Frank Rich on Clarence Thomas: "A barometer of what has and hasn't changed"

[EffieBlack]

Frank Rich nails it again!

Nobody Knows the Lynchings He’s Seen
By FRANK RICH

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.

. . .

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.

. . .
Bill O'Reilly may have deemed the "60 Minutes" piece "excellent," but others spotted the holes. Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who now directs the National Urban League, told Tavis Smiley on PBS that it was "as though Justice Thomas's public relations firm edited the piece." On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin, the author of the new best-seller about the court, "The Nine," said that it was "real unfair" for "60 Minutes" not to include a response from Ms. Hill, who was slimed on camera by Mr. Thomas as "not the demure, religious, conservative person" she said she was.

. . .
The only way he can live with his various hypocrisies, it seems, is to claim that he's the rare honest, politically incorrect black man who has the guts to tell African-Americans what no other black leader will. Thus he asserted to a compliant Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News last week that everyone except him tiptoes around talk of intraracial crime and out-of-wedlock births. This will come as news to the millions of Americans who have heard Mr. Obama, among other African-American leaders whose words give the lie to this bogus claim. But the fact that America's highest court harbors a justice as full of unreconstructed racial bitterness as Clarence Thomas will prove more eye-opening still.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07rich.html?ref=opinion

[Skittles]

1. this man has no business being any kind of judge

the fact that he is a Supreme Court judge is an absolute travesty - he doesn't have any shame whatsover in not only being extremely biased, but MAKING MONEY OFF OF IT

[beaconess]

3. He's a sick man who uses his position of power to settle scores

Disgusting.

[Mz Pip]

2. Thomas strikes me

as a bitter and very unhappy man who seems to be determined to exact vengeance on perceived slights. It's unfortunate that he is in the position to do so on a such a grand scale.

The guy needs therapy.

Mz Pip
:dem: