Nobody Knows the Lynchings He’s Seen
By FRANK RICH
New York Times
WHAT'S the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.
Pity Clarence Thomas. Done in by what he calls "left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony" — as he describes anyone who challenged his elevation to the court — he still claims to have suffered as much as African-Americans once victimized by "bigots in white robes." Since kicking off his book tour on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, he has been whining all the way to the bank, often abetted by a press claque as fawning as his No. 1 fan, Rush Limbaugh.
We are always at a crossroads with race in America, and so here we are again. The rollout of Justice Thomas's memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," is not happening in a vacuum. It follows a Supreme Court decision (which he abetted) outlawing voluntary school desegregation plans in two American cities. It follows yet another vote by the Senate to deny true Congressional representation to the majority black District of Columbia. It follows the decision by the leading Republican presidential candidates to snub a debate at a historically black college as well as the re-emergence of a low-tech lynching noose in Jena, La.
Perhaps most significant of all, Mr. Thomas's woe-is-me tour unfolds against the backdrop of the presidential campaign of an African-American whose political lexicon does not include martyrdom or rage. "My Grandfather's Son" may consciously or not echo the title of Barack Obama's memoir of genealogy and race, "Dreams From My Father," but it might as well be written in another tongue.
It's useful to watch Mr. Thomas at this moment, 16 years after his riveting confirmation circus. He is a barometer of what has and has not changed since then because he hasn't changed at all. He still preaches against black self-pity even as he hyperbolically tries to cast his Senate cross-examination by Joe Biden as tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan assassination of Medgar Evers. He still denies that he is the beneficiary of the very race-based preferences he deplores. He still has a dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but, and not merely in the matter of Anita Hill.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
WHAT'S the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.
Pity Clarence Thomas. Done in by what he calls "left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony" — as he describes anyone who challenged his elevation to the court — he still claims to have suffered as much as African-Americans once victimized by "bigots in white robes." Since kicking off his book tour on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, he has been whining all the way to the bank, often abetted by a press claque as fawning as his No. 1 fan, Rush Limbaugh.
We are always at a crossroads with race in America, and so here we are again. The rollout of Justice Thomas's memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," is not happening in a vacuum. It follows a Supreme Court decision (which he abetted) outlawing voluntary school desegregation plans in two American cities. It follows yet another vote by the Senate to deny true Congressional representation to the majority black District of Columbia. It follows the decision by the leading Republican presidential candidates to snub a debate at a historically black college as well as the re-emergence of a low-tech lynching noose in Jena, La.
Perhaps most significant of all, Mr. Thomas's woe-is-me tour unfolds against the backdrop of the presidential campaign of an African-American whose political lexicon does not include martyrdom or rage. "My Grandfather's Son" may consciously or not echo the title of Barack Obama's memoir of genealogy and race, "Dreams From My Father," but it might as well be written in another tongue.
It's useful to watch Mr. Thomas at this moment, 16 years after his riveting confirmation circus. He is a barometer of what has and has not changed since then because he hasn't changed at all. He still preaches against black self-pity even as he hyperbolically tries to cast his Senate cross-examination by Joe Biden as tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan assassination of Medgar Evers. He still denies that he is the beneficiary of the very race-based preferences he deplores. He still has a dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but, and not merely in the matter of Anita Hill.
(Continued here.)
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