Why Anita Hill Lost

Suzanne Garment

E mu_ simply have to accept, for the of the established rights of women and minority Wpresent, that no more than two people in groups. Kennedy and other Democratic Senators the world can know with certainty whether helped put off hearings on the nomination in order Clarence Thomas said to Anita Hill what she to give liberal interest groups time to organize and says he did. launch a media campaign. Among the campaign's Shortly before the U.S. Senate was CO vote on his chief target audiences were black organizations nomination to the Supreme Court in October 1991, throughout the South. This strategy was Hill charged Thomas with sexually harassing her successful: fear of displeasure in the black when she worked for him at the Department of community caused crucial Southern Democratic Education and then at the Equal Employment Senators to vote against Bork. Opportunity Commission .(EE0C), by asking her Politics in the selection of Supreme Court Jus- out and forcing her to listen to obscene talk; but tices was nothing new in this country's history, the crime of harassment, as Hill explained, often but the anti-Bork effort set a couple of precedents. has no witnesses. This central, crucial mystery did For one thing, it buried the traditional, largely not mute the debate or make the advocates any internal Senate politics of Supreme Court selection more tentative in their arguments. Instead, the under mass-communications techniques de- Hill-Thomas case became perhaps the biggest sex veloped for national political campaigns. More- scandal in American history. Combatants on both over, it was unabashed in its claim that Supreme sides attacked their opponents in an explosion of Court Justices could legitimately be rejected for resentment and hate. Hill and Thomas were forced their ideology and political views. Thus during to testify publicly to the Senate Judiciary and after the anti-Bork campaign, its operatives Committee about intimate aspects of their lives; were happy to give the press the details of their they became contending gladiators in the arena, new and successful political tactics. We learned with us in the television audience poised to turn about their organized rallies, their telephone thumbs up or thumbs down. The Senate became banks to generate mail to key Senators, their an object of general contempt, since most of the computer bulletin boards, their fundraising me- Senators on whom we depended to question thods, and their choice of "opinion-making Thomas and Hill lacked either the skill to elicit the markets" for their TV advertising. information we wanted or the moral stature to act as proper judges. tH modernSenate, without the strong The case had its roots in recent American his- 9leadership that might have resisted such tory, beginning with the battle over Robert H. tactics, showed in the Bork fight that it was Bork, whom President Ronald Reagan nominated extremely open to the new style of Supreme Court to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1987.* Bork politics. So, when Clarence Thomas was nomi- was not only a highly qualified nominee but one nated for the Supreme Court in 1991, some of the of the chief intellects of the American legal pro- organizational veterans of the Bork fight geared fession. He had become a symbol of American up, as more than one of them put it, to "Bork" legal conservatism and its challenge to the liber- Thomas as welL People for the American Way alism dominating the upper reaches of the pro- reenlisted in the fight. So did the National Lead- fession. ership Conference on Civil Rights, the Alliance for Bork's opponents attacked him with a cam- Justice, the National Abortion Rights Action paign of unprecedented scope. Senator Edward League, the National Women's Law Center, the Kennedy began it by sounding a call to arms, Women's Legal Defense Fund, the National portraying Bork as an enemy of free speech and Women's Political Caucus, and the National Organization for Women. SUZANNE GARMENT is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of. most recently, Scandal: • For a fuller discussion of the Bork nomination, see my The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics (Times Books/ article, "The War Against Robert H. Bork," COMMENTARY, Random House). January 1988. 26 WHY ANITA HILL LONT tr;

But their strategy did not work the second time sion than a simple plaything, and that personal around. Because Thomas was a black conservative habits like a male politician's treatment of women and an opponent of the more sweeping versions of were something the public bad every right to affirmative action. much of the traditional civil- know about. By the time of Watergate we had rights leadership harbored a special resentment developed not only a vast publicity machine ca- toward him. Yet affirmative action was a dangerous pable of spreading such personal scandals across issue to raise against Thomas, since it had become the land but a rationale that gave us, the high- such an unpopular idea among the general public. minded voters, permission to pay detailed atten- Furthermore, even in the civil-rights Soups, many tion to these salacious matters. people identified with Thomas's rise from poverty, The first consequence of this shift was an ef- and the resulting ambivalence kept these florescence of classic adultery scandals. But in the organizations from exerting the force they had mid-1980's, a more important consequence of the shown with the Bork nomination. In addition, new thinking appeared: we began to see many Thomas supporters had learned a thing or two from more scandals involving charges of sexual coer- the Bork battle and made sure that charges against cion or sex without full consent. It was only a their man did not go unanswered matter of time before such matters would assume in the media. • center stage in some confirmation drama. In this Finally, during his first confirmation hearings sense, the Thomas episode was a scandal waiting before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thomas appeared to contradict or qualify his past conser- to happen. vative views more dramatically than Bork had done. Thomas escaped from the trap of declaring Nrra Hni. certainly seemed an indi-vidual himself one way or the other on the abortion issue Ato be taken seriously. She was, by saying that he had never debated the legal like Thomas, black. Like Thomas also, she came aspects of Roe v. Wade. The Senators of the from a rural background, having been raised on a Judiciary Committee, even as they asked Thomas farm in Oklahoma, the youngest of thirteen repeatedly about abortion, accepted his evasions children. And, like Thomas again, she had at- and denials. All parties knew, by that time, the tended Yale Law School. When Thomas was necessary steps in the post-Bork ballet. about to become Assistant Secretary of Education The Jurliriary Committee sent Thomas's nom- for Civil Rights, a mutual friend introduced the ination to the full Senate on a vote of seven-to- two of them, and Thomas offered her a job. She seven. In mid-October, on the eve of the worked with him for nine months; he then re- Senate's final vote on Thomas, his confirmation signed to become chairman of the EEOC. She looked like a sure thing. • went with him and worked at the commission Meanwhile, as the chances of defeating the until 1983, when she left to take a teaching job at Thomas nomination grew smaller, both the press Oral Roberts University in her home state. and the groups working against him grew ever In charging that Thomas had harassed her both more vigorous in their search for material to use at the Education Department and at the EEOC, against him. Employees at the EEOC reported Hill lacked any evident political motive: she was getting repeated phone calls from journalists and described as a Reagan appointee, a Bork supporter, Thomas opponents explicitly asking for "dirt." and a conservative, though it later emerged that she On Sunday, October 6, after the Senate Judiciary had had political differences with the Reagan Committee had voted to send the Thomas nom- administration from the beginning and had crit- ination to the Senate, Newsday and National icized Thomas, to the FBI in July and to the press Public Radio reported that for a month the com- in September, for his position on affirmative action mittee had had in its possession an affidavit from and the problem of black dependency. a woman named Anita Hill making charges of sexual harassment. -- A friend and former law-school classmate of This particular accusation, like the mobilization Hill's said that she had told him, within days of of interest groups against Thomas, had a recent the Thomas nomination in July, about the nom- history in American politics. inee's sexual harassment of her. Ricki Seidman, Political sex scandals have been a perennial former legal director of People for the American feature of American life, but in the past quarter- Way and now an aide to Senate Judiciary Com- century these scandals have begun to acquire a mittee Democrat Edward Kennedy (though she new character and meaning. As late as the mid- was not on the Judiciary Committee staff itself), 60's, politically active people who considered called Hill in early September to ask her about the themselves liberal tended to be relatively tolerant harassment. Hill proved willing to talk further. in matters of sec and to accept the idea that every James Brudney, an aide to Judiciary Committee individual, even a politician, had a private sphere member Howard Metzenbaum (though also not of life that was none of the public's business. on the Judiciary Committee staff), and another The women's movement changed all that. From former Yale Law School classmate of Hill's, called the late 60's onward, we heard from movement her and continued the conversation. The FBI writers that sex was more often a tool of oppres finally began investigating Hill's charges on WCOMMENTARY JANUARY 1992

