What is going on with this thread? I have never seen a thread aggresively moterated like this on SLOG before. Is SLOG now removing particularly innane comments? I'm not sure it wouldn't be for the better, but I have seen dozens of comments that are much more offensive and yet they live on.

@1 .. she didn't wait, she wasn't going to tell the story. she was subpoenaed after a reporter leaked the story to the press when thomas was announced as the next pick for the court.

Hmmmm................why would you have to enter a time machine to want to do that?

@5 and Danielle

Anita Will Quietly Piss You Off
And Make You Want to Climb into a Time Machine and Murder Every Republican Senator in 1991"

- It's funny and a bit sad that this statement could be easily identifiable as something that a black person would say, but it's true. By saying it you are just promoting and perpetuating the violent black stereotypes that you blame white people for. You are also doing a disservice to the entire community by publishing widespread to a young audience, violent, uncivilized fantasies of mass murder as popular, hip culture.

Danielle, after mentioning anger and being pissed off 3 times then sadness, it's no secret that this is all about your volatile emotions being swayed in the wind, this way and that, and not much else - which is pretty typical of the entire modern feminist movement -

Consider me convinced. It is better to keep deleting his or her comments than to give them any response. Anyone who would say something so obviously insane is either just trolling or is not capable of engaging in any kind of meaningful conversation...

@6 Wow, you sound like a racist, sexist asshole.

I loved this post, but I think the bit about Clarence Thomas' role in the justice system could be a bit more nuanced. He is an impotent sidekick in a reactionary voting bloc of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, parts of our federal justice system, including district judges appointed by republicans, are currently trying to bring marriage equality to the whole country, despite the best efforts of Justice (swing vote) Kennedy to make the Supreme Court's position on this issue revolve around states' rights.

Because of such great progressive accomplishments as marriage equality, this period in history is only bad in comparison to how things should be. In comparison to the rest of human history, times are actually pretty good. Hopefully, Clarence Thomas will be a footnote to an early chapter of the best part of human history. A chapter that treats Anita Hill as more than a footnote, presumably.

@8

I agree and thanks for liking my post.

@8

You didn't just like it . You loved it. I love you too.

Fucking troll

It is highly unlikely that a 13yr Danielle would have be watching this hearing. What is more likely is that she watched some Youtube videos...recently. Subsequently, she has superimposed her morally and intellectually bankrupt position on gender dynamics and race.

When you accuse someone of something, then you have to defend it with objective evidence; so yes, you will be questioned as if you are on trial. That is called being fair.

As for imputing that someone's gender, race, and political affiliation would make them incapable of presiding over those hearings is ridiculous.

Danielle hasn't realized it yet, but her brand of benighted articulation will soon make her a relic of the past.

@12
She'll become a relic as a result of what--your sudden onset omniscience? There's as much reason to take her at her word as to what she did as a 13 year old as not to. Where's your objective evidence when you accuse her of lying about something of this nature? Defend your position, unless you want to be the unethical hack you're accusing Danielle of being.

@12, Who are you to say it is "unlikely"? Are you the fucking Television Police or something? I may not have watched the live hearing but I recall being completely aware of this and seeing news snippets of the hearing, and I was 10. If I'd been a little bit older and more interested in politics, it is likely that I would have watched.

Excellent piece, Danielle. Thank you.
And to judge from some of the comments above, very badly needed. Turns out there's a bunch of Clarences (Clarence Thomas clones) among Slog readers.

Yet, who will tell the Zoe Baird story?

@12, why on earth is that unusual? I was 12 and I watched it.

I wouldn't reserve my ire for GOP senators exclusively. VP Joe Biden was kind of a sexist douche during it as well, IIRC.

Clarence Thomas is the worst SCOTUS justice in my lifetime. His only apparent qualification was that he was a black conservative - they're rarer than hen's teeth, for good reason. He's since gone on to confirm my judgment every session. Bork would have been preferable.

Thurgood Marshall is rolling in his grave.

@16

If you don't tell the story then who will? And if not now then when?

Well, I did watch it and I was an adult at the time. Danielle has it right.

Anita Hill is an incredibly courageous woman - then and now.

Clarence Thomas is one of the worst Justices ever and never should have been confirmed. His wife? A piece of work.

And @19,I wish Thurgood Marshall was alive to verbally kick Thomas' ass.

Danielle, I was an adult (white male) at the time of the hearing and I watched it with the exact same thoughts you have expressed. You captured the feelings of the time (and since) exactly as I experienced them: anger, outrage, sadness, disgust.

