001 article in Time magazine about him was headlined “Uncle Tom Justice” reminds us that racism stubbornly persists.
His only current rival in the race debate is President Obama. At moments of racial controversy the nation’s first black president has used his national pulpit to give voice to black fear that racial stereotyping led to tragedy. But that is as far as he is willing to go. His attorney general, Eric Holder , has gone further by calling Americans “cowards” when it comes to discussing race. And some critics have chastised him even for that.
Justice Thomas, meanwhile, is reshaping the law and government policy on race by virtue of the power of his opinions from the bench. Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American on the Supreme Court, stood up as a voice insisting on rights for black people. Justice Thomas, the second black man on the court, takes a different tack. He stands up for individual rights as a sure blanket of legal protection for everyone, including minorities.
Thomas has taken it upon himself to address racism by dismantling the civil rights era protections of the law over the last 50 years and saying “those were training wheels, you have to succeed on your own.” This, he argues, will magically create the respect from white America necessary to rid the country of racism.
This only works of course if you believe that the direct victims of racism (which Thomas does absolutely recognize as still existing in America) are white people, and that the corrective actions of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act other legislative fixes were the problem for the last two generations, and in no way part of the solution.
Thomas has many like-minded comrades on SCOTUS when it comes to this with the goal of putting America back to 1965, and that the Civil Rights era was a massive error, a huge mistake which has damaged America for decades.
Rather, Thomas’s solution is simple: the burden to rise above racism is placed upon minorities to simply be better and to succeed in spite of it, solely through personal responsibility. If racism exists (and Thomas again admits it does) then your duty as a black or Latino or Asian or other minority is to overcome it. That’s all upon you to choose to do so.
If that sounds insane, and it sounds like “Hey, Thomas is absolving all of white America of racism even though he knows it exists in 2015” and “Why are minorities the bad guys here?” then you’re correct. The free market will fix this. It’s dangerous thinking, and yet the evidence is pretty solid that the Civil Rights era in America is ending, thanks in large part to Thomas.
Luthe
Justice Turdburgler can bite my Latina lesbian ass. How does he expect me to “overcome” being female? Lose the boobs and grow a dongle? It doesn’t matter how good you are; if you’re not a straight white guy you’re already starting with a handicap. No amount of bootstrap-pulling will overcome that.
greennotGreen
I think Justice Thomas’s legal opinion on civil rights in the early 21st century can be summarized by, “IGMFY.”
henqiguai
Well yeah; that’s the old ‘you got to be twice as good to be rated as average’ thing; something with which we grew up. Professional white women making a career in modern corporate America will probably recognize that, as well.
And otherwise just give the rest of America (genetically-privileged whites) time to adjust…
Yeah, fresh snow to move so *somebody’s* got to receive some bad attitude.
BGinCHI
Why isn’t the opposite also true?
Why can’t the market ensure that transactions are free of racism and racial bias?
Why is “free to be a racist” free while “free to be not discriminated against” not free?
The answer is that free market conservatives have a mistaken assumption at the heart of their “thinking,” and that is that the default setting in the universe of human nature and interaction is not fetishizing Hobbes’s “war of all against all.”
PsiFighter37
I don’t understand how people can take Clarence Thomas seriously. He never asks any questions when cases are before him and seems like the laziest, least intellectually curious person on the court.
People may revise their opinion of H.W. up given how crappy his turd of a son was as president, but this is the long-lasting defining black mark on his presidency.
ruemara
This man does something quite rare. He almost vets me to hate someone I do not know. May his rewards find him.
Baud
Thomas doesn’t strike me as “influential” except in that fact that the Supreme Court includes four other conservative justices who will vote for the same results Thomas prefers.
And the lame attempt to compare Thomas to Obama and Holder is….well….lame.
Although Juan Williams works for Fox, this seems more like something Sean Hannity would write. Maybe Juan has a quota to meet to keep his job.
Botsplainer
What nobody on the right seems to get is just how forgiving the American society has been for white Christian guys, particularly those with means. In early days, you could fail at farming or business, and keep moving west – the government would give you land and certain business concessions, like mines, logging territory, etc. you got preferred treatment for your criminal acts. Later, if you were a mediocre to average worker, you still got above a living wage in the trades or in a public service or safety job.
Minorities were utterly locked out of the initial grant of free land and mines. When the trades and public service jobs got handed out to dullards, minorities were still locked out. And now, with the engines of security having already been distributed and built up by the labor of the oppressed, the bastards who Thomas shills for say “be free – why can’t you make it?”
dp
I have to say, the Katrina analogy was inspired.
SFAW
@Luthe:
Well, have you tried? If not, then you’re just another “oppressed” group trying to blame Real Americans for all your problems.
And stop being Latina, too!