September 23 and reported back to the committee of a liberal society—to apply "presumption of on the 26th. a day before the scheduled vote on innocence" standards as they watched the proceed- whether to send the Thomas nomination to the ings. This feature made Thomas measurably full Senate. Thus the committee had little time to harder CO dislodge. consider the accusations. In addition, Thomas's opponents may have Thomas supporters protested the introduction underestimated just how big an audience they of a new charge against him, after so many other would attract. The comparison with the Bork accusations had been leveled and failed, on the nomination is instructive: what most citizens knew very eve of the confirmation vote. Thomas oppo- of the earlier struggle came to them through lients said that because not much was known television news, which had its own distinct biases. Watching the Hill-Thomas face-off, by contrast, about the charges, the vote should be postponed was a mass activity. and Hill's story given a more thorough airing. People may have begun by tuning in the hear- But the opponents said a great deal more as ings for entertainment, but they stayed on to well. They claimed that the Senate, by its treat- make sober judgments, and these judgments ment of Hill, had already demonstrated men's turned out to be radically different from those of outrageous indifference to the welfare of women the anti-Thomas activists who had first insisted and the fundamental incapacity of male elected on bringing the controversy out into the open. officials to give proper political representation to To see how the huge audience engaged by the their female constituents. If the Senators went public hearings finally formed its opinions, we ahead with their floor vote on Thomas as sched- must first look to the center of the storm and the uled, they would compound the insult. story Anita Hill told; for, in one of the many The anger of Thomas's critics drove out respect asymmetries of the case, it was Hill and not for procedural traditions and niceties. The Judi- Thomas whose account became the focus of the ciary Committee had considered Hill's charges controversy. The questions asked by the Senators privately, in agreement with Hill's expressed helped shape what information Hill gave, of wishes; but someone on some Senate committee course, and the press influenced the way we saw staff decided that he or she was morally justified in her. Still, the public had a huge amount of direct overriding these rules of confidentiality and access to Hill and what she said, and there is leaking Hill's affidavit, either directly to the press little reason to think that this public failed to or to an intermediary, and subjecting both Hill make up its own mind. and Thomas to a public airing of the issue. After the leak, Thomas's supporters said that xt most detailed version of Hill's case

because he was to be effectively put on trial, he Tappeared in the opening statement she should be given the presumption of innocence: delivered on October 11 at the Judiciary Com- Hill should have to come up with some solid mittee's first public session investigating her corroboration of her claim. Thomas's opponents charges. In it she explained that three months dismissed this idea, explaining that since sexual after she had gone to work for Clarence Thomas harassment often took place in private, an absence at the Department of Education in 1981, he asked of corroborating evidence was only to be expected. her out. She said no. He kept asking and started Asking for the conventional presumption of in- talking to her about sex. "He spoke," said Hill, nocence under this circumstance would be noth- ing other than a fancy version of "blaming the about acts that he had seen in pornographic •• films involving such matters as women having victim." sex with animals and films showing group sex The or rape scenes. He talked about pornographic opponents evidently calculated that by bathing materials depicting individuals with large pe- the whole affair in the light of publicity, they nises or large breasts involving various sex acts. could undo the Judiciary Committee's verdict. On several occasions, Thomas told me graphi- And indeed, at first they seemed to succeed. But cally of his own sexual prowess. in the end, they succeeded too well. They forced This talk, said Hill, then ended. When Thomas a public event that featured Hill and Thomas was made chairman of the EEOC, he invited her to facing off against each other directly and follow him, and she did. There he resumed the individually. They provided Hill with a phalanx sexual conversations and overtures. Once, in Hill's of lawyers to match Thomas's White House presence, he looked at a Coke can from which he handlers. They created, in other words, a forum was drinking and remarked, "Who has put pubic that strongly resembled a criminal trial. hair on my Coke?" He talked about the size of his No, it was not an actual criminal trial; the penis and about oral sex. She began looking for Thomas hearings were meant to investigate a other employment and finally left the EEOC in character question broader than issues of criminal 1983 when she found her teaching job at Oral guilt, and the rules were looser—so loose, it later Roberts University. Since that time, she had seen turned out. as to seem nonexistent. But the hear- Thomas only twice and had minimal phone con- ing and its stakes were trial-like enough so that tact with him. She had not spoken publicly about onlookers tended inexorably—like good products WHY ANITA HILL LOST. 29 the harassment until she was asked about it by making sure that the names were not released Senate staffers investigating the Thomas to the public. . . . So at all times the Senate nomination. knew my name, the committee knew who I She told her story to the Senators in a calm and was. So that wasn't ever an issue. composed way. During the intense questioning Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Judiciary that followed, she did not stumble or contradict Committee, promptly issued a statement saying herself in talking about the words that she claimed that the delay was not the committee's fault, the had passed between Thomas and herself. staff had been "guided by Professor Hill's repeated Her testimony, however, did have inconsisten- requests for confidentiality," The Biden statement cid...Some of these were of the sort one would provided a detailed chronology, based on expect from any account, even a truthful one, by a documentation, of the committee's dealings with reluctant witness remembering events that took HilL It asserted that Hill did not make her first place years ago. For instance, during questioning contact with the committee until September 12. A Republicans pointed to the fact that Hill's charges committee staffer told Hill then that her charge against Thomas had changed over time, becoming could be kept confidential, but that the more detailed from her first FBI interview (in July investigation could go no further unless her name 1991) through her affidavit and second FBI inter- and accusations were given co Thomas so that he view in September to her considerably more elab- would have an opportunity to respond. "Professor orate testimony to the Judiciary Committee. While Hill specifically stated," said the chronology, that these variations could point to inventiveness on her "she did not want the nominee to know that she part or openness to suggestions from the Senate had stated her concerns to the committee." staffers who had first contacted her, such changes can also take place as an individual remembers A week later, on September 19, according to the committee staff, Hill called again: progressively more about a past event. They are not necessarily the result of lies. For the first time, she told full committee staff On the other hand, most of-the inconsistencies that she wanted all members of the committee and conflicts in and around Hill's testimony and to know about her concerns, and, if her name statements were not of this random sort; they fell needed to be used to achieve that goal, she into a pattern. These conflicts, which might have wanted to know. She also wanted to be apprised seemed small or accidental or the product of of her "options." animus if taken one by one, became more impor- The next day the staff called Hill to explain again tant because they so closely echoed one another. that before her accusations went to committee The inconsistencies all revolved around two ques- members, Thomas would have to be given her tions: How personally and professionally ambi- name and a chance CO respond in an FBI inves- tious was Hill? And how well did she usually look tigation. out for her own welfare and interests? Hill, according to the chronology, said she The first such problem arose in Hill's story of wanted to think about it and phoned the nett day how it was that she came to give her information to say that she would not agree to the FBI in- to the Judiciary Committee in the first place and of vestigation. Two days after this refusal, though, why the committee had delayed for almost a she contacted the staff and agreed to the inves- month in considering her charges. "I was ap- tigation. Three days after the FBI finally got to proached by the Senate Judiciary Committee in interview Hill, it finished its report. early September," she said in the press conference she gave after her story became public. But it was r ...Cs account thus asserted that she had not until September 20 "that an FBI investigation Halways been willing to use her name in any was suggested to me. . ." way necessary to bring her concerns to the "I suggested to the committee throughout," committee members' attention. But only late in Hill emphasized, "that I wanted to make this the game, according to her, did committee staffers information available to every member of the inform her that she had to let the FBI investigate Senate committee