I uniformly hate these “fictionalized looks” at history.
Comments
“Fictionalized” version of the Thomas-Hill case on HBO — 32 Comments
Ginni Lamp Thomas was in my law school class so I had a bias for her husband.
I sent my daughter an email detailing all the factual problems with Hill’s testimony. Her response was that Hill had raised awareness of sexual harassment as a problem. Yes, it did that but I was concerned about the truth in that specific case. Two entirely different things.
I agree on the attempts to create a brief dramatic fiction about complicated events. Why would you even do that unless you were attempting to slant the narrative your way? There is literally no (honest) hope of giving your audience sufficient background and context to inform them what the various sides of the issue are and give them enough historical data to form an intelligent opinion.
So we must conclude that “viewer forming an intelligent opinion” is not their goal. What, then, could it be?
Interesting side bit: Insty links to a review which links to a further review at indiewire – which I had not previously heard of. The indiewire reviewer was incensed that Clarence Thomas’s side of the story was allowed to stand at all, claiming that it was not much challenged in “Confirmation.” So it may be less-biased than expected. Though that reviewer may simply be a scorched-earth character who wants agitprop. I won’t be able to weigh in on that for all of you, as I won’t be watching.
And, of course, the Left excels at rewriting history so that young people fall in line with the narrative.
The “larger issue” is NOT awareness of sexual harrasment. Those who believe the larger issue to be whatever the current outrage of the moment may be… are the Left’s “useful idiots”. Who will be predictably astonished when the Stalinists show up.
The larger issue is destroying any obstacle to the triumph of the narrative. Utterly necessary to the triumph of “the revolution”, which as David Horowitz has pointed out is ALWAYS the real issue.
The Thomas-Hill hearings marked the beginning of my migration from liberal to conservative, a process which took several years. The obvious bias and the concerted effort to destroy Thomas was shocking enough to make me suspicious of liberal politics from then on.
I’ve always wondered how many people saw the broadcast, as a part of the hearings, of a panel of several women supporting Clarence Thomas. As I recall, the panel comprised 10 or 12 women of varying ethnicities who had previously worked with Thomas and who uniformly endorsed his integrity. This was broadcast on CNN in the wee hours of the morning, and only one person of my acquaintance ever saw it.
Jan in MN
The Thomas hearings flipped me from liberal to conservative. The tipping point. If the Left would try to destroy this guy with such a thin claim – simply based on what he represented – then I knew the Left would stop at nothing. I didn’t want to be associated with such creeps.
Anita Hill profiles as an incest victim… to an astonishing degree.
Her father had 17 children… which indicates a pretty high sex drive right there.
So, he’d be a candidate for first offender.
Based on OTHER fellas in her life, Anita was a persistent accuser of alpha male figures across the board.
Her history was excluded, repressed.
It was this history that generated the hostility seen by the Senators during her testimony.
They knew a LOT more than they were able to read into the record.
A while back they made a movie about the Bush-Gore Florida brouhaha called “Recount”. Recount won a mess of awards and I don’t know how true to life it was but the director said the film “wasn’t 100 percent accurate, but it was very true to what went on….That’s what dramatizations do: stitch together the big ideas with, sometimes, constructs that have to stand for a larger truth.”
Yes, its all about the “larger truth”.
These rewrites of history always work. The Left controls the narrative. Always have. Always will.
Control of the narrative begins at the family dinner table.
Alan W,
Yep. It’s the critical Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game – the only social cultural/political game there is – where narrative is elective truth and the actual truth is just a narrative that must be competed for like any other in the arena.
Neo:
“I uniformly hate these “fictionalized looks” at history.”
That’s like ‘hating’ the opposing team’s best player or its best plays. That’s fine when your discontent motivates you to do what’s needed to compete and win. But ‘hate’ of a consistently effective technique will not counter its competitive effect. It’s not like the Left will stop using a profitable method or it’s going to be banned from the arena because you ‘hate’ it.
Cornhead:
“These rewrites of history always work. The Left controls the narrative. Always have. Always will.”
Stipulated on the 1st part, “These rewrites of history always work.” Simply, activism works.
I disagree on the 2nd part, “The Left controls the narrative. Always have. Always will.”