JPL
@Baud: Juan gets paid so other conservatives can say “even liberal Juan thinks” . It’s his sole source of being.
jayjaybear
Wow. I have to admit that I’m not sure which option I’d put my money on…whether Williams spit or swallowed after that loving blowjob…
Amir Khalid
Couldn’t see the WSJ piece. It doth behind a paywall lie. But if your summary of Juan Williams’ argument is right, Clarence Thomas is assuming that a society can be cured of prejudice, that American society has been cured of it and no longer needs the temporary intervention of civil rights legislation. Except that of course the impulse to discriminate is innate in us. It’s the other side of our impulse to be loyal to our own. So at best it’s complacent to assume that. At worst, well …
greennotGreen
There’s another kind of preference that a lot of people who have succeeded professionally or economically forget about: ability. Now, I want the United States to be a meritocracy, but that doesn’t mean people who are only average should live lives of privation. And if society automatically gives a leg up to average white guys, then every other average person slips to a lower rung of the ladder, and some of them will slip off entirely.
Those of us who happen to be smarter than the average bear didn’t earn it – we were born with it. Lucky in genes, lucky in birth, lucky in life. Everyone is not so lucky, but they shouldn’t have to suffer for having drawn the less favored hand.
Suzanne
@PsiFighter37: Word. He is so bad at his job that it borders on comical. The idea that Clarence Thomas is an important thinker on any issue beyond What’s For Dinner Tonight is absolutely laughable.
ItAintEazy
Whenever I think of Thomas, I think of both Miller-El v. Cockrell and Johnson v. California, where Thomas was the only dissenting justice in the cases everyone else thought were examples of clear-cut racism in jury selection. Apparently you can have manuals saying that black people are unfit to be jurors in capital cases, and that doesn’t prove that racism exists, according to Thomas.
gene108
@PsiFighter37:
What’s interesting about the Thomas nomination is the GOP felt obligated to replace Thurgood Marshall with another black man, 25 years ago. It would have been bad optics to come across as having no qualified black people in the GOP and Thomas was being groomed – with his political appointments, up to that point of time – as being Marshall’s successor.
**************************
I saw part of an interview with Thomas on CSPAN. His basic attitude towards Affirmative Action and other Civil Rights era laws comes from the fact that when he got out of Yale Law School (I think?) people felt he did not earn his place there, but benefited from a “quota system” that forever tarnished his personal and professional accomplishments.
He does not want other blacks to suffer the same stigma he had to deal with, while somehow being deliberately obtuse to the cause-and-effect of the chances for black getting into Yale Law school in the first place maybe reduced without the Civil Rights era laws, so they would not have the same opportunity to decide for themselves if they faced a social stigma of not having earned their keep as a Yale Law School graduate.
What I loathe about Thomas is his willingness to try and return to a pre-New Deal era interpretation of labor and business law, and his opposition to gay marriage. Again some sort of inability to understand the obvious is with this man that he cannot understand without the Loving v Virginia decision, handed down in 1967, when he was a college student, his marriage to a white woman may still be illegal in his state of residence, Virginia, if left up to the voters.
@greennotGreen:
Hi legal opinion on everything is IGMFY.
henqiguai
@PsiFighter37 (#5):
Hey! ;-)
rikyrah
Juan gotta earn them slave catching $$$$, Zandar.
Yes, Unca Clarence is looking out for us Black folks.
KNEEGROW, PLEASE.
Clarence is the type of Black person that wouldn’t get it until they were about to kick the chair out from under him at his own lynching.
SFAW
@greennotGreen:
I often reflect on how fortunate I was and am to have been born to smart and educated parents, who lived in a town with top-notch schools, and to have a father who made a pretty good income. That allowed me to become reasonably well-edumacated, get a good job, live comfortably for most of my adult life.
Certain persons – mostly on the wingnut side of the aisle – who don’t realize how good they have it, should try living like those they hate so much for a year or two. They might gain a greater appreciation for the bullshit that non-“Real Americans” have to go through on a daily basis, and it might lead to some b-mod. (Of course, 27 percent will just grow even more enraged.)
Villago Delenda Est
Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to his race.
The human race.
For that matter, so is the worthless shit that is Wan Williams.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
You might be giving him too much credit.
RAM
To me, Thomas has always appeared to be a person filled with adolescent self-hatred. Testimony at his confirmation hearings suggested to me his emotional growth stopped right around age 14. And his body of work since then has confirmed it. Everything I read about him suggests he’s an angry man out to make someone–anyone–pay for all the slights, real and imagined, he’s ever suffered. And that’s a terribly dangerous attitude for someone who sits on the nation’s highest court.
Yatsuno
@rikyrah: Uncle Ruckus in a robe. I’m almost certain McGruder based at least part of that character on Thomas.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: You’re assuming that they’ll somehow, after a full year or two of being treated like shit, develop some empathy for those they treated like shit.