for their consideration...." and let Thomas know her name before committee She later said, "Reliving this experience has members could be told of her story. been really bad for me, . . . especially with the In Senator Biden's version, by contrast, Hill frustrations that I have felt with trying to get the was told from the beginning that in order to go information in the right hands." forward and get her story to the committee A journalist asked, "Did you at some point members, she would have to give Thomas her offer to make these allegations by name? Did you name. She said no. She changed her mind and discuss the removal of your request for called the committee a week later—but when she confidentiality, and at what point did that was again told the conditions, she again said no. occur?" Hill replied: Then she changed her mind once more and The extent of my confidentiality was never to finally agreed to the FBI investigation. keep the committee members from knowing my These two conflicting stories draw two quite name. The extent of my confidentiality was different pictures of Anita Hill. In Biden's ac- 30/COMMENTARY JANUARY 1992 count, Hill decides to go to the committee b—ut don't recall anything being said about him being learns, only after making contact, that in order to pressed to resign." pursue her charge she must confront her accuser "I would ask you," Specter continued, "to press and face the consequences—emotional, moral, and your recollection as to what happened within the professional. She wrestles with this problem, un- last month." der pressures whose nature we do not know, for "And I have done that, Senator," she said, almost ten days. She finally lets the investigation "and I don't recall that comment." go forward, but at a late date that greatly lessens "I'm asking you now," Specter finally said, the chances of the committee's giving substantial "only if it did happen whether that would be the (consideration to her concerns. kind of statement to you which would be impor- This picture that the Biden staff drew of Anita tant and impressed upon you [so] that you could Hill does not portray her as particularly dishon- remember in the course of four or five weeks." orable. After all, the decision she had to reach was Hill said, "I don't recall a specific statement, not easy, and the fact that she weighed her actions and I cannot say whether that comment would carefully does not necessarily make her a menda- have stuck in my mind. I really cannot say this." cious witness. Still, the Anita Hill in Biden's story, But in the afternoon session of the same day, even while coming forward as a good citizen to aid without being asked the question again, Hill, the committee in its task, prudently protects her talking generally about how she had come own interests. As a result, she is partly responsible forward to the Judiciary Committee, offered the for the delay that she criticized and that women's information that one of her conversations "even groups cited as evidence of the committee's included something to the effect that the dismissive attitude toward her. information might be presented to the candidate The Anita Hill of her own account is quite and to the White House. There was some different. She is not so smart as Biden's Anita Hill, indication that the candidate, or, excuse me, the not so quick to grasp legal and political complex- nominee, might not wish to continue the process." ities, not so capable of giVing deliberate, cautious Later Specter pressed further: "So Mr. Brudney thought to the personal consequences of the ac- [Senator Metzenbaum's aide] did tell you Judge tions she contemplates, and more exclusively Thomas might not wish to go forward with his moved by the simple, uncomplicated desire to tell nomination if you came forward?" the truth and do her civic duty. "Yes," replied Hill. The very same conflict emerged when one of Specter later claimed that Hill's morning tes- the Judiciary Committee's Republicans, Senator timony, had she not contradicted it, would have Arlen Specter, cross-examined Hill during her been "flat-out perjury." Hill supporters were out- public testimony about her dealings with Senate raged by the accusation, calling her misstep only aides in the days before she sent her statement to a minor inconsistency. What is more certain than the Judiciary Committee. either of these interpretations is that Hill's cor- According to a USA Today story published at rected testimony in the afternoon session present- the time of her testimony, Hill had been assured ed a picture of her that was congruent with the by one staffer that merely telling Thomas about portrait in the Biden chronology: this was a wom- the existence of her charges would make him an who knew, discussed, and cared about her withdraw, and that Hill would not have to come "options," and who gave thought to the means by forward publicly. In other words, the story im- which she could accomplish her goal while plied, Hill was playing a somewhat less heroic avoiding personal risk. Nothing in this was neces- role than it might appear. sarily pejorative. So it is especially interesting to "Did anyone ever tell you," Specter asked, "that see how persistently Hill omitted this element by providing the statement that there would be a from the picture she gave of herself during the move to press Judge Thomas to withdraw his morning's five successive rounds of questioning nomination?" on the subject. "I don't recall any story about pressing—using this to press anyone," she answered. HE same discrepancy was more pro- Specter tried again: "Well, do you recall any- nouncedd in other parts of Hill's thing at all about anything related to that?" speech and testimony—in the matter, for example, "I think I was told," she said, "that my state- of why she went to work for Thomas at the ment would be shown to Judge Thomas, and I EEOC. Hill contended that Thomas had harassed agreed to that." her in her first job with him, at the Department of "But was there any suggestion, however slight," Education; yet when he moved to the EEOC Specter asked a third time, "that the statement chairmanship in the spring of 1982, she chose to with these serious charges would result in a with- go along with him. In her initial press conference drawal so that it wouldn't have to be necessary for Hill explained this oddity. "There was a period" your identity to be known, or for you to come at the Education Department, she said, "[during] forward under circumstances like these?" which the activity stopped." "Furthermore," she "There was no—not that I recall." she said. "I went on. WHY ANITA HILL LOST 31 at that time I was twenty-five years old. . . . If that a Yale Law School graduate would not have I had quit, I would have been jobless: I had understood that the Judiciary Committee would not built a résumé such that I could have require her to confront her accuser. As for Hill's expected to go out and get a job. And you'll going to the EEOC in order to stay in the civil- recall that in the early 80's, there was a hiring rights field, that was the field in which she was freeze in the federal government. I wanted to stay in civil rights. I thought I had something already working at the Department of Education to add. and in which she could have remained. As for Hill's belief that she would not be kept on by Later, in her testimony to the Judiciary Com- Thomas's successor at the Department of Educa- mittee, she said: tion, she could easily enough have asked: this The work [at the EEOC] was interesting, and at successor was a friend of Thomas's, and Hill also that time it appeared that the sexual overtures had independent access to the new official which had so troubled me had ended. I also through a mutual friend. And as for Hill's serious- faced the realistic fact that I had no alternative ly thinking the Department of Education was job. While I might have gone back to private "scheduled" to be abolished (it still exists), there practice, perhaps in my old firm or at another, I cannot have been three people in the federal was dedicated to civil-rights work and my first government who did not know that it would have choice was to be in that field. Moreover, at that taken a year and a half just to get the moving time, the Department of Education itself was a labels on the furniture. . dubious venture. President Reagan was seeking These contradictions were used to good account to abolish the entire department. by Hill's enemies, yet they could easily have been She told Chairman Biden in later questioning, resolved. Hill did not have to go to the EEOC in "My understanding from [Thomas] at that time order to stay in the civil-rights field, but she did was that I could go with him to the EEOC, that I have to go there if she wanted to be at the center did not have, since I was his special assistant, that of the civil-rights action and keep herself hitched I did not have a position at the Office for to the rising star of her boss, Clarence Thomas. Education." She also said, "I was a special assis- Working for Thomas's successor or staying on in tant of a political appointee, and therefore I as- some Schedule-A position at the Education sumed and I was told that that position may not Department might have seemed like a perfectly continue to exist." And she said about the Ed- good job to some, but it was not so good if one ucation Department as a whole, "The thought of it as being left behind instead of going Department of Education at that time was on to a much better professional opportunity. scheduled to be abolished. There had been a lot Thus, Hill's reason for following Thomas to the of talk about it, and at that time it was truly EEOC in spite of harassment was perfectly considered to be on its way out." plausible—if one only added, as Hill did not in her accounts, the notion that she was moved by Biden said he . had been informed that Hill the ambition to advance her career. herself was not a political appointee at the