The Left controls the narrative only inasmuch they win that control in the arena.
Certainly, as long as the Right ‘always’ chooses not to compete for real with a sufficient competitive permanent full-spectrum social activist movement, then it logically would follow that the Left ‘always will’ win control of the narrative.
As the “jayvee” Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists have shown, it doesn’t take an especially sophisticated level of activism to wrest the narrative versus an opponent that refuses to compete for real.
However, if and when the Right chooses to compete for real with sufficient competitive activism, then control of the narrative will be determined by honest competition in the arena.
The Left is not automatically “always” the winner of the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game. Right now, it only looks that way because conservatives of the Right have chosen not to compete for real in the only social cultural/political game there is.
parker:
“Control of the narrative begins at the family dinner table.”
Actually, it begins on campus.
Clarence Thomas . . . Clarence Thomas . . . hmmm . . . yeah! —
Wasn’t he the dude who objected to Anita Hill’s using the men’s room because it was her honest-to-goodness feeeeling that she was a man, and had an unalienable right to use the men’s room?
Ooooops: wrong decade. Never mind.
(Drums keep pounding a-rhythm to the bray-ay-ayn.)
Of all the stories one could dramatize the only reason to pick the Hill-Thomas brouhaha is political. I was just reminded of the Pan Am 747 Hijacking in 1986 where the crew (largely Indian stewardesses) bravely delayed the hijackers and eventually helped the passengers escape. At least one was killed and other injured.
How about praising these women in a Hollywood film (an Indian one was made recently)? A little true feminism for a change?
Eric:
You need to come up with an acronym for “jayvee Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists” or a cute nickname for them, or you’ll wear out your keyboard.
JLMTFARA is a bit stilted, though.
No Eric,
It begins at the dinner table and continues during their teen years before college. Family trumps (no pun) the ‘zeitgeist’ if the ‘narrative’ is rooted in demonstratable reality. Failure to teach your children through deeds, words, and lifestyle leads to young programmable minds/spirits.
Its simple: love, nurture, educate, lead by example. A good place to start is firearm safety and marksmanship training beginning at age 8. Straight shooters rarely stray.
HBO is very biased and Kerry Washington is a very politically active progressive. There was absolutely no chance this was going to be anything but a Clarence Thomas hit job, just to make sure the next generation understands he is to be hated. Heck, HBO also just did a movie on the 80’s AIDS era to make sure the lie about Reagan being responsible for it gets passed on to kids who were born after Reagan was president.
Re: “Her response was that Hill had raised awareness of sexual harassment as a problem.”
Heh, yeah, so did Bill Clinton!
No, what we can credit Hill for is making everyone in corporate America attend sexual harassment training. Thanks A LOT, Anita Hill!
parker and Eric,
The single greatest obstacle to the leftist narrative is parental influence. Which is why Obama and leftist activists have started to push for federal funding of kindergarten and daycare.
And Eric, there is no such thing as “elective” truth. Nor is the truth “just another narrative”. The truth is the only thing that is really, real. All else is illusion, pretense and denial. That the majority declare their biases and imaginings to be reality’s truth, no more makes it factual, than a man declaring himself to be Napoleon.
Multiculturalism declares itself to be elective truth. In Europe, Islam has begun to confront multiculturalists with the truth (fact) of its sword. There is no doubt as to which will prevail because illusion cannot permanently disinherit realty’s truth.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate on this. I don’ think there’s any conscious attempt to rewrite history. These people are just telling a story about a fascinating moment in our recent history as they remember it happened. Nothing nefarious.
IMO, it is possible that these people are just telling a story as they remember it.
But to do so requires a huge amount of willful blindness. Self-deceit always involves a conscious refusal to face the truth. In thier heart of hearts, they know the truth and, justify their dishonesty with the classic, ‘end justifies the means’ rationalization.
Thus it consists of both intellectual and moral dishonesty and makes that person fuly complicit in the untruths.
I disagree. Self-deceit is as easy as pie, and doesn’t require deliberation. A diligent thinker tries to root out all such self-deceptions, but it’s hard work because we lie to ourselves so often. I assure you that I’m lying to myself right now and have no idea about what. (I suspect I’m lying to myself about my lunch being healthy with a reasonable amount of mayo, and also that that girl in the meeting I just got out of was really impressed with me. The other lies, who knows?)