If they return to a life of relative privilege, the empathy they feigned will evaporate like a puddle on a summer’s day.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
Hey! Sock-puppets fulfill an important role in our society.Or so I’ve been told by Lee Siegel and John Lott.
greennotGreen
@SFAW: In my early twenties I had a black boyfriend (I’m white,) and my parents disowned me. I was just out of school, the job I thought I had lined up didn’t pan out, and I had no clue, really, how to get a job. So for a few months, until that job did finally come through, we were desperately poor as in hungry, lights turned off. Do you know how hard it is to get a job when you don’t have a dime to buy a paper to look at the want ads? I had to borrow a dress to go to interviews…which had to be accessible by bus. And my first week of work I had to hitchhike across town because I didn’t have bus fare.
But I had things other people in the same situation didn’t have: a good brain, an education, and the idea that this was a temporary situation.
It was hard at the time, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone…except all the people who think that they’ve so earned every little thing they’ve achieved. If you’re white in this America, you’ve already started on the first rung. If you’re white and raised middle-class, that’s two rungs. If you’re white, middle-class, and smart, three rungs. So, smart non-whites raised middle-class are still starting on the second rung.
Now, how do you succeed if you start at the very bottom?
Actually, I don’t think that experience would help Thomas who did start life (early) in poverty. He would still be just as bitter as he seems to be now.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
You’re more cynical than I am – hard to believe, I know. That’s the 27 percent. OK, maybe it’ll be 47 percent. But I still want to believe that there are a number of Republican supporters who are that way because they just have no clue about what it’s like for a large number of their fellow citizens. All they know is that it’s tough for them, and they’ve been told by their leaders that those bastards lower-on-the-socioeconomic-ladder are lazy and taking stuff away from them. One would hope that, after a year of seeing how things really are, as opposed to what they’ve been told, it might help the scales fall from their eyes.
Perhaps I’m being naive, but I hope not too much.
JGabriel
Juan Williams @ WSJ:
And yet, somehow, those “individual rights” Thomas defends always end up helping most those who already have money and power, who are mostly white, people like the owners and target audience of the Wall Street Journal.
Funny how that happens.
Xboxershorts
Touching on what I’ve come to think of as rejecting the concept of the public commons, and the Interstate Commerce Clause as well as other concepts encoded in the constitution which mandate the federal government as the final arbiter of contract law in the nation.
Justice Thomas and the rest of the federalists on the court seem to want to place limits on the body of law that grew from this when it became painfully obvious to the world that separate but equal was never ever actually equal. Americans just wanted decent schools and equal opportunity and that was denied to millions by states, both north and south of the Mason Dixon line.
Taxpayer supported institutions (schools, roads, water and sewer, energy distribution systems, communications services) routinely limited contractual opportunity to those Thomas recognizes as genuine Americans but he denies that the federal government has any legal authority to enforce the public commons and taxpayer supported contracts.
I’ve never understood the legal thinking that leads to the conclusion that our forefathers would incorporate such meaningful clauses into the constitution and then deny that the government created by that constitution has the authority to enforce such clauses and legal concepts.
The cognitive dissonance and lack of compassion needed to come to this conclusion amazes me.
jayboat
Fuck both of those guys. Waste of oxygen, they are.
SFAW
@greennotGreen:
I’m glad that things (appear to have) turned out OK. I’m sure it sucked. I have – fortunately – never been in a situation as dire as that. Also, I agree with your “rungs” comments.
Mrs. SFAW came from (relative) poverty. Not dirt-poor, but reasonably far down. Times when no food in the refrigerator, etc. Although I can see the residue of that experience, she is reasonably well-adjusted, and (except for the lack of a law degree) would make a much better Justice than Sock-Puppet. Or Fat Nino, for that matter. [Note: the lack of a law degree is not a comment on her intelligence, it’s just a judgment that one would need certain training to be on the SCOTUS. Kind of like having an engineering degree to be an engineer, I guess.]
Frankensteinbeck
@greennotGreen:
I was homeless right out of college, and I’ve clawed my way financially up through every step you can imagine – and I know damn well that luck was a part of it and I wouldn’t have gotten some of the breaks I did if I were black. I hope and pray that as many people as possible of all races will get out like I did. Attitudes like Thomas’s disgust and anger me. You Do Not Pull The Ladder Up After Yourself. How dare someone deny to others what they needed? Man, I’m getting worked up just thinking about it.
Suzanne
@SFAW: The thing that makes it hard is that, if someone who has higher socioeconomic status looks at the decision-making and lifestyle of those who are further down that ladder, a lot of the decisions made really do appear to be bad ones. The thing that is helpful about that Linda Tirado piece is that she freely admits that many poor people make “bad” decisions, but also points out that when you have come to a mindset of hopelessness for whatever reason, those bad decisions become more comprehensible. But I’m more financially stable now, and you know what? I MAKE BAD FINANCIAL DECISIONS ALL THE TIME. I just make enough at this point that the consequences are no big deal. I certainly don’t have enough to live large, but I can have the occasional luxury good, like a new iPhone, if I plan and save for it. But this is dumb. I don’t need a new iPhone. I could use a cheapie Cricket phone, though a lot of the conveniences I’m used to would be missed. But it’s not a choice between a new iPhone and shoes for my kids, or a car payment, or rent/mortgage payment. So my bad decisions are “okay”. I think if it could be pointed out on a societal level that all of us make bad decisions, but only the poor are expected to be perfect and go without any pleasure, we’d have better luck.