De- But Hill did not speak of her own ambition. As partment of Education: she was a Schedule-A a result, in her account of her move to the attorney, with job protection. Couldn't she have stayed at the department? "I believe I was a EEOC she sounded as if she were offering too Schedule-A attorney," she said, but "I was the many reasons making too little sense. assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Education"; "I had not been interviewed by anyone who was to HE fell into the same kind of trouble when she take over that position for that job; I was not even S talked about her relationship with Thomas informed that I could stay on as a Schedule-A after she left the EEOC in 1983 to teach at the attorney." law school of Oral Roberts University. Here is "As a Schedule-A attorney," Biden persisted, the way Hill, in her testimony, described how she got her job at Oral Roberts: "I participated in a "you could have stayed in some job." seminar, taught an afternoon session in a "I suppose," Hill answered. "as far as I know, seminar at Oral Roberts University. The dean of I could have. But I am not sure, because at the the university saw me teaching and inquired as time, the agency was scheduled to be abolished." She told Senator Specter: to whether I would be interested." She said, "I • agreed to take the job in large part because of my I didn't know who was going to be taking over desire to escape the pressures I felt at the EEOC the position. I had not been interviewed to due to Judge Thomas." She said she told become the special assistant of the new indi- Thomas in July that she was leaving. "I got that vidual. I assumed that they would want to hire job on my own," she asserted, explaining that their own, as Judge Thomas had done. she had asked Thomas for a recommendation In telling why she had followed Thomas to the only after she had landed the job and "only EEOC, Hill got herself into a certain amount of because the process required some kind of letter evidentiary trouble. Believing that a Yale Law from an employer." School graduate did not know anything about her Here, in contrast, is what Thomas testified Schedule-A job protection was as hard as thinking about the subject 32/COMMENTARY JANUARY 1992

In the spring of 1983, Mr. Charles troche con- "It was a matter that I did not want to invoke tacted me to speak at the law school at Oral any kind of retaliation against me professionally," Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Anita Hill made the distinction. "It wasn't that I was Hill, who is from Oklahoma, accompanied me on trying to get any benefit out of it." that trip. It was not unusual that individuals on "Well," Specter followed, "you say that you my staff would travel with me occasionally. Anita consulted with him about a letter of recommen- Hill accompanied me on that trip primarily dation. That would have been a benefit, wouldn't because this was an opportunity to combine business and a visit to her home. As I recall, it?" during our visit at Oral Roberts University, Mr. "Well," Hill resisted, "that letter of recommen- Rothe mentioned to me the possibility of ap- dation was necessary. The application asked for a proaching Anita Hill to join the faculty at Oral recommendation from a former employer." Roberts University law school. I encouraged him to do so and noted to him, as I recall, that Anita HIS tussle over the presence or absence of Hill would do well in a teaching position. I recommended her highly, and she eventually was Tdeliberative ambition as a force directing offered a teaching position. Anita Hill was waged most dramatically over the issue of the phone logs. Diane Holt, Thomas's Charles A. Rothe, then dean of the O.W. Col- secretary at the EEOC, remembered that Hill had burn School of Law at Oral Roberts, said it was phoned Thomas a number of times after leaving at Thomas's invitation that Hill attended the the agency. In fact, a hunt through Holt's phone afternoon seminar she mentioned in her testi- logs revealed ten calls from Hill, including one to mony. Roche said that when he learned Hill was congratulate him on his marriage. Hill responded from Oklahoma; he expressed interest in hiring by telling the Washington Post that the phone her, asking Thomas what he thought of the idea. logs were "garbage." She said she had called Thomas said, Rothe remembered, that Hill Thomas once in 1990 to make sure he had would make a good teacher. received an invitation initiated by others at the In Hill's testimony, Thomas and his role are University of Oklahoma law school, her profes- missing—his taking her on the Oklahoma trip in sional home after Oral Roberts, to speak at com- the first place, his inviting her to the Oral Roberts mencement. Apart from that, she said, "If there seminar, and his early role in recommending her are messages to him from me, these are attempts for her new job. If Hill had included any of these to return phone calls." She went on: "I never things, they would not necessarily have shown her called him to say hello. I found out about his charges against Thomas to be false: a woman with marriage through a third party. I never called him job aspirations or professional ambitions might to congratulate him." well decide to endure harassment to get something The logs became a major subject of controversy back from the harasser in the form of contacts or during the hearings. In her testimony, Hill ex- recommendations, just as such a woman might plained her calls to •Thomas by saying, "I have, put up with disagreeable treatment for the benefit on at least three occasions, been asked to act as a of an upward move. A woman making this type of conduit to him for others." When this happened, trade-off would be, of course, one with personal said Hill, she would speak to Thomas's secretary, and professional aims well beyond the need to put "and on some of these occasions undoubtedly I bread on the table. It was this sort of ambition that passed on some casual comment to then-Chair- Hill's acount excised. man Thomas." She added: The same discrepancy appears elsewhere. A In August of 1987, I was in Washington, D.C., former Oral Roberts law professor said that Hill and I did call Diane Holt. In the course of this had suggested Thomas as a speaker for an em- conversation, she asked me how long I was doing ployment-discrimination conference at the to be in town, and I told her. It is recorded in the school; Hill denied that she had wanted Thomas message as August 15. It was in fact August 20. there. Thomas said that when he did visit the She told me about Judge Thomas's marriage, school, Hill drove him to the airport, and Dean and I did say "Congratulate him." Rothe remembered that she had offered to do so. She claimed that what she had called "garbage" Hill disputed the recollection: to the Washington Post was not the authenticity I really don't recall that I voluntarily agreed to of the phone logs themselves but the use of the drive him to the airport. I think that the dean logs to attack her. She denied the Post story that suggested that I drive him to the airport and quoted her as saying she had initiated no calls to that I said that I would. But at any race, one of Thomas. the things I have said is that I intended—I But when Holt testified, she said that in addition hoped to keep a cordial professional relation- to the uncompleted calls recorded in the logs, Hill ship with that individual and so I did him the had made still other calls—perhaps five or six—to courtesy of driving him to the airport. Thomas. Holt said that the calls recorded in the Specter asked, "Was it simply a matter that logs were not returns of Thomas's calls, and they you wanted to derive whatever advantage you were not calls to Holt herself in which a message could from a cordial professional relationship?" to Thomas was tacked on. WHY A.NITA HILL LOST 33

%IP On the issue of the logs, Hill was forced to do and disempowered by sexual harassment? Wasn't some public backtracking. As with the questions failure to admit this possibility just another way of about her Oral Roberts job, the question of wheth- denigrating the importance of sexual harassment? er and why Hill had initiated all those calls did not But most people seem not to have shared this speak directly to the truth of her charge about attitude, and we can get a clue as to why not by Clarence Thomas and the obscenities he allegedly taking a look at the stories of sexual harassment spoke. Thomas was Hill's mentor and a profes- that filled mass-circulation magazines like Time, sionally rising star, and she clearly benefited from Newsweek, and People during the crisis. beim known as someone connected to him. Ad- Some of these tales would curl your hair, and vances and obscenities or no, a professional wom- legitimately so. A female laborer and dump-truck an under these circumstances might well have driver for a municipal sewage department had to thought it prudent to take even elaborate steps to face persistent questioning by her supervisor about make sure the relationship stayed alive. Once her sex life and her husband's anatomy. A again, all we need to reconcile her phone calls with restaurant manager who protested when her boss her charges against Thomas is to assume that Hill asked her to perform oral sex in front of another was a woman of some ambiton; but this is the employee was tailed by a private detective and picture that Hill denied. fired for not ringing up drinks correctly. A secretary had a supervisor who threatened to fire Frowitao the end of the hearings, one her if she did not sleep with him. A public- . of Hill's attorneys announced that information officer at a state corrections she had taken and passed a polygraph test. Nev- department had a boss who made lewd comments ertheless, the Americans who followed the Thomas about her and her one-year-old daughter and had controversy •told New York Times/CBS pollsters her fired when she complained. after the hearings that by a ratio