I clearly remember feeling as if I was watching the harassment reenacted in the hearings as a panel of old white men tried to tear apart a young black woman who exhibited exceptional bravery and dignity. It felt like I was watching some sad movie from an earlier time when the country was overtly racist and felt no need to disguise their appalling behavior. I guess I now have the opportunity to watch the actual movie.

Thanks for a thoughtful post.

The thing that gripes me more, and this may be kind of redundant based on the previous comments, is that this conservative a**hat got confirmed anyway; with help not only from lemmings on the democratic side of the aisle, but also from so-called Civil Rights leaders who had the audacity to say that Thomas would be an acceptable successor to Thurgood Marshall.

I was fully adult at the time and watched the whole thing. Danielle has it exactly right. Anita Hill was treated appallingly, and her story is completely plausible. Justice Thomas, on the other hand, is a hypocritical asshole, and the Republican senators (and a few others) were just as bad.

This pretty much cemented my own transition out of the mental prison of conservatism which had begun a few years earlier with Ollie North's shockingly duplicitous and bogus testimony in the Iran-Contra hearings.

After Hill, it became impossible for any thinking person to be a Republican.

Anita is one of my top three heroes and I'll despise Clarence Thomas until I die. I watched the verdict in a bar when I was 19 and all the guys cheered while I fought back tears over a lump in my throat. I remember a guy looking at me and going, "HA!"

So make no mistake: This wasn't a "normal" decision reflective of "the olden days." It was a travesty and every woman I knew felt as I did: that this was the beginning of a backlash against women's rights. I'll never, ever forget that moment the verdict was read. Fucking awful.

But the silver lining is that Anita lost, but women, in many ways, won. Sexual harassment complaints skyrocketed after the verdict and things honestly did seem to change in the workplace. I used to endure some seriously f-ed-up, Mad Men–type shit from pervy bosses and all that crap really did seem to end when that verdict was read. I owe Anita Hill a lot. All women do.

I was 41 in 1991, and Anita Hill's testimony rang a bell: I'd survived and had to fight sexual harassment on the job, twenty years before the sexual harassment laws.

We women were on our own then: not believed, not supported, with no legal backing.

And then even with the laws in place, old white men railroaded Anita Hill for having the courage to speak out.

And those old white male fuckers gave us the shitpile of Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.

If #27 is right, and the lynching of Anita Hill gave us a climate in which sexual harassment is finally taken seriously, then we have Anita to thank.

@25- "After Hill, it became impossible for any thinking person to be a Republican."

Unfortunately thoughtlessness is always in style.

#8 "impotent sidekick"? Try "judicial house slave".

Clarence Thomas is basically the Supreme Court justice "Uncle Ruckus" from THE BOONDOCKS would be.

And that was clearly intentional on Bush The First's part...Thomas' tenure on the court was obviously meant to be a living insult to the legacy of Thurgood Marshall, the justice Thomas replaced.

Not only that, but Thomas and his wife(as evidenced by her early morning phone message to Anita Hill, just a couple of years ago, where Mrs. Thomas dared to ask Ms. Hill to apologize for telling the truth about her treatment)still seem to think it was an injustice that he was only confirmed by a vote of 51-48...never mind that, margin notwithstanding, the guy still gets to serve on the Court until he either retires or drops dead on the job.

@30 I was just paraphrasing Danielle's phrase "impotent right-hand man." I meant to convey that I agree with her about how awful Clarence Thomas is and how poorly Anita Hill was treated. I think she got a little off track in suggesting that the federal court system is mostly on Thomas' side, when the federal judiciary has been and is still, despite Thomas, often on the forefront of civil rights

It's "through the wringer" as in clothes wringer.

I was about 13 or so during the Nixon Watergate hearings, and still remember watching them on TV decades after the fact. It seems perfectly plausible that a 13 year old black girl would have been interested in watching Anita Hill's testimony.

As an adult white man, I watched much of her testimony too, and I was pretty disgusted at the time by the apalling way she was treated and casually dismissed. I have no doubt that this documentary would ramp my rage meter right back up again.

#31: I didn't mean what i posted there as a slam on your post. Sorry that it came out that way.
My intent was just to say your description was an understatement.

I was 19 and not even an American and I watched it. EVERYONE was watching it. And it was instantly, horribly obvious that Hill was going to be dragged through the mud for no justice at all. One look at they way they spoke to her and it was clear. I think the other poster's disbelief that Henderson was watching is an indicator that they themselves were either too young to watch or not born yet, because anyone old enough to turn on a tv at that time hardly could have missed it.