But the companies that live on selling us luxury shit wouldn’t like that.
Yatsuno
@SFAW:
To be fair, there is no requirement that one has to have a law degree in order to be appointed to SCOTUS. In fact, the Constitution was written at a time when lawyers were educated as apprentices rather than in colleges. That switched some time in the 18th Century, but I believe in Virginia you can still get a JD credential that way unless it’s changed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne:
Once you’re in the club, you can make incredibly bad financial decisions all the time and fall upwards! Just look at Donald Trump, born on third base, thinks he hit a triple to get there, fucks up consistently, and still is in the club!
Yatsuno
@Villago Delenda Est: I still cannot understand how you can bankrupt a ca$ino. A CA$INO. That’s practically a licence to print money!
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
Wouldn’t much effect the bottom line of luxuries companies. Judging the Poor is about a self-righteous feeling of being better than someone else, with the added bonus that you can hurt them and claim that makes you even better. For guys like Thomas on the top of the heap, it makes them feel like they are Galtian supermen who can do whatever they like. People do more for ego rush than they do for greed. Hell, the greed is usually just serving the ego rush.
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m not in that club. I can buy myself the occasional shiny, and go out to lunch with my coworkers once a week, and I don’t have to wait for shoes to go on sale, but I am certainly not at the “fail up” level.
heckblazer
@PsiFighter37: From what I’ve heard, Thomas thinks oral arguments are a bunch of BS theater, and I can’t exactly say he’s wrong. I found this essay on Thomas by Corey Robin illuminating. It doesn’t make me find his jurisprudence any less scary, but it does make it make sense.
Yatsuno
@Frankensteinbeck: The problem with someone like Thomas, and he is acutely aware of it, is that no matter how hard he tries he will never be in the real elite club of America. Oh sure he may be a Supreme Court justice, but that doesn’t mean he can go to all the best clubs and be forgiven for marrying outside his race. So he feels the need to punch down even though a lot of how he succeeded is still necessary to this day. He is pure bitter resentment with the added bonus of having an outlet for that resentment that cannot ever be questioned.
Suzanne
@Suzanne: Put it this way– I can afford to go to the movies, but I still sneak food in.
SFAW
@Yatsuno:
Understood. But, in practical terms, having a JD (or equivalent) is a de facto secret decoder ring to be considered for that level. (In my opinion, of course.)
SFAW
@Suzanne:
Well, that’s only because you’re trying to Stick It To The Man.
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
It’s not quite impossible to lose money on the gambling operation, but you’d have to be tremendously unlucky. As I understand it, that’s not what happened to Trump. He just has the opposite of the Midas touch at running a business, like George W.
SFAW
@Yatsuno:
It’s Obama’s fault, of course.
Yatsuno
@SFAW: Man. That guy has super sekrit Islamocommunofascist powers even when he was a mere college professor!
Suzanne
@SFAW: Movie food is exorbitant. And gross.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Let’s hope the SEC doesn’t investigate Trump. When they were investigating Harken Oil, around September, 2001 … well, let’s just say that the entire country was distracted for awhile, and the investigation was dropped.
SFAW
@Yatsuno:
You don’t know the half of it … Judge Crater, the Lindbergh baby, the Rosenbergs, Major John Andre, Kim Philby, the Johnstown Flood, the Great Flood (i.e., Noah), the Great Depression — they all bear the Mark of Obama.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
The Truth will not help you here.
SatanicPanic
Free market had a hundred years to fix racism and failed, and give me a fucking break, minorities in this country work harder than anyone. I’d love to see Rand Paul or Clarence Thomas try doing field work for a fucking day. RRRrrr this shit pisses me off.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne: Oh, that I know. I’m just stating that if one is in “the club”, bad financial decisions are simply not something that measures your worthiness. But if one is middle class or poor, much less serious bad financial decisions are markers of one’s moral turpitude and unworthiness. You see this in the 2008 financial collapse…all those people who defaulted on their mortgages obviously were in over their heads, or forced the banks at gunpoint to give them mortgages. It can’t be that the bank made a poor decision to loan them money…that could never be!
We know, for a fact, that analysts told them the market was tapped, there were no more mortgages to be made, that the spectacular growth had to come to an end…and the response of bank management was to lower the standards for mortgages to keep the grift of the mortgage resale and bundling boom going. Yet these bastards have yet to pay the price, and the poor and middle class are blamed for “living beyond their means”.