of more than two- There can be disputes aplenty about the facts to-one, 58 percent versus 24 percent, they found behind such charges, but the accusations them- Thomas more believable than Hill. This was about selves are clearly serious. They were made by the same ratio of those who had favored working-class or lower-middle-class women oc- confirming Thomas throughout the nomination cupying ordinary jobs rather than high profes- process. After all the talk in the press about the sional positions. These women's situations in- unrepresentative nature of the "all-white, all-male volved firing or explicit threats of firing. Even Senate Judiciary Committee" that had made the when the accusations were of verbal rather than original decision to vote on Thomas despite Anita physical assaults, the attacks were aimed quite Hill's charges, there was little difference, in the frontally at the women who were forced to listen. end, between men and women or between blacks In Anita Hill's case, there was no physical and whites in their opinions. grabbing. Thomas's alleged obscene and porno- There are, by now, scores of explanations of graphic words described himself and a set of how this lopsided majority was built; dearly, movies, not any attributes of Hill herself or sexual people's answers to the question "Whom do you acts to be performed by her. Hill's supporters believe more?" were made up of many consider- noted that she was at the young and still-vulner- ations. It is odd that we have seen virtually no able age of twenty-five when the alleged offenses after-the-fact polling that might help us distin- took place; but in the types of jobs held by many guish among such theories. of the women who told their stories to the mag- The reason for the pro-Thomas verdict, one azines, a twenty-five-year-old was nobody's baby. explanation went, was that Thomas had won the Such women were often extremely vulnerable to battle of images. Hill's performance had been too their supervisors' personal judgments, while Anita "cool" for the American public Thomas's pas- Hill had considerable employment protection. sionate delivery style had simply played better to These women had limited job choices. while the audience. But looking at Hill's testimony Anita Hill had a Yale law degree. To women like suggests that "cool" was not quite the word for these, retaliation meant dismissal, or demotion, or the disquieting quality that she displayed. Not bad reports, while when Anita Hill told the Senate only the Senate questioners but a series of wit- about the retaliation she feared, she said she was nesses portrayed Hill as a somewhat ambitious afraid of not getting good enough assignments, and calculating woman, certainly more ambitious being denied a letter of recommendation after she and calculating than she let on. Her testimony on had left the EEOC and was already working in the subject seemed to show a lack of candor, and another job, or being cut off from a cordial, this fact alone may have been a basis for professional relationship. mistrusting her. But the problem lay deeper: Hill's perceived ambitiousness probably led many peo- EDERAL law on sexual harassment says ple to reject her description of herself as a victim F that such harassment can exist without any of sexual harassment. physical assault or explicit threat. It can occur In the feminist view, such a proposition is cause when a supervisor or co-worker creates a for anger. After all, why couldn't Hill be both an "hostile environment" for the victim by actions ambitious professional and a woman humiliated "sufficiently severe and pervasive" to "alter the 34/COMMENTARY JANUARY 1992

conditions of employment and create women that he could hardly open his mouth an abusive working environment." during the hearings. Joseph Biden had been When it comes to judging whether or not the environment is hostile, the charged with plagiarism during the 1988 presi- courts have even ruled that the matter should be dential campaign. Dennis DeConcini was one of viewed from the point of view of the "reasonable the Keating Five involved in the savings-and-loan victim." If the victim is a woman, that means scandal and, as such, had recently sat in Clarence judging the case from the perspective of a "rea- Thomas's place during public hearings of the sonable woman." Senate Ethics Committee. It was no wonder they The ideas of a "hostile environment" and the went easy on Thomas, the critics concluded; and "reasonable woman" have caused controversy: this asymmetry between Republican and Demo- ..they seem to suggest that any woman will be able to cratic behavior had permitted him to avoid his just collect damages from any man who speaks words deserts and showed again the need for more wom- that she finds offensive, even though he may not en in positions of power. think them offensive at all. Certainly in the Thomas case some of Hill's supporters assumed C uc:ki asymmetry was at work, all right, that if Thomas spoke the words Hill said he did he but it came from more than personal had clearly harassed Hill, humiliated her, and failings and foibles: it also stemmed from the damaged her. public quasi-criminal trial into which the Senate But the dispute between Hill and Thomas was had allowed the proceedings to be cast. Anita referred to a jury more than half made up of Hill had charged Clarence Thomas with crimes "reasonable women," the great majority of whom to which she said there had been no witnesses. were less advantaged than Hill. Viewed from The normal courtroom defense to such charges is their situation, as from the situation of the to try to even the score by eliciting details that "reasonable men" of the jury, Hill had a great damage the accuser's credibility and by testing deal of protection from Thomas's whims—so that any offensive language from him was less various theories of her motivation. This chance to the threatening cause of a "hostile environment" attack the accuser is a protection meant to in a legally significant sense than an invitation to balance the relative ease of making false charges tell the creep to get lost. in such "no-witness" cases. Thus the unequal And what about the implied threat Hill felt to situations of Hill and Thomas were to some the progress of her career? The answer, in this extent part and parcel of this type of charge, not same view, is that such a threat does not have a something created by Democratic weakness. comparable moral significance or capacity to do In addition, in order to give the concrete details psychological damage as the threat to deprive of her charges, Hill had to provide the committee someone of all or part of her livelihood. If Hill with a great deal of information about the short- decided to stay and move on and up with Thomas, term and long-term circumstances under which it was out of calculation, not out of fear. In this the alleged acts had .occurred. It was this infor- sense, it follows, ambition made Hill acquiescent mation that gave the Republican cross-examiners or complicit in the continuation of Thomas's material to work with—to probe, pick at, and alleged obnoxiousness. In her statements Hill examine for inconsistencies. herself, when she repeatedly omitted evidence of Clarence Thomas, by contrast, did not offer an an ambition that other witnesses saw at work, alternative account of the incidents described by seemed to recognize this distinction. - Hill. He did not say anything like, "Yes, I asked If sexual harassment consists of both the actions her out, but I never said those things to her." He of the aggressor and the economic and psycho- did not answer, "Yes, I said those words, but I logical damage done to the victim, Hill seemed not meant them as a joke." Instead, he defended to have given a true picture of the second half of the himself by just saying "No." Thomas pointed out formula. So the words of Anita Hill's story give us a during the hearings that this position put him at a fairly dear idea of what could have made people disadvantage: "You can't prove a negative," he uneasy with her account of Thomas's behavior and said. But the same posture gave him one very prompted them to reject it. large advantage: "No" is a very small target for a Some pro-Hill activists said after the hearings cross-examiner to shoot at. The possibilities for that Anita Hill's testimony would have looked inconsistency and internal contradiction are much better were it not for the Democratic Senators on more limited than they are in a statement like the Judiciary Committee. According to these crit- Hill's. This difference, too, made the cross-exam- ics, the Democrats not only sat in silence during ining asymmetrical in a way that needs no resort the hearings while Republicans viciously attacked to Democratic wimpery to explain. Anita Hill, but failed to subject Thomas to any- But, said some critics of the hearings, the Dem- thing like the same type of cross-examination. ocrats need not hve restricted themselves to the The Democrats' poor performance was said to narrow story that Clarence Thomas denied. For have been caused not just by a lack of skill but by instance, Hill had charged Thomas with talking to bad conscience and political vulnerability. Edward her about pornographic movies. Why not ask Kennedy was so notorious when it came to Thomas whether he had ever rented such movies? WHY ANITA HILL LOST 33

And, to help assess Thomas's general elected officials in the Senate and leaking Hill's credibility, why not ask Hill whether the two of affidavit. And once it leaked, there were liberal them had ever discussed Roe v. Wade in their organizations in Washington and feminists in years of working together? the national media willing to treat the massively The short answer is that Democratic committee ambiguous news as a dear and patent outrage. members certainly knew, once they raised these When it comes to the issue of staffing the federal questions, what kind of response they would get courts, there is certainly enough partisanship to go from the Republican side: why can't we probe mi around. Yet the spirit that manifested itself at the deeply into Anita Hill's past and psyche to see beginning of the Thomas scandal, the type of whether she might indeed be delusional? And why factional leftist partisanship that insisted on can't we get some Senate staffers before the saddling our institutions with an impossible bur- committee under oath, to see whether they might den and putting the country through what we saw have suggested to Hill some of the juicy details of in those hearings despite dearly serious questions her charges? of fact, was truly breathtaking. Even in the bitter Any of these questions might be deemed rele- politics of federal judicial nominations, these peo- vant under some rules of evidence. The problem is ple deserve special worry. that the Senate has no such rules. It is not set up We should also worry about the politicians and like a courtroom. in which professionals from each journalists in the capital who proved so ready to fall side would have questioned both Thomas and into the now-settled routine of scandal politics, for Hill before an impartial judge—and, it must be it was this compliance that enabled the scandal's said, questioned both of them much more creators to capture the national agenda. Leaks have intensely than happened during these hearings. become such an ordinary way of doing business Neither did this Senate hearing operate with the that a congressional staffer who has lost an internal benefit of anything like a grand jury, which sifts battle will not think twice about continuing the through raw data and decides which information fight by making it public. Few journalists will is good enough to ,serve as a -legitimate basis for hesitate to publish unconfirmed charges. Those further government action. More informal proce- who hear the resulting news story simply assume dures than those of the courtroom are fine for that a cover-up has been narrowly averted. some types of hearings. But in public hearings on Politicians will do whatever they must to avoid issues of individual guilt and innocence, the absence of rules means that the contest is being associated with this dread cover-up. No one drenched in free-floating poison. The odds are in the system seems to have the power to say "No" even slimmer than usual of ever finding a and stop the machine. semblance of the truth. This time around, with the Thomas scandal, Americans saw the process taking place with a A FrER the Senate vote on Thomas, he compressed intensity. People managed to make 13 took his seat on the Court. His wife their way through the chaos to some serious Virginia gave a cover interview to People, explain- conclusions, but they were also forced to watch the ing how her religious faith had seen her through scandal sausage being made, and they did not like the ordeal. Anita Hill received an enthusiastic either the product or the sausage-makers. Even in ovation from a conference of female state legis- Washington there were small signs of revulsion. In lators when she "issued a ringing call to arms," the midst of the Hill-Thomas fight, the according to the New York Times, on the issue of Washington Post reported, with an unusual sexual harassment Meanwhile, politicians and skepticism, on the "increasingly symbiotic rela- journalists who had seen the Senate's disarray tionship between committee staffers, liberal inter- during the controversy talked about improving est groups, and the news media" in "a role once "the process." It was a convenient phrase, for it played almost exclusively by the Senate." Since allowed the speaker or writer to express revulsion the final vote, it has been reported that senatorial at the hearings without taking a position in behalf offices are, at least for the moment, no longer so of either Thomas or Hill. Some took their worries friendly as they once were to some of these groups. about "the process" quite seriously: the Judiciary The groups themselves are not coming forward, as Committee has decided not only to hire outside they did after their Bork experience, to brag about counsel to investigate the Ieak of Hill's affidavit and explain their tactics and strategies. They have but to allow the FBI into the case. Chairman not merely lost; they are in bad odor. Biden has said he intends to hold hearings about Unfortunately, this setback in reputation will not how the process can be fixed so that a mess like bother them. Having won the Bork fight, they this does not occur again. exulted in the way the will of the people had been But it was not faulty procedures that brought us brought to bear in the battle; having lost the this problem; it was, instead, the spirit in which popular contest over Thomas, they will adopt some of the players used the procedures. Someone other arguments and work via other means, in- was so partisan and so certain of the righteousness cluding a continuing, assiduous use of the con- of his or her opposition to Thomas as to feel fully firmation process, to gain what they have consist- justified in overriding those morally deficient ently failed in recent years to win at the polls. 8/COMMENTARY MAY 1992 ing on Israel promptly to withdraw NORMAN PODHORETZ writes: "strategic-asset" argument has al- from all Palestinian territory, rec- It is Alan 0. Ebenstein, I fear, ways rested less on Israel's contri- ognize the PLO and "all the rights of who "has it wrong." For insofar as bution to the containment of Soviet the Palestinian people," including Islamic fundamentalism is a factor power than on the value to the the right of "return," was passed by in the Arab war against the Jewish United States of a democratic ally a vote of 93 nations [emphasis state—and I agree with Mr. in the Middle East; and it still added]. Ebenstein that it is—it makes a new does. Furthermore, I have always Palestinian state even less likely to been convinced, and I still am, that The rescission, therefore, placed people like Mr. Frank, who keep critics of the administration's result in a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The reason is that the insisting that Israel is no longer a hostility toward Israel on the true democracy, are helping, in defensive and sanitized the UN in religiously based hostility to Israel is, if anything, more intransigent some cases (though not, I hope, in the eyes of many, but left that his) deliberately, to undermine the organization just as hostile and and less subject to possible com- promise than the politically based main basis of American support. thus even more dangerous to Israel This is not to say that I consider than ever. . . . opposition. To Islamic fundamen- talists, the existence of a sovereign the status quo pleasant or desirable. KENNETH L. Yet the question must always be: GARTNER Mineola, New York Jewish state, no matter where its boundaries might be drawn, is an compared to what? Unlike Mr. Ebenstein, Mr. Frank evidently To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: abomination and a blasphemy. This is why the fundamentalists, unlike thinks that a new Palestinian state Norman Podhoretz's frighten- the Palestinian nationalists, cannot poses no threat to Israel; to assert ingly insightful article leads me to even pretend to favor trading land that it does is "baseless propa- conclude that President Bush and for peace or to settle for a two-state ganda" and "embarrassingly out- Secretary of State Baker have solution. In their eyes, the entire dated thinking." Well, I suggest that little warmth or compassion for Is- area belongs by divine right to Mr. Frank take a look at Harry V. rael.... When I look at the friends Islam. Therefore a Palestinian state Jaffa's letter above, and especially of this administration (former pals in the West Bank and Gaza could the sections Mr. Jaffa quotes from Sununu and Buchanan and current not possibly satisfy them; indeed, the Palestinian National Charter. pals Syria and Iran), I am very even if (as an Egyptian journalist And with regard to the Arab world concerned. once proposed) Israel were limited in general, I suggest that he also ask Should Bush and Baker continue to one synagogue in Tel Aviv and himself why Syria has been to use Israel and American Jews the ten meters surrounding it, the importing Scud-C missiles with the as a scapegoat to shore up falling Islamic fundamentalists would still accuracy and the range to hit popularity polls, I trust that consider it their religious duty to Israel's cities, and why the COMMENTARY will be in the correct this violation of the divinely "moderate" Saudis are helping them vanguard, exposing this ordained natural order. Mr. pay for these missiles. Perhaps then opportunism. SHELDON SELLER Ebenstein, admitting that a new he might begin to understand why Riverton, Connecticut Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, so many of us—along with a great and Gaza would pose "great majority of the Israeli people—are To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: potential dangers for Israel," convinced that, short of a change in Congratulations on Norman nevertheless thinks that it would be the Arab world comparable to the Podhoretz's fine article, "America in the interest of the United States. one that has occurred in the former and Israel: An Ominous Change." Yet his own stress on Islamic Soviet Union, there is no way Israel As a somewhat eclectic conser- fundamentalism belies that can withdraw from the territories in vative, I agree with all of it, every dangerous illusion. favor of a new Palestinian state word, including his indictment of If Tony Frank had paid more without placing itself in mortal the feckless Bush administration careful attention to some of my danger. for believing that some sort of earlier writings, he would not have I thank the other correspon- settlement of the so-called Pales- been so surprised to find me ac- dents for their kind words and tinian problem will bring peace to