Danielle Henderson, remember "high-tech lynching," then suddenly, as in a dream, appear sharp eyes flashing envy and vindictiveness boring into him, bludgeoning him from an obscure pit an indistinct puffed-face woman, hair pulled unnaturally straight, lips painted blood-red, and she's surrounded by a ghostly multitude of her, no skirt torn, none raped, but mouthing in some hazy whispering a rank racist slime:

"We'll punish him! He can't criticize this perfect black woman, so well-suited for our political agenda -- and he's married to a white woman -- oh, God, oh, Lawd, sweet Jesus whom we worship for teaching us to love; please, help us, dear Lawd, to bring him down, to destroy him!"

#36: WTF?

@13 and others...

Q. Why do I think that the author's recollection of being engrossed in the hearings is 'unlikely'?

As a 13yr, she would have been in school during the day when the hearings were being covered by C-Span. Secondly, once she returned home from school, there would have been a variety of activities which would have competed for her attention: after school snack and cartoons; homework and possibly chores; dinner; more homework; prime time television; and bedtime somewhat early. Moreover, the recordings of the day's proceedings didn't run continuously which obviously reduces availability.

The scenarios above can be used in conjunction with rich demographic data on television watching in order to create a system of stochastic differential equations from which statements of probability can be made. In particular, a Poison Process could be used to model the data. From this, a person can surmise that the probability that the author watched all 104 days of the hearings is unlikely. (Q.E.D)

Does this mean that she was unaware of the hearings? Nope. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the author's recollection, as evidenced in her essay, that illustrates an objective assessment of the hearings. By contrast, there is plenty of evidence that the author was highly influenced by the documentary which by definition is biased.

Regarding becoming a relic, any time a person has an ideology that is not internally consistent nor whose conclusions are confirmed by carefully constructed statistical studies, it is only a matter of time before people will turn away.

In conclusion, my position is defended.

@35

You don't know what everyone was watching, especially the 13yr old demographic in the United States. You only know what you and the people you knew were watching.

Also, the panel members were cordial and treated Prof Hill with respect. The subject matter was serious and Professor Hill's credible had to be established. That's what happens when you accuse someone of a crime.

In the end, the detail rich testimony of the hearings wasn't consistent with what Prof Hill told the FBI. Moreover, Prof. Hill's characterization of Judge Thomas didn't reconcile with the testimony of the people who knew him during his total career.

@34 it is not to worry. I think we're on the same side. Which is particularly important when there are lunatics like 36 in the world

"DontBejealous" must watch the film before commenting on what 13-year-olds watch on tv. One of the men in the documentary mentions his 12-year-old daughter watching a RERUN of the cnn broadcast, at midnight, and telling him, "Daddy, I believe her"...........

Ok, so-so headline Danielle, but wonderful byline though!!!
Wouldn’t it be great if there actually was a time machine and YOU could go back and do the deed! Hell, why stop at Republican senators (Arlen Specter) when you could just wipe out all the Repubs in 91? Wouldn’t it be worth the trade-off? Elizabeth Warren (voted R until 95), Gabby Giffords (00), Arianna Huffington (90’s), you could even sniff out a young Wendy Davis (06)! John Kerry would personally thank you (Teresa Heinz Kerry 03)! My, what a hero you would be! Don’t worry, the 1965 President of the Wellesley Young Republicans (Hillary Clinton) switched over in 68, just make sure you have that machine adjusted right!
Danielle, you should get with all of your like-minded constituents on here and plot the future. After you wipe out all of the ‘intolerant people’ your folk can start straightening out the blemishes you see on each other. Maybe first get rid of the people who eat meat, then the ones who eat dairy, next could be ones who won’t wear their hair short, then the blacks who don’t want to date whites, the gays who won’t stick to their own gender, eventually you will make it to everyone who doesn’t have blond hair and blue eyes…
You can still do the future, heck you've already planted the seed in your little hate-filled byline!
Yes, Ms. Hill was dealt a GREAT injustice by the Senate and Monsanto lawyer Clarence Thomas. I wonder how many people who see your article listed will actually come away with that impression or if they ever got past the headline.

@27 mitten and @28 judibrowni: Spot on--both of you!
I was 27 and in George H.W. ("Daddy") Bush's U.S.Navy
during Anita Hill's testimony.

Thanks for writing this, Danielle! It's nice being reminded of a hero like Anita. It's important that the generation of women who have grown up without ever knowing who she was and what she had to endure learn about what women in the workplace had to go through to ensure that they had a little bit easier time of it. The shock to me was the realization that Joe Biden was in charge of that senate witch hunt. The other shock is commenters who have any doubt whatsoever that Anita told the truth when sworn under oath do do so, and we now have a supreme court judge who took the same oath, but lied through his teeth for the sake of his own advancement. Karma's a bitch, Clarence. It's clear from your wife's voicemail message that neither one of you lives in peace about what you did to Anita just to get that job.