Jacks mom
OT. It is finally snowing in southwest colorado. We had temps in the 70s ten days ago and now we have about 3 inches of snow and still coming down. Thanks FSM
srv
I need to go take a bath after that one. Thanks Juan.
Keith G
Given that his thoughts do have impact, I guess Clarence Thomas is one of America’s most influential thinkers on matters of race.
In the same vein however, one could say that Adolf Hitler was one of the most influential thinkers about Jewish settlement patterns in Europe.
srv
Well, there’s a new way to destroy the economy. Walker and others should fly in to show how brave they are.
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: As a general rule, it’s not done to fly from Wisconsin to Minnesota. One drives.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: I have zero doubt Walker is enjoying every perquisite of his office that he can. Including a private jet he can borrow from Charlie and Dave whenever he feels like.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
A lot of times the decisions you have to make are between bad and really fucking bad. There really are, very often, no good decisions to make. And that is something that a lot of white privilege misses. It’s not, do I go to Yale or Harvard, it’s, can I find a shit job that pays shit wages so I can live in a shithole and eat whatever I can find. Shitty choices is usually all there is. So it looks to someone with even marginally better choices that “those people” are stupid, because they make bad choices. Of course people make bad choices, when that’s all there is available/allowed to you, that’s what you do. Why would someone take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans for a very small chance it might help them in the long run? What other choice do they have? And that’s only one example, there are endless others.
PurpleGirl
@Yatsuno: At one time you didn’t need an undergraduate bachelor’s degree to go to law school in NYS. Professor Bluma Trell of NYU went to law school at age 21, practiced law for a decade before returning to school for a bachelor’s degree. She was a long time professor of Greek language and Greek society/art/culture. I never took one of her courses but I knew her through one of the Deans. She was a gutsy and wily woman, and an independent thinker.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
FACT: Under orders issued before their deaths from the Communist leaders Stalin and Hitler, the Muslims have installed a secret Christian in the Whitehouse as president of these United States.
The above makes more sense than that article from Fox about Thomas. I really though Thomas is more about protecting Corporate Citizenhood than about civil rights.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
OK, now we know what you could do for a living, you could write for Fox. Doesn’t mean of course that you believe a word of what you write, just that you are capable of typing the words without sticking pins in your eyes.
Roger Moore
@Luthe:
He doesn’t. His view, and the view of Conservatives in general, is that the government is only required to provide you with a very narrowly drawn equality. They believe that there should only be equality in treatment by the law, and that only for classes of people they believe should be protected (e.g. your being a lesbian would not be protected). They don’t think the government has any right to prevent private discrimination, which is OK because it’s not the government. If you can’t get ahead, that’s your problem.
Keith G
@JGabriel: from the Williams quote that you featured
A problem with this avenue of thinking, one shared by many libertarians of either stripe, is that there is no magical pony guaranteeing access to rights that already exist.
In fact, the reverse is often true. There are many interests in the society that do what they can to obfuscate and otherwise block access to what are actually commonly accepted rights.
The poorer one is, the more likely one is to encounter these blocks and obfuscations and the more necessary either collective or governmental actions are to balance the power equation. Justice Thomas writes as if he is of the opinion that such extra help is just plain unecessary and even counterproductive.
VFX Lurker
@Suzanne:
For the middle-class and up, the danger may not be luxury items so much as bad financial products and advisors. It’s possible for a high-expense mutual fund or high-expense advisor to quietly skim a third of the earnings of a middle-class client’s savings, with the grateful client being none the wiser.
SFAW
@Keith G:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
WereBear
Another thing about financial judgements is that they really are different at the different levels.
Mr WereBear and I were taught to be thrifty and save for retirement. But only my blog reading and hunches kept my 401k from being wiped out in the crash. And what caused the crash hasn’t been fixed. So when we get a little ahead, we invest in equipment and such that will help us keep making a living when we retire. Our only savings account is for emergencies because it pays 1.25 interest.
Those of you in kinder climes can hang onto your cars. We have extremes of temperature that leads to metal fatigue because we don’t have a garage to keep it in, and salt on the roads. After some terrible experiences with used cars in our area, it’s better for us to buy a new, inventory leftover, car. A warranty means we have a budgeted amount every month instead of nothing some months and a monster repair bill other months.
But a lot of conservatives assume everyone has the same needs and the same access. But it’s simply not true. There are excellent articles on Cracked that know better; it might be cheaper per roll to buy the giant size of TP, but not if that purchase wipes out your food money for the week and you have no place to put a dozen extra rolls.
So much conservative scorn for the poor people comes from poor people who live in a ratty apartment not doing what middle-class people with a house can do. And that stupid.
And that’s Justice Thomas, too.
pluege
thomas is a mental and moral perversion of immense proportions. He is a poster child of the worst a human can achieve. Juan WIlliams is cut from the same cloth, although I would not characterize him as bad as thomas. But being of the same ilk it’s no surprise that he would praise thomas.
Keith G
@SFAW: Every time he votes as part of a five to four majority, he is having impact. I think that’s evidence.
Waldo
@WereBear: Too true! With my education and middle class income, I’d make a very successful poor person. Why can’t everyone?
WereBear
It never matters what conservatives say, anyway. It’s all rationalization because they can’t say what’s really on their mind; then people react with horror and repugnance.
These wanky “think” pieces are justification and let wingnuts make ponderous noises about how splendid their professors and pundits are. Just like Liberty University is about neither; it’s a smokescreen to let George W Bush claim he was hiring lawyers.
RSA
@SatanicPanic:
A lot of those who claim to be free marketeers see racism as a personal failing rather than a societal one, which means they can say boo-boo about pervasive racism but not do a thing to change it. Rand Paul comes to mind, with his views on civil rights legislation.
WereBear
@Waldo: I found a book on my Oyster App called Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream.
Haven’t read it yet because the cover shows a young, strong, blond, white guy. Which puts him way ahead and he has no clue. So I have much better premises to be reading.
To quote a review of the book:
And one reviewer loves the premise of “anyone can do it” and yet is un-self-aware enough to follow up his praise with:
Doh!
SFAW
@Keith G:
“Thoughts,” not “impact,” was what I was referring to.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Are you saying that all conservative thought is bullshit?
As it stands right now I’d have to agree with that. As it stood 60 yrs ago, well, I’d still have to agree. Farther back than that? Whada ya know, same old shit.
Geeno
@Yatsuno: Embezzlement is the only thing I can see that would bankrupt a casino.
danielx
I have to admit that (for me) this was one of those deals where the first line of the post was all I had to read to know what was coming.
Edit: granted that when “Fox News contributor”, “WSJ” and “Clarence Thomas” are all in the same sentence, it does not require a huge amount of insight to predict the tongue bath to follow.
Geeno
@Yatsuno: Embezzlement is the only way I can see.
WereBear
Sadly, I have come to regard it as a symptom of a diseased mind. It is a way of rationalizing development difficulties and justifying selfish and spiteful attitudes. Turning your dysfunction into a political movement, much as Hitler cobbled together prejudice and resentment into National Socialism… not a lot to recommend it.
Chris
If nothing else, I agree entirely with Holder on the “nation of cowards” quote. Sadly.
kindness
As terrible as it is to say it but Supreme Court Justice Uncle Tom Thomas has a bit of a ring o truth to it.
D58826
It seems to me that if Justice Thomas and his 4 pals are successful in turning the clock back to 1964 (or maybe 1864?) then the good justice will have a problem. He will either be back in Ga. picking cotton or dangling from a lamppost when the Va. chapter of the KKK catches up with him and his white wife.
Yatsuno
OT: Dear me, looks like BiP is gonna have to hit the propaganda mill hard now.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
So you do agree.
I’ve tried to understand it over the years, I’ve looked at it at times as the least worst of two choices (and been wrong every fucking time) and it has always come back to me as fundamentally flawed. It takes no account about human failings such as racism. Which we all have some level of and have to work to understand why and overcome. Some can overcome this easily with almost no effort, some never can or even embrace the idea of not being racist at all. In other words we carry the baggage of not only our parents but everyone we interact with. We can separate those and grow but we have to want to do that. Conservatives don’t want to do that at all. They are perfect just as they are and they just know that, nothing shown to them or explained to them or even proven to them will change such a closed mind. And if everything would just go back to when those ideals were infused in them (whatever age that was) the world would be perfect as well. Perfection being such a human trait and all.
Ruckus
@D58826:
A lack of actual self reflection seems to be a defining conservative trait.
SFAW
@D58826:
It’s either pre-New Deal (a la “Constitution in Exile” nutcases), or pre-Enlightenment, that they’re seeking.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv:
Will never happen in a million fucking years.
These maggots are the most despicable of cowards.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Do you feel a big need to insult maggots?
SRW1
So, Clarence Thomas is the personification of ‘the law’ in Anatole France’s famous quote
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
WereBear
Exactly. I hear so many conservatives talking about their adolescence as “the best years of their lives.” And they haven’t matured since then, either.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. — John Kenneth Galbraith
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: Yeah, I know. Maggots are on line 2 threatening a defamation suit.
I am sorry my comparison may have offended them. Did I get the wording right for the standard “conservative” non-apology apology?
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW:
Michelle Bachmann, she of the cray-cray eyes and cray-cray “brain”, once said that the Renaissance was a mistake.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Yeah, if only those losers would get a college degree without long-term indebtedness, they too could make something of themselves. Why can’t they do just the same thing he did?
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Well, you know, you can borrow $30,000 from your parents and start a business, or you can cash out some of that stock you got as a wedding present, and then make something of yourself!
It’s really not all that difficult. Why, Mitt Romney makes couch change to the tune of $250k a year from speaking fees!
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Close. Gotta use passive voice, and put the blame on the maggots for being offended: “I’m sorry if maggots were offended.”
Roger Moore
@Geeno:
Only if you’re looking at operating profits. IIRC, Trump’s big problem was that he borrowed against his stable business to engage in riskier deals that went sour on him. The safest investment in the world won’t do you any good if you pull that kind of shit.
Mike in NC
So when Clarence Thomas, Juan Williams, and Dinesh D’Souza meet for lunch on Capitol Hill, the self-loathing in the room must get pretty thick.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
I believe the common American term for the age they’re seeking is Antebellum.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Trump is always careful to make sure that a corporate person is legally responsible for the fuckups, never him. In this sense: “Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” – Ambrose Bierce
This is how a lot of NFL owners plead poverty: the team is losing money because it’s contracted to concessionaires that are also under the control of the owner. So the profits are siphoned away from the team…but the owner still profits.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: Yup, you’re right. Gotta shift the blame to the party that was offended.
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
In fairness to Juan Williams: except for this idiocy he wrote, it seemed as if he was getting to be less of a Fox house darkie in recent months. Maybe I was mis-perceiving that. But if I was was reading it right, then this was probably his attempt to get back in Fox’s good graces.
Despite his too-often silly comments, I don’t think he’s in the same galaxy as D’Souza, as far as being a vile, arrogant, un-self-aware, vile, evil, motherfucking dickhead. And did I mention D’Souza’s vile, too?
ETA: To be clear: I was applying those adjectives (including “vile,” did I mention that one?) to D’Souza. Although I don’t especially like Williams, I think there’s hope for him.
patrick II
Justice Thomas on racist stereotyping causing less job opportunity for black men — ignore it, we all need to be considered as individuals.
Justice Thomas on racist stereotyping during his own congressional hearings — you senators are using baseless racist stereotyping of the black male’s sexual aggressiveness against me.
That was about all I needed to know about the guy.
SFAW
@patrick II:
Yeah, except that there wasn’t any racist stereotyping. He just threw out the “high-tech lynching” bullshit to fuck a few rats, and thus put the Dems on the defensive.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Excellent, Grasshopper.
Hal
@WereBear: I remember that book. There was another woman who was incensed at Morgan Spurluck and after receiving money from fast food industry groups, did a reverse super size me and lost weight eating at McDonald’s. Of course it was all salads, grilled chicken and sugar free drinks, but hey, McDonald’s is actually healthy!
Some people love corporations. What really irritated me about this book is he doesn’t see an advantage in being a white male with no kids who can spend the first few months of minimum wage jobs living in his car.
gian
@Geeno:
Bad management.
(Not excluding theft)
If word gets out that the one armed bandits don’t pay as well as the place next door, or it was built with loans that the business plan couldn’t pay. Or knowing trump certain customers were stereotyped and made to feel unwelcome
beth
@Hal: My daughter read that book at school and Shepard came and spoke to her class. it bugged me that he didn’t seem to realize how much easier it is here in Charleston for a white person even as he lived among minorities at Crisis Ministries. Kind of reminded me of Colbert’s “I don’t see race” without the satire behind it. He also managed to accumulate a nice nest egg but quit before anything made him lose that money, like his car breaking down or getting sick or hurt. He also did hard manual labor in his twenties – I’d like to see him repeat that in his forties or fifties.
Citizen Alan
@Hal:
Some people
loveworship corporations. It amazes me that people who claim to be Christian can read a passage like “You cannot serve both God and Mammon” and see no connection at all between Mammon and the American veneration of capitalism as a religion and the 1% as its anointed priesthood.Ruckus
@beth:
I still work in a manual labor job. Not as manual as digging ditches or pouring concrete, both of which I’ve done, but manual, blue collar work. Been doing this and worse for over 50 yrs. What is hard in your 20s is difficult in your 50s and while not impossible in your 60s really takes it out of you. What used to take me an hour to recover from takes 2-3 days now. People who write books about how hard manual labor really isn’t never, ever do the work for decades and then talk about how easy it was. Because it’s all bullshit. There is a reason people want machines to make work easier, manual labor is tough on the body, both on a day to day basis and even worse, long term.
MobiusKlein
@Suzanne: I approve of sneaking food into movies, theme parks, stadiums, and all other monopoly concession fora. Eating wholesome, healthy food is a right. Paying 100% markup on crap sucks ass
MobiusKlein
@Suzanne: I approve of sneaking food into movies, theme parks, stadiums, and all other monopoly concession fora. Eating wholesome, healthy food is a right. Paying 100% markup on crap sucks ass !