knowledging that the Israeli Left their many interesting clarifica- the Middle East. What a laugh. and its American supporters be- tions and additions. Among these, I myself do not see how Israel lieve that continued occupation of I am especially struck by Jeffrey can give up one inch of territory. the territories in question has had Hart's passionate statement. Mr. As Napoleon somewhere said, strat- and will continue to have a cor- Hart was Patrick J. Buchanan's egy is geography. Without the West rupting effect on Israel's demo- campaign chairman in the New Bank, Israel is less than twelve cratic culture. I have said as much Hampshire primary, which only miles wide at its waist. Once Iraq about the Left many times in the goes to prove (as I suggest else- had (has?) the bomb, an Iraqi tank past. But I have also then gone on where in this issue) that backing thrust through Jordan just might do to express my strong disagreement Buchanan does not necessarily im- the trick. but with the buffer of the with this belief. To me it seems ply approval of his hostility to Is- West Bank, Israeli armor could obvious that Israel's democratic rael or of his advocacy of a new certainly smash any such tank culture remains alive and well— Palestinian state. thrust. (If the other side had amazingly so, given the strains of nuclear bombs, Israel could not use living in a state of siege and con- Hill vs. Thomas its nuclear deterrent.) As for giving sidering how other democracies, up the Golan Heights, who is including our own here in Amer- To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: kidding whom? . . . ica, have behaved in periods of . . . Suzanne Garment's article. JEFFREY HART national emergency. "Why Anita Hill Lost" (January], is Hanover, New Hampshire Incidentally, my version of the one more in an endless stream of LETTERS FROM READERS/9 commentaries that skirt the real Thomas had but one choice to the two participants know. Thus, issue underlying the Clarence Tho- make out of regard for his good analysis, no matter how penetrat- mas-Anita Hill controversy. I refer name. In my opinion, his response ing, is futile. The second point, it to the unspoken issue of whether was both predictable and under- seems to me, is more important and what Thomas allegedly did, even if standable in human terms, and could make a major difference in true in each and every detail, re- therefore justifiable. future controversies: why did the flects anything worthy of scrutiny, Mrs. Garment's analysis adds media use the story? whether public or private. A man in little to the debate. In addition to It is general practice in journal- his early thirties makes a verbal the litany of inconsistencies in ism not to use charge-denial stories move toward an attractive female— Hill's conduct and testimony previ- which cannot be proven, regardless who rejects, but protests not. . . . ously listed by just about every- of the source. Indeed, even when a It is over such as this that a na- body, she underscores the fact that crime is involved, reporters tion stood transfixed for several Hill is an ambitious female, which generally do not use the material weeks. All the actors on the attribute Hill artfully concealed. unless a warrant has been signed. stage—including the accused, even Again, so what! . .. Did Hill embel- Why were traditional journalistic while denying it—condemned the lish or lie about (1) the extent of rules violated in this instance? And dastardly conduct as beneath con- her ambitiousness; (2) the extent will this violation set a pattern? Of tempt and unbefittin one aspiring to of the outrage and/or revulsion, if course the story had tremendous such high office. Never mind that any, that she felt over Thomas's "news value," since a Supreme the alleged conduct was entirely alleged licentiousness; (3) the full Court nominee was involved and verbal. Never mind that the so- and true reasons she remained silent competition—fear of losing a called victim neither flinched nor over the years? My guess is that "good story"—no doubt also played protested, but over the years she is probably guilty on all counts, a part. Yet the question remains: continued to nurture her for that is just the way it is with why in this case were responsible relationship with her alleged tor- humans when outsiders attempt to principles abridged? . . mentor. Never mind that in rites of pry into their innermost personal It does not seem to have oc- passage, such acts as these are as motives and conduct. curred to the journalists involved commonplace as there are birds and In short, it is most likely, on that the agony so decried on the bees on a summer day. . . . In spite balance, that, as the exchange un- nation's editorial pages could have of all this, the matter continues to folded, both individuals found it been avoided if whoever received be much discussed. But what has necessary to retreat from a strict the FBI-Hill material had simply not been open to debate so far is account of the facts in order to said, "I can't use this." the simple but honest street phrase preserve their dignity, good names, that I am sure has occurred to many and self-respect. of us: so what! ARTHUR S. I will nevertheless offer up my BAY Oklahoma City, Oklahoma own opinion. Despite the fact that Hill was by far the more incon- To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: Audio Books sistent, both in her statements Suzanne Garment is right on ,4 during the hearing and in regard to point, but she leaves unanswered 1:1'0 Or. to:.1.1%I. i`a• Over 300 Titles her actions over the years, she the two most pertinent questions ?a- Purchase or 30 captures my vote because of what raised by observers: (1) Did Cla- h 1 ( 1 . 1 1 F l i , Day Rental a. she did not say, i.e., that Thomas rence Thomas do the things alleged '11A(; Unabridged had repeatedly cornered her and by Anita Hill? In short. which one THE ROSE RENT Recordings zik• told the truth? (2) If Hill is to be submitted her to physical indig- Wealth and l're•et:. Professionally nities, that he threatened to fire her believed, does that render Thomas Read unqualified to serve on the cAist. or reassign her to a less desirable Though you may have position as punishment for her Supreme Court? . . . NISTOET -- nles little spare time for read- rejection, etc. Such actions would HOWARD SALASIN MARXISM. ing, fortunately you can unquestionably constitute abuse. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania Pillagypi?iff 1,1•4, %.1.10 now recharge your mind Had she wanted CO invent a story to . TSR 1.041 111 with hooks by the worlds damage Thomas, surely she would To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: OF THE VANITIES have included in the mix some Suzanne Garment offers a com- greatest authors—while clearly outrageous and abusive pelling analysis of Anita Hill's pub- you exercise or travel. Per conduct on his part. The very fact lic posture. She deserves congratu- cassette prices are the that nothing of this sort was lations for a dispassionate article lowest on the market and included weighs heavily in her which will certainly not win her you won't find these mas- favor. any friends in the feminist MOZART — terworks anywhere else. All of which is totally beside movement. I had, however, hoped the point, the point being that for a little more attention to the role played by the media, since CLASSICS ON TAPE Thomas's actions as depicted P.O. Box g 04. A,111.ina Creilon 97520 amounted to little more than Mrs. Garment is a former member of the Fourth Estate and has Youthful indiscretions. His re- For a FREE Catalogue. Call Toll Free: sponse to the committee should contributed so valuably to the have been a resounding "it's none debate on major public issues. of your business." Unfortunately, Two main points are involved: in the present climate wherein the The first. as Mrs. Garment notes in 1-800-729-2665 feminist movement has outlawed her opening sentence, is that none of mother nature in the workplace, us will ever know the truth. Only 10/COMMENTARY MAY 1992

While Mrs. Garment touches on Any rational person—and presum- journalists have already come up the role of "leaks" at the end of her ably Anita Hill is such a person— with interesting and disturbing cir- article and how they serve the will remain in an employment situ- cumstantial evidence involving interests of those who do the "leak- ation only if he or she believes it is Hill. But if the citizens who had to ing," her insights into the media's advantageous to do so. The concept "vote" for Thomas or Hill did not role and what needs to or should of a "hostile" work environment is have a clean and clear public be done could have proved con- inherently subjective. To one record available to them when they structive and useful. person, it may mean a cramped made their choice, neither did they BERL FALBAUM office, to another, a strict dress have the new information that is West Bloomfield, Michigan code, etc. In any case, the proper now starting to emerge. Members response to an intolerable of the public had to pronounce To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: workplace is to quit and find a judgment on the record as it stood In her otherwise thoroughgoing more compatible one. Staying put then. If we want to know what the article Suzanne Garment did not implies that it is not really intoler- Hill-Thomas affair tells us about explore Anita Hill's "liberal cre- able. our political system and our dentials." The possibility that part ... An employee is no more jus- citizenry, we must first deal with of Hill's motivation in mounting a tified in asking a court to order an the scandal as it appeared at the vendetta against Clarence Thomas employer to provide a less hostile time to those who had to evaluate might have been ideological was work environment than an em- it, and that is what I tried to do in the subject of two articles in the ployer would be to ask that it direct my article. wake of the controversy, one in the an employee to be more productive. Let me add a word of caution: in Wall Street Journal, the other in At its core, the "hostile-work- writing about American political the Washington Inquirer. . . . environment" issue hinges on scandals, I have repeatedly found In her Wall Street Journal piece, whether or not people are capable that when a big scandal breaks, Lally Weymouth . . . dismissed as of acting to maximize their own secondary charges tend to come nonsense the anti-Thomas camp's welfare. The Declaration of Inde- pouring out of the woodwork. In allegation that Hill had "no motive" pendence affirms our unalienable particular, I have seen how for lying. She showed, on the right to pursue happiness. It is in- Clarence Thomas's opponents, contrary, that Thomas himself had deed sad that so many Americans trying to sink his Supreme Court once noted in a memorandum how have forsaken their birthright and nomination through scandal he and his one-time employee, instead look to legal remedies to politics, peppered him with allega- Anita Hill, "disagreed on positions improve their condition. tions ranging from judicial conflict [albeit] we were able to resolve PHILLIP GOLDSTEIN of interest to the excessive viewing disagreements professionally." And Brooklyn, New York of pornographic films. Some of the in an interview with the former secondary charges that arise in dean of the Oral Roberts University SUZANNE GARMENT writes: affairs like these are true. some are Law School, Weymouth established Many thanks for the letters that false, and a great many are exag- that Hill "was far from [being] a said complimentary things about gerated. Winnowing is required. conservative Republican: she my article on Anita Hill and Clar- and in this case the work has vet to tended to be liberal and feminist in ence Thomas. I agree with the writ- be done. I am eager to see her approach to things." ers that there are interesting issues additional journalists join in the Weymouth also spent time on it did not address. The first of these task. the campus interviewing Anita questions is straightforward: whose Howard Salasin asks another Hill's students, one of whom told story, in the end, should we question: "If Hill is to be believed, her that "Miss Hill is not an inno- believe? does that render Thomas unquali- cent professor thrust into the situ- I believe Clarence Thomas. I fied to serve on the Supreme ation by the media, . . . but rather have met him and spoken with him; Court?" In one sense the answer is, a political activist furthering a I have shrewd and insightful for me, easy enough: if the actions cause she had so vehemently ad- friends who are his friends as well; complained of in a case like this vanced in the past." Likewise, a and in writing my most recent book one turn out to be signs of some former member of the University I investigated at some length his major character flaw relevant to of Oklahoma's feminist group, the personal performance as chairman public performance, they may in- Organization for the Advancement of the Equal Employment deed prove disqualifying. If the of Women, for which Hill served Opportunity Commission. I do not behavior seems to bear little rela- as campus adviser, reported that believe him capable of the behavior tionship to anything else in a Hill "is a liberal; she was for such Anita Hill described. candidate's public character, how- things as 'comparable worth.' At But the public record of the ever, it should not be enough to do our meetings. if it wasn't Reagan- Hill-Thomas episode simply does him in, and making a public bashing. tt was Bush-bashing. not, by itself, settle the matter. scandal of the matter serves only to They were terrified of Roe v. Arthur S. Bay has studied the pub- scare the best people away from Wade being overturned." . . . lic materials and come to a conclu- public service. ALBERT L. WEEKS sion very different from mine. But the issue is not really so Sarasota, Florida Such differences spring from the simple as all that. It is one thing to record's ambiguities and silences. say that we should not pry into To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: A few good reporters have now most kinds of private acts when we . . . It is not necessary to at- begun the hard job of digging into consider candidates for high office. tribute . . . Anita Hill's inaction in Hill's life in search of new in- It is quite another matter to say that the face of alleged sexual harass- formation that might finally settle if we do learn of objectionable ment to any particular motive. . . . this question of credibility. These private behavior by these can- LETTERS FROM READERS/11 didates, we should just go ahead they have done for quite some time. sia. Whereas some American jurors and confirm them as if we had Hill's advocates, for obvious have demonstrated the equanimity never heard the news about them. reasons, spoke of her as a conser- and common sense to acquit mercy . In the first situation, we are merely vative. A small but well-placed part killers (see 0. Ruth Russell's The w) ignorant; in the second, by contrast, of the press actively and fiercely Right to Die), Mr. Kass relentlessly we place a stamp of public supported Hill, and we can assume persecutes and prosecutes them. tolerance, if not approval, on bad that these people deliberately chose The mercy killers have had the te- private behavior. We also un- to look no farther. Other merity to advocate a thorough. avoidably change, for the worse, the journalists who failed to investigate considerate, respectful, and tech- way we view these officials once Hill's views surely did so because nically precise exit from life and they are in authority. We avoid act- they were afraid, consciously or from society. Should mercy killers ing unjustly toward candidates for not, to violate today's political be inconsiderate or sloppy when office, but we do so at a cost to their stricture—among not only assisting suicide? moral authority and the tone of our journalists but also other opinion- How sanctimonious of Mr. Kass civic culture. makers—against "blaming the vic- to acknowledge "the anguish and That is why it is not enough to tim." And still other press people, fear of patients and families in the deal with conflagrations like the having little time and few re- myriad matters surrounding decay Hill-Thomas case simply by reject- sources, simply accepted the as- and death." Do doctors cause this ing one charge or another as a sumptions supplied by their fellow anguish by vowing "neither to give basis for disqualifying a nominee. nor suggest a deadly drug'? Medi- journalists. By this combination of We must instead recognize that the cal torturers and their accomplices problem lies deeper, in the modern manipulativeness and mindlessness first prolong suffering and then notion that "the personal is are feeding frenzies shaped. hector the victims to show greater political." It is a slogan that has courage in the face of debilitation permitted the use of the "character Suicide and death. issue" in the service of the most Mr. Kass concludes that the ta- bitter partisan politics, as an ex- TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: boos against homicide, suicide, and cuse for opening candidates' and Leon R. Kass's diatribe against euthanasia are breaking down. nominees' personal lives to an ex- euthanasia ["Suicide Made Easy," Why make these subjects taboo? amination that virtually no one can December 1991], reveals how ob- Does planning to kill inevitably survive and remain capable of tuse, irrational, and, yes, evil are lead to unnecessary death? Then democratic leadership. many arguments against euthana years and years of war games mils- Finally, some of the letter-writers ask questions on which I wrote little because what I have to say is not NOW ON OVER 2,500 Cable Systems Nationwide novel. For example, Berl Falbaum quite Now celebrating 10 years of service to the Jewish community! properly asks why the press DON'T MISS AMERICA'S #1 JEWISH PROGRAM abandoned its traditional stan- dards of proof to chase after the ultimately unknowable matter of Thomas's private dealings with TAIL/ALINE with Hill. The reason, I think, is that those standards have been in the process of abandonment for the ZIEV UUENNIEIV past 25 years. During the Vietnam RADIO SCHEDULE era and beyond, as the press grew Saturday Eves 11:30 pm -1 am more antagonistic toward govern- New York/New Jersey/Conn WMCA 570 AM SUN. ment, journalists became increas- EVES 10 -12 pm • EST NATIONWIDE SATELLITE ingly convinced that the "real" sto- SATCOM C-1, TRNSPNDR 2, 7.5 MEGH ries of American politics lay not in Washington. D.C. - WINX 1600 AM public documents or speeches by Southern Florida - WMBM 1490 AM our leaders but in politicians' and Boston. MA - WKOX 1200 AM officials' private interests, Chicago. IL - WCGO 1600 AM & WTAS 102.3 conspiracies, and gossip. In FM TELEVISION SCHEDULE pursuing such stories, journalists Sundays 12 -1 p.m. (EST) - Nationwide on the International Channel Satcom F4 Trnspnder 12. got used to the idea of jettisoning MANHATTAN & PARAGON CABLE CHANNEL 65 old-fashioned notions like the BROOKLYN QUEENS CABLE CHANNEL 72 necessity for named sources and BROOKLYN CABLEVISION CHANNEL 59 corroborating evidence. The press MONTGOMERY COUTNY (MD) CABLE CHANNEL 51 coverage of the Hill-Thomas Sundays 7pm and Thursdays 6pm - JFTV Florida controversy was merely one CHECK YOUR LOCAL CABLE GUIDE FOR NATIONAL LISTINGS CF TALKLINE ON THE INTERNATIONAL striking example of the result. CHANNEL AND THE VISN NETWORK. In the same way, Albert L. Weeks For more information. complete radio listings. and advertising rates. contact: asks why the press, without inves- Talkline Communications Network tigation, portrayed Hill as a con- P.O. Box 20108. Park West Station. New York. NY 10025 servative with no ideological motive (212) 769.1925 - Out of New York: 1-800-628-TALK for attacking Thomas. In this matter, too, the media behaved as