Of course self-deceit is easy and indeed, we are all prone to it. Self-deceit becomes willful blindness (intentional self-deceit) when the logical flaws in our self-deceit are pointed out to us and we still refuse to face the contradictions between what we wish to be true and factual reality. That is when the conscious aspect of self-deceit arises.
Geoffrey Britain, Nick:
I’m with Nick on that.
Self-delusion is easy as pie, and to work well (which it usually does) one must be unconscious of it, unless one is a Sovietphile (see the tale of Harry Freeman, here).
I see by this thread that most are unaware that Anita Hill was of the opinion that half of all her superiors were sexually harassing her.
She’d filed previous complaints over and over.
These were quashed — as if she was a rape victim.
As you know, the previous slutty habits of a rape victim are NOT admissible evidence in a court of law.
The Senate took the stance that their hearings should adopt the same standard.
Whereas the Senators KNEW — prior to the hearing — that Anita was a CHRONIC victim of older alpha males — if you believed her complaints.
Other gentlemen informed the FBI that Anita was obsessive — pursuing THEM.
Incest victims have a profile — and Anita Hill fits that profile to a Tee.
It’s notable that Anita never seems to have had a normal dating life — with fellows that were single and of marriage age.
Yet, she was hardly ugly….
What does that tell you ?
She was constantly obsessed with married men old enough to be either her father or pretty close to it.
That tic, right there, is a strong ‘tell’ that she was an incest victim.
Indeed, it’s a clarion call to — Watch out !
Most of her intendeds considered her a pest — and a sure fire trip to the courthouse… and not in a good way.
The gal needs therapy, not a podium.
Nothing new with leftists attempting to rewrite history. Years ago there was a movie titled “the trials of Alger Hiss” that attempted to exonerate Hiss by claiming he was framed. Alas, when the Venona transcripts were released in the 1990s they proved beyond any doubt that Hiss was a spy for the USSR thus proving the claim made by this so called documentary was fallacious.
Let me guess: Gerard Butler is playing Howell Heflin.
The Clarence Thomas Hearings were one of my first experiences of watching a CD hearing of any kind. I was uninterested in politics for most of my life, but the Bork situation, in 1987, showed me how important–and fascinating, and infuriating–such things were. I saw Bork as incredibly qualified for SCOTUS, and watched with a building fury as he was torn apart with lies.
When the Clarence Thomas Hearings came up, I watched every second they were on the air, the entire Hearing. I knew nothing of Thomas, and as I watched I grew to know he was a remarkably honorable man, and extremely qualified. I watched the different groups who came to speak of him and loved so many of them–especially the “everyday people” who knew him from childhood or older youth. It seemed to me that they had stopped their daily life for a moment, strapped on a pair of Seven League Boots, and strode their way into this gathering wherein the Power in Washington sat to Advise and Consent (or Not) for the Great Positions in the Land. These people spoke clearly and openly and honestly about their approval of Thomas, of their personal respect. A person is extremely lucky in life to have such an encomium, and I applauded this heartfelt affirmation of Thomas.
I heard of the existence of Anita Hill and was saddened and worried, because I knew from experience that when it comes to sex even the finest men can be fools and even a true villain. But when I heard Hill speak, and heard and read all the information from the MSM and the so-called witnesses, I KNEW Hill was lying. (Even that woman Judge slipped up by telling the truth about the date–being BEFORE Hill worked with Thomas–and then she came back with a “correction”–a Prog synonym for lie. It was monstrous.
Jan in MN–I did sit up that last night before the vote, when the panel of women spoke of their admiration and devotion to the honorable man they knew Clarence Thomas to be. I felt such love for them, for their courage and their integrity, it was overwhelming. And when a man named John Doggett–I think, my memory for names is horrible–came out and told of his experiences when he’d met Hill on occasion. You have to understand that Doggett was an affluent, self-made man, and had a sex-appeal that I could feel radiating out of the TV. WHOOSH. Oh, and it is important that he was black, because, as he said, Anita Hill acted like she was so beautiful and accomplished that any attractive black man who was clearly on his way up in the world would look at her and immediately want her to be his girl. She would attach herself to Doggett at a party, or other like place, as though she belonged with him–or, perhaps, as though he belonged to the magnificence of her. He didn’t like it, and he said he thought that she had done the same with Thomas, just waiting for the inevitable moment when he fell for the remarkableness that was Anita Hill.
I believed Doggett. I believed those women who praised Thomas.
And, you know, Thomas had married a white woman, which must have been gut-wrenching for Hill given her feelings of entitlement to him. And then, when Thomas was up for the great position of Justice of the SCOTUS, and Hill found out that she could, anonymously, bring him down–they told her that she need never appear, because her accusation would destroy Thomas and he would withdraw from the nomination.
But he didn’t withdraw.
So she had to come forward.
And about the movie “Confirmation”, I saw previews, and I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it. The beautiful actress playing Hill looked soulful and battered by her testimony, and was very effective on the preview I saw; but, Anita Hill was from start to finish almost clinical about the “details”, and showed little to no emotion. I saw the clip where the actor Thomas spoke about the “high tech lynching” and the actor was good, but the real Thomas had eyes filled with a fierce torment and fury, barely held in, when he said the words. I saw the clip where Thomas’ wife seems uncertain about it all, but if there is one thing that stood out to me when I looked, during the actual hearing, at Ginni Thomas, sitting there proudly in the front of the audience to the hearing, her eyes damning those panel Senators who were engaging in the machinations of the Inquisition: THAT woman never, ever, doubted her husband.
And, Eric, parker, et al, it begins in Pre-K, that’s why Obama has announced a plan to have universal Pre-K.
Start socializing them early. (Actually, start socialism-izing them early.) One of the Progs favorite goals. Collectivism starts at the earliest possible age.
Thomas’s memoir has a good clear explanation of what happened with Hill.
@Minta: Speaking of narrative and controlling it, you can definitely look to pop culture for advancing The Left’s social issues. The executive producers of Once Upon A Time have admitted that, based on the fervent mission to practice “inclusion,” will happily promote the “new normal.”
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Ginni Lamp Thomas was in my law school class so I had a bias for her husband.
I sent my daughter an email detailing all the factual problems with Hill’s testimony. Her response was that Hill had raised awareness of sexual harassment as a problem. Yes, it did that but I was concerned about the truth in that specific case. Two entirely different things.
I agree on the attempts to create a brief dramatic fiction about complicated events. Why would you even do that unless you were attempting to slant the narrative your way? There is literally no (honest) hope of giving your audience sufficient background and context to inform them what the various sides of the issue are and give them enough historical data to form an intelligent opinion.
So we must conclude that “viewer forming an intelligent opinion” is not their goal. What, then, could it be?
Interesting side bit: Insty links to a review which links to a further review at indiewire – which I had not previously heard of. The indiewire reviewer was incensed that Clarence Thomas’s side of the story was allowed to stand at all, claiming that it was not much challenged in “Confirmation.” So it may be less-biased than expected. Though that reviewer may simply be a scorched-earth character who wants agitprop. I won’t be able to weigh in on that for all of you, as I won’t be watching.
And, of course, the Left excels at rewriting history so that young people fall in line with the narrative.
The “larger issue” is NOT awareness of sexual harrasment. Those who believe the larger issue to be whatever the current outrage of the moment may be… are the Left’s “useful idiots”. Who will be predictably astonished when the Stalinists show up.
The larger issue is destroying any obstacle to the triumph of the narrative. Utterly necessary to the triumph of “the revolution”, which as David Horowitz has pointed out is ALWAYS the real issue.
The Thomas-Hill hearings marked the beginning of my migration from liberal to conservative, a process which took several years. The obvious bias and the concerted effort to destroy Thomas was shocking enough to make me suspicious of liberal politics from then on.
I’ve always wondered how many people saw the broadcast, as a part of the hearings, of a panel of several women supporting Clarence Thomas. As I recall, the panel comprised 10 or 12 women of varying ethnicities who had previously worked with Thomas and who uniformly endorsed his integrity. This was broadcast on CNN in the wee hours of the morning, and only one person of my acquaintance ever saw it.
Jan in MN
The Thomas hearings flipped me from liberal to conservative. The tipping point. If the Left would try to destroy this guy with such a thin claim – simply based on what he represented – then I knew the Left would stop at nothing. I didn’t want to be associated with such creeps.
Anita Hill profiles as an incest victim… to an astonishing degree.
Her father had 17 children… which indicates a pretty high sex drive right there.
So, he’d be a candidate for first offender.
Based on OTHER fellas in her life, Anita was a persistent accuser of alpha male figures across the board.
Her history was excluded, repressed.
It was this history that generated the hostility seen by the Senators during her testimony.
They knew a LOT more than they were able to read into the record.
A while back they made a movie about the Bush-Gore Florida brouhaha called “Recount”. Recount won a mess of awards and I don’t know how true to life it was but the director said the film “wasn’t 100 percent accurate, but it was very true to what went on….That’s what dramatizations do: stitch together the big ideas with, sometimes, constructs that have to stand for a larger truth.”
Yes, its all about the “larger truth”.
These rewrites of history always work. The Left controls the narrative. Always have. Always will.
Control of the narrative begins at the family dinner table.
Alan W,
Yep. It’s the critical Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game – the only social cultural/political game there is – where narrative is elective truth and the actual truth is just a narrative that must be competed for like any other in the arena.
Neo:
“I uniformly hate these “fictionalized looks” at history.”
That’s like ‘hating’ the opposing team’s best player or its best plays. That’s fine when your discontent motivates you to do what’s needed to compete and win. But ‘hate’ of a consistently effective technique will not counter its competitive effect. It’s not like the Left will stop using a profitable method or it’s going to be banned from the arena because you ‘hate’ it.
Cornhead:
“These rewrites of history always work. The Left controls the narrative. Always have. Always will.”
Stipulated on the 1st part, “These rewrites of history always work.” Simply, activism works.
I disagree on the 2nd part, “The Left controls the narrative. Always have. Always will.”
The Left controls the narrative only inasmuch they win that control in the arena.
Certainly, as long as the Right ‘always’ chooses not to compete for real with a sufficient competitive permanent full-spectrum social activist movement, then it logically would follow that the Left ‘always will’ win control of the narrative.
As the “jayvee” Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists have shown, it doesn’t take an especially sophisticated level of activism to wrest the narrative versus an opponent that refuses to compete for real.
However, if and when the Right chooses to compete for real with sufficient competitive activism, then control of the narrative will be determined by honest competition in the arena.
The Left is not automatically “always” the winner of the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game. Right now, it only looks that way because conservatives of the Right have chosen not to compete for real in the only social cultural/political game there is.
parker:
“Control of the narrative begins at the family dinner table.”
Actually, it begins on campus.
Clarence Thomas . . . Clarence Thomas . . . hmmm . . . yeah! —
Wasn’t he the dude who objected to Anita Hill’s using the men’s room because it was her honest-to-goodness feeeeling that she was a man, and had an unalienable right to use the men’s room?
Ooooops: wrong decade. Never mind.
(Drums keep pounding a-rhythm to the bray-ay-ayn.)
Of all the stories one could dramatize the only reason to pick the Hill-Thomas brouhaha is political. I was just reminded of the Pan Am 747 Hijacking in 1986 where the crew (largely Indian stewardesses) bravely delayed the hijackers and eventually helped the passengers escape. At least one was killed and other injured.
How about praising these women in a Hollywood film (an Indian one was made recently)? A little true feminism for a change?
Eric:
You need to come up with an acronym for “jayvee Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists” or a cute nickname for them, or you’ll wear out your keyboard.
JLMTFARA is a bit stilted, though.
No Eric,
It begins at the dinner table and continues during their teen years before college. Family trumps (no pun) the ‘zeitgeist’ if the ‘narrative’ is rooted in demonstratable reality. Failure to teach your children through deeds, words, and lifestyle leads to young programmable minds/spirits.
Its simple: love, nurture, educate, lead by example. A good place to start is firearm safety and marksmanship training beginning at age 8. Straight shooters rarely stray.
HBO is very biased and Kerry Washington is a very politically active progressive. There was absolutely no chance this was going to be anything but a Clarence Thomas hit job, just to make sure the next generation understands he is to be hated. Heck, HBO also just did a movie on the 80’s AIDS era to make sure the lie about Reagan being responsible for it gets passed on to kids who were born after Reagan was president.
Re: “Her response was that Hill had raised awareness of sexual harassment as a problem.”
Heh, yeah, so did Bill Clinton!
No, what we can credit Hill for is making everyone in corporate America attend sexual harassment training. Thanks A LOT, Anita Hill!
parker and Eric,
The single greatest obstacle to the leftist narrative is parental influence. Which is why Obama and leftist activists have started to push for federal funding of kindergarten and daycare.
And Eric, there is no such thing as “elective” truth. Nor is the truth “just another narrative”. The truth is the only thing that is really, real. All else is illusion, pretense and denial. That the majority declare their biases and imaginings to be reality’s truth, no more makes it factual, than a man declaring himself to be Napoleon.
Multiculturalism declares itself to be elective truth. In Europe, Islam has begun to confront multiculturalists with the truth (fact) of its sword. There is no doubt as to which will prevail because illusion cannot permanently disinherit realty’s truth.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate on this. I don’ think there’s any conscious attempt to rewrite history. These people are just telling a story about a fascinating moment in our recent history as they remember it happened. Nothing nefarious.
IMO, it is possible that these people are just telling a story as they remember it.
But to do so requires a huge amount of willful blindness. Self-deceit always involves a conscious refusal to face the truth. In thier heart of hearts, they know the truth and, justify their dishonesty with the classic, ‘end justifies the means’ rationalization.
Thus it consists of both intellectual and moral dishonesty and makes that person fuly complicit in the untruths.
I disagree. Self-deceit is as easy as pie, and doesn’t require deliberation. A diligent thinker tries to root out all such self-deceptions, but it’s hard work because we lie to ourselves so often. I assure you that I’m lying to myself right now and have no idea about what. (I suspect I’m lying to myself about my lunch being healthy with a reasonable amount of mayo, and also that that girl in the meeting I just got out of was really impressed with me. The other lies, who knows?)
Of course self-deceit is easy and indeed, we are all prone to it. Self-deceit becomes willful blindness (intentional self-deceit) when the logical flaws in our self-deceit are pointed out to us and we still refuse to face the contradictions between what we wish to be true and factual reality. That is when the conscious aspect of self-deceit arises.
Geoffrey Britain, Nick:
I’m with Nick on that.
Self-delusion is easy as pie, and to work well (which it usually does) one must be unconscious of it, unless one is a Sovietphile (see the tale of Harry Freeman, here).
I see by this thread that most are unaware that Anita Hill was of the opinion that half of all her superiors were sexually harassing her.
She’d filed previous complaints over and over.
These were quashed — as if she was a rape victim.
As you know, the previous slutty habits of a rape victim are NOT admissible evidence in a court of law.
The Senate took the stance that their hearings should adopt the same standard.
Whereas the Senators KNEW — prior to the hearing — that Anita was a CHRONIC victim of older alpha males — if you believed her complaints.
Other gentlemen informed the FBI that Anita was obsessive — pursuing THEM.
Incest victims have a profile — and Anita Hill fits that profile to a Tee.
It’s notable that Anita never seems to have had a normal dating life — with fellows that were single and of marriage age.
Yet, she was hardly ugly….
What does that tell you ?
She was constantly obsessed with married men old enough to be either her father or pretty close to it.
That tic, right there, is a strong ‘tell’ that she was an incest victim.
Indeed, it’s a clarion call to — Watch out !
Most of her intendeds considered her a pest — and a sure fire trip to the courthouse… and not in a good way.
The gal needs therapy, not a podium.
Nothing new with leftists attempting to rewrite history. Years ago there was a movie titled “the trials of Alger Hiss” that attempted to exonerate Hiss by claiming he was framed. Alas, when the Venona transcripts were released in the 1990s they proved beyond any doubt that Hiss was a spy for the USSR thus proving the claim made by this so called documentary was fallacious.
HBO’s ‘Confirmation’ opens old wounds on Biden’s legacy with women — an unintended consequence?
Greg Kinnear is playing Biden?
Let me guess: Gerard Butler is playing Howell Heflin.
The Clarence Thomas Hearings were one of my first experiences of watching a CD hearing of any kind. I was uninterested in politics for most of my life, but the Bork situation, in 1987, showed me how important–and fascinating, and infuriating–such things were. I saw Bork as incredibly qualified for SCOTUS, and watched with a building fury as he was torn apart with lies.
When the Clarence Thomas Hearings came up, I watched every second they were on the air, the entire Hearing. I knew nothing of Thomas, and as I watched I grew to know he was a remarkably honorable man, and extremely qualified. I watched the different groups who came to speak of him and loved so many of them–especially the “everyday people” who knew him from childhood or older youth. It seemed to me that they had stopped their daily life for a moment, strapped on a pair of Seven League Boots, and strode their way into this gathering wherein the Power in Washington sat to Advise and Consent (or Not) for the Great Positions in the Land. These people spoke clearly and openly and honestly about their approval of Thomas, of their personal respect. A person is extremely lucky in life to have such an encomium, and I applauded this heartfelt affirmation of Thomas.
I heard of the existence of Anita Hill and was saddened and worried, because I knew from experience that when it comes to sex even the finest men can be fools and even a true villain. But when I heard Hill speak, and heard and read all the information from the MSM and the so-called witnesses, I KNEW Hill was lying. (Even that woman Judge slipped up by telling the truth about the date–being BEFORE Hill worked with Thomas–and then she came back with a “correction”–a Prog synonym for lie. It was monstrous.
Jan in MN–I did sit up that last night before the vote, when the panel of women spoke of their admiration and devotion to the honorable man they knew Clarence Thomas to be. I felt such love for them, for their courage and their integrity, it was overwhelming. And when a man named John Doggett–I think, my memory for names is horrible–came out and told of his experiences when he’d met Hill on occasion. You have to understand that Doggett was an affluent, self-made man, and had a sex-appeal that I could feel radiating out of the TV. WHOOSH. Oh, and it is important that he was black, because, as he said, Anita Hill acted like she was so beautiful and accomplished that any attractive black man who was clearly on his way up in the world would look at her and immediately want her to be his girl. She would attach herself to Doggett at a party, or other like place, as though she belonged with him–or, perhaps, as though he belonged to the magnificence of her. He didn’t like it, and he said he thought that she had done the same with Thomas, just waiting for the inevitable moment when he fell for the remarkableness that was Anita Hill.
I believed Doggett. I believed those women who praised Thomas.
And, you know, Thomas had married a white woman, which must have been gut-wrenching for Hill given her feelings of entitlement to him. And then, when Thomas was up for the great position of Justice of the SCOTUS, and Hill found out that she could, anonymously, bring him down–they told her that she need never appear, because her accusation would destroy Thomas and he would withdraw from the nomination.
But he didn’t withdraw.
So she had to come forward.
And about the movie “Confirmation”, I saw previews, and I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it. The beautiful actress playing Hill looked soulful and battered by her testimony, and was very effective on the preview I saw; but, Anita Hill was from start to finish almost clinical about the “details”, and showed little to no emotion. I saw the clip where the actor Thomas spoke about the “high tech lynching” and the actor was good, but the real Thomas had eyes filled with a fierce torment and fury, barely held in, when he said the words. I saw the clip where Thomas’ wife seems uncertain about it all, but if there is one thing that stood out to me when I looked, during the actual hearing, at Ginni Thomas, sitting there proudly in the front of the audience to the hearing, her eyes damning those panel Senators who were engaging in the machinations of the Inquisition: THAT woman never, ever, doubted her husband.
And, Eric, parker, et al, it begins in Pre-K, that’s why Obama has announced a plan to have universal Pre-K.
Start socializing them early. (Actually, start socialism-izing them early.) One of the Progs favorite goals. Collectivism starts at the earliest possible age.
Thomas’s memoir has a good clear explanation of what happened with Hill.
http://www.amazon.com/My-Grandfathers-Son-Clarence-Thomas/dp/006056556X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461159041&sr=8-1&keywords=clarence+thomas
@Minta: Speaking of narrative and controlling it, you can definitely look to pop culture for advancing The Left’s social issues. The executive producers of Once Upon A Time have admitted that, based on the fervent mission to practice “inclusion,” will happily promote the “new normal.”