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Good old huckabuckin’ Juan. Whoever upthread spoke of him being a little less slavecatchery lately was right, but apparently it was time to get back on massa’s good side. Ever notice that cons of color always get made to snap to sooner or later? Secret: the best trained among them self-police.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yatsuno: I already know BiP’s counter to that: the documents are fake, they’re CIA/Nazi plants, Vlad Putin the Saintly would never plan an invasion of another country with the objective of annexing chunks of it, etc.
Evan Brehm
Clarence Thomas sure is an example of “shouldering the burden of responsibility and rising above it” on his own merits, what with getting into Law School on Affirmative Action and all.
SFAW
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
That was yours truly upthread, glad (?) to see I’m not totally clueless.
“A little less slavecatchery”? Interesting neologism, probably a good phrase to retain.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@SFAW: Not everyone’s cup of tea, to be sure, but I’ve watched this kind of thing all my life, and I’m too fed up to be bothered calling it anything other than what it is.
CarolDuhart2
I’ve often thought that the Clarence Thomas/Juan Williams/DeSouza attitude is this: if every other black and minority person is kept from advancing, nobody will know just how mediocre I really am. And really, any sign of excellence from those types at all? Think of how Thomas must feel to realize that he’s not only mediocre, but actually hated by a growing number of black peers, many of him exceed his accomplishments now. Obama. Holder. Booker will either be a lifetime Senator, on somebody’s ticket as VP, or even be the next black President. If Hillary wins and has an opportunity-he may not even be the only black person on the bench anymore. Juan Williams will never really be a power-that is, his own show. The guy subbing in for Brian Williams (brain fart for name) may well end up either as an anchor or at least his own show. DeSouza will never be anything but a grifter-not even an elected official, with his own show, or at the head of a think tank.
Another Holocene Human
@greennotGreen: Thomas lacks empathy for others. He’s a very self-contained narcissist. Thomas’ talk about helping Black people is just talk. His actual treatment of Black women and of Black men through his pro-police-state rulings that shredded the Bill of Rights give the lie to such notions.
Thomas isn’t a psychopath–he knows that Black people don’t respect him and that bothers him. But he can only double down on his wingnuttery and grievance nursing. What was it Paul said, though I speak with the voice of an angel but I do not love–? Thomas does not love. (He doesn’t even love himself, that’s obvious–and would be typical of a narcissist although some narcissists pretend to love themselves as part of the false front they present to others.)
SFAW
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
I wasn’t complaining or disagreeing (or whatever). I just thought it was in interesting phrase, possibly appropriate, and one that would not have occurred to me.
Another Holocene Human
@JGabriel: J Williams, set your butt down and stop lying. Thomas believes in the doctrine that you have no rights if you’re driving down the street minding your own business and the cops pull you over. They can search your car, search your person, arrest you without Mirandizing. You shouldn’t have been pulled over in the first place; it’s your fault.
Ben Cisco
@SFAW: Understood – and I meant no implications towards you; I am just mindful that not everyone here might share that view.
Ben Cisco
@Yatsuno: Quote of the day.
Another Holocene Human
@Ruckus: And that’s before we get into hazards like losing fingers, broken backs, crushed feet, and chemical exposures.
Another Holocene Human
@CarolDuhart2: Great insight. Right wing politics and wingnut welfare tend to attract narcissists. Deep down narcissists don’t love themselves. A bit of imposter syndrome might not be too far off the mark (especially with Clarence Thomas, not D’Souza though, he has Dunning-Kruger written all over him).
For a while these token types–not unlike white wingnuts–think they’re really bright for bucking the crowd and telling the “truth” (hateful rightwing patter). They get lots of unearned attention and goodies. But, yeah, you called it, these would be social dominators find themselves outflanked by the liberals and moderates and it’s too late to change their stripes. They’re still living in the 80s…
Not wanting competition is much like the white wingnut’s motivation, they don’t want competition either.
David Koch
Lindsey Lohan – America’s most influential thinker on sobriety.
Roger Goodell – America’s most influential thinker on domestic violence.
Sarah Palin – America’s most influential thinker on stuff, also too.
sharl
Back in 2002, before he went on with others to found the Black Agenda Report website – which I would describe as having an AA socialist/economic progressive viewpoint, fwiw – Glenn Ford co-authored a piece at The Black Commentator that discussed some of the more prominent AA media right-wingers (or at least, AA media enablers of right-wingers). Juan Williams gets a lot of discussion in that article.
Woodrowfan
remember that Thomas was raised by a psychotic abusive grandfather. he’s been badly damaged psychologically, and the country is paying for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Woodrowfan: For a second I thought this was the Downton/Grantchester conversation and said to myself, “Aha, there is an insight into Mr. Barrows.”
Darkrose
I feel a sudden need to repost this.
brantl
Justice Thomas should not be (in accuracy) referred to as an Uncle Tom Justice, he should be referred to as a Quisling Justice. But, most people wouldn’t know what you meant by that.