Somehow, I get the impression that Clarence Thomas had convinced himself that the Anita Hill who inhabits his fantasies and nightmares is who she really is, when he sat down to write his memoir, "My Grandfather’s Son."
In a tone of voice I imagine is how Digby sounds,
"Jeebus, how much more deluded could he have been??!!??"
For you see, she isn't gone from this world, hiding in shame in some backwoods hollow, cowed by the mighty presence he's become (in his dreams).
No, according to the brief bio appended to her Op-Ed piece in today's NY Times, The Smear This Time,
Anita Hill, a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University, is a visiting scholar at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College.
So much for the mediocre employee smear... apparently a conclusion he arrived at with something other than clarity of thought.
All in all, she treats his memoir with polite neutrality,
Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, "My Grandfather’s Son." He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.
until she addresses his unseemly and cowardly 'portrait' of her,
But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.
In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a "combative left-winger" who was "touchy" and prone to overreacting to "slights." A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.
I remember how clear it seemed during those hearings (ah, if only we had had the invaluable current marriage of YouTube and CSPAN back in the day) that he was exactly as she portrayed him. The slanders of the day were fairly easily seen through if you knew anything about who and what she'd accomplished already in her life. She doesn't disappoint in this piece. She deconstructs his attack with almost surgical precision.
Go read the whole piece, you won't be disappointed. Especially go read it if you were off (fighting a BushCo war?) somewhere at the time of his confirmation and missed all the fireworks.
For me, he's the perfect example of the need for term limits in the judiciary. Who the hell voted FOR his confirmation, anyway?
Update (of sorts): OK, it was late at night when I wrote the above about term limits. Not a good idea for a Supreme Court, though I do like, to an extent, one plan below in comments regarding 15 or 20 year limits. Essentially, though, the general thrust of the comments echo a truth we're all learning, and learning well, here on dKos.
*WE NEED MORE AND BETTER DEMOCRATS*
And thanks to all who have reminded me of things I'd forgotten over the years (jeebus, was that today's Joe Biden? Where the hell have I been? (staying 19 forever can be tough on one's available memory cells, as can microbrews)).