I don’t doubt for a second that Clarence Thomas experienced racism and significant discrimination. Both while growing up and as he moved into adulthood. I also don’t doubt for a second that despite all the insults to his intellect when he got to SCOTUS and for (I think) well over a decade never asked a single question during oral arguments. Thomas is no intellectual giant like the Justice he replaced. Thurgood Marshall will always be a towering figure in SCOTUS history and would be a tough Justice for anyone to follow.
So yes, given his inappropriate behavior as a GOP administration employee getting exposed, knowing that the ONLY reason Bush 41 named him to the Bench in the first place was his staunch conservative (and lest we forget Federalist Society too) credentials and was like Marshall a black guy. Bush 41 tried hard but not well enough to hide his smirk during the announcement of Thomas’ nomination. He knew damn well the talk about him being the most highly qualified individual that could possibly be named was a load of crap. We knew it. He knew we knew it. And we (including conservatives) knew he knew we knew it.
Putting him on SCOTUS was a brutal F**K you to Thurgood Marshall and Democrats. Not quite the elder Bush’s style but he needed to shore up hard core conservative’s support and this sure as hell did the trick. Thomas was used as a show pony. Not even a show horse but a show pony. It was THE ultimate Affirmative Action hire. But he figured what the hell? In the legal profession a seat on our nation’s highest court, a lifetime appointment that he might well hold for forty years or more if he lived long enough he was willing to endure the insults.
And one day extract EVERY bit of payback he could.
He’s relished doing so. With Trump getting to pack the Court he’s freed up to go to town on everything progressives hold dear. Best of all, he gets to pull up the ladder behind him. College, to being a somebody working for Republican administrations right up to being put on SCOTUS he’s been quite willing to benefit from being not just African-American but a conservative one! Like in the days of slavery he got to be the more or less articulate slave who managed all the other slaves in the Plantation owner’s house. If other slaves were too open with “Uncle Tom” talk a word with the Master and punishment was swift and brutal.
Trump’s getting to name three fellow Federalist Society trained, groomed even made him that “top slave”, the Master’s go-to guy and Thomas has thrown himself into the role. Best of all for him, there are multiple issues where SCOTUS had given him the ability to have aspects to life he wanted, like getting married to a white woman, being able to use birth control so Ginni wouldn’t have to spend time with the kids, and of course affirmative action to get into a top college and then law school and eventual his seat on SCOTUS.
And Thomas has made clear he intends to pull up the ladder behind him on every one of those.
He might as well put it plainly – I got mine – the rest of you go f**k off.
Once he was part of what most of the time on conservative issues would be an activist court (remember when Republicans regularly accused Democrats of that, even when the mix of Justices was even or even majority GOP appointees?) any thoughts he might retire, even with a Republican President in office to name his replacement are pure fantasy. Thomas has spent a lifetime waiting to extract payback on everyone who offended him during his life. People of his own heritage who criticized him for being conservative first and foremost. And with Joe Biden in the White House? The humiliating scandal Thomas endured, despite him having been such a sexist pig meaning he deserved not only that but to have lost his confirmation vote.
Again, I don’t doubt the truth of what he wrote in his concurring opinion about injustices he’s suffered in his life. But an awful lot of them as he reached adulthood weren’t so much injustices as legitimate criticism. Which he was more than willing to brand as racism when the fact is any white guy who said and did things he did would suffer the same criticism.
But like I said, Thomas and his wife are senior citizens and rich. With even richer people showing them with money and gifts. Neither needs the protections the law, via the force of SCOTUS rulings and precedent provided them.
So we are firmly in to “I got mine – the rest of you F**K off!!!!!” time.
About this: “being able to use birth control so Ginni wouldn’t have to spend time with the kids”
Brain bleach, first. The very notion of Clarence Thomas and that thing he married having sex is not just revolting but it passes even the “walk in on mom and dad having sex” level of revolting.
But, Thomas is also a Roman Catholic. I’m not sure how he got a workaround with divorcing his first wife and marrying the Creature (he’s alleged to have moved from the Church in the early 70s over–ironically–the Church’s poor record on civil rights; but he’s supposed to have reconciled with the Church in the 1990s) so the Griswold-protected type of “birth control” is absolutely verboten to “good Catholics.” (Remember, the Pope refused to make allowances for condom use to prevent AIDS even though that was, for so many years, the most reliable way of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and, in many third-world and other impoverished areas, it’s far more affordable than almost every medical treatment.)
Lots of Catholics have defied church doctrine and used birth control. I’ve known more than I can count during my life. And there are nuns and even priests willing to offer forgiveness in confession to parishoners who admit to it, or for engaging in same-sex activity or living together out of wedlock. Even baptizing babies from non-married couples albeit not in the church itself. Basically, Catholics and Catholic leaders who preach church doctrine from the pulpit who in this and other countries recognize certain realities and that the Vatican is out of touch.
I don’t know how the Catholic church operates in the USofA but, over here in Ireland, ONLY an ordained priest can hear confessions and forgive sins and children born to non-married couples can and DO receive church baptism (inside a church).
How does the church operate in the US? It harbors pedophiles. Does more need to be said?
My point was that there are priests in lots of countries that will talk to/counsel or even in the confessional be accepting of people who don’t follow church doctrine on reproductive/family planning issues and not rip on them. Not the majority but more than a few. And sometimes after one difficult talk/confession on such matters a tacit “don’t ask, don’t tell” understanding is reached. It’s the old question of theory (or in this case doctrine) vs. the reality of people’s lives, and that it’s a very different world than the one in which the views of the leaders of the past used to create/shape doctrine.
My parents were not married in a Catholic church, but I was raised what they called a Roman Catholic. I went through all the steps, baptism and communion. All in the church and learned that they are some of the most evil people in the world. My mom actually had me going to a Catholic school until a priest came into my science class one day and said ” Where is that bastard Marie Morgan”, I learned then, in the 4th grade that they are truly the most evil people in the world. Who does that to a child?!?!?!
His name isn’t Clarence Thomas, it’s Uncle Tom.
Not “insults to his intellect” denis but rather facts about his lack of intellect. Thomas does not have what it takes to be on any federal judicial bench let alone the highest court in the country. He was chosen because he was a black man (to replace Justice Marshall) and chosen by the idiots in the fed. soc. Period. No matter what comes before the s.c. he will take the position most reactionary and anti-progressive. He thinks he is protected by that black robe which is an excellent reason for Congress to create ethics rules for those fuckers–they will violate them and we’ll finally be rid of the ilk like thomas and alito. If not ethics rules then expand the s.c. to fix was that fucker from KY broke.
John Stoehr wrote a good piece for Raw Story today:
https://www.rawstory.com/amp/the-supreme-court-only-outlawed-the-kind-of-bias-that-its-rightwing-supermajority-dislikes-2662085337
The ‘catholic church’ has as much connection to Jesus, as I do to the far side of the universe. Oops. Since my atoms were once part of a supernova, I actually have a connection. These asshats are liars and hypocrites, as are the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, etc. etc. etc. My advice? Think for yourself, but try to study a few facts along the way. Math makes all of us bags of erroneous belief systems in a vast, and essentially an unknowable universe. FACT. Now, back to our regular programming, i.e., lies make us all a little more comfortable with reality.
” what the church as done to Jesus is what the governor of California wants to do to the redwoods…take a wild and wonderful thing and turn it into den furniture.” Daniel Berrigan
uh oh…I just upset some deluded soul who thinks what THEY believe is the TRUTH! GOD told me to. So there!
The black man who replaced Justice Marshall operates under the sad delusion that there isn’t enough to go around. There is. Yes, the wealthy would have a bit less if everyone had enough. Big f**king deal.
I have a prediction and it’s not one that requires prognostication skills-unless things change drastically, humans will eventually revolt. If this happens the “haves” are going to be very dead. All their walls, gated communities, private armies, purchased police protection and everything else they think will protect them won’t. IF the wealthy are as bright as they think they are (I suspect this is bullsh*t due to all the inherited wealth) they will realize their danger–ending up on the receiving end of a pitchfork/gun/what-the-f**k-ever. They might try one last stab of keeping control but it will fail…and they will be very dead. The bright ones, the actual bright ones, will work with the people so they do not end up in whatever the world comes up with in place of a guillotine. What we have on this planet right now for economic systems are for the most part unsustainable-Northern Europe might be ok.
Of course they might just climb onto a spaceship that looks like a dick and go to another planet. That would be such a win for the planet, and us, that I tend to bi!ch much less about this conspicuous spending by the oligarchs on asinine sea/space projects. The sea projects are pretty good-the vessels implode and rid us of a few oligarchs. The space projects might get them the fuck away from us and in larger numbers. I am seeing less downsides to this frivolous spending now that I think about it.
When the so called people of ‘faith’ can tell me exactly where they are in the universe, then their collective hallucinations will be taken more seriously. First some math. Just remember math doesn’t lie…people DO, and have through the ages. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per SECOND. It can travel 7x around the earth in that time. It takes 8 minutes at that speed to reach us from the closet star, our sun. Our solar system has approximately 100 BILLION stars, all distances between them measured at the speed of light. With Webb out there finding more galaxies as I type, the astrophysicists now think there may be a trillion galaxies, each with God only knows how many stars. Ask any person of faith WHO made all of this, and they are CERTAIN the answer is ‘GOD’, ALLAH, etc. My point? All your certain beliefs are laughable in the face of REALