Why is Clarence Thomas still on the Supreme Court?

By Margery Eagan APRIL 23, 2018

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, when Anita Hill stunned America with stories of Clarence Thomas’s fascination with Long Dong Silver, I was a reporter squeezed in among other reporters on the floor of the packed and sweaty Senate hearing room. I remember feeling disappointed, but not surprised, when those senators — all white men — confirmed Thomas to the US Supreme Court. A lifetime appointment.

Pathetic as it seems now, I was just grateful that Hill had brought sexual harassment out of the closet. Bosses started worrying. Instructions popped up, taped to the women’s bathroom door, on what to do about creepy colleagues. There was a chance that turning in a creepy colleague would make harassment stop. That didn’t happen. Still, it was a start.

Here’s what’s pathetic today. Thomas remains on the court, unchallenged, unprotested, with all we know now about sexual harassment and other accusations against him. He wields enormous power over every woman in America. Why are so few of us worked up?

Sunday night, the Associates of the Boston Public Library honored New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer. In 1994 she coauthored, “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” with her then-Wall Street Journal colleague Jill Abramson. Abramson later became the first woman executive editor of The New York Times.

Mayer and Abramson’s reporting detailed stories of three other women who said they too endured harassment by Thomas. Four women had been willing to testify to the committee, but the committee never asked. “Strange Justice” also reported on four others who said they knew of Thomas’s penchant for bizarre sexual talk. These revelations caused a stir, but Thomas, and the rest of us, soon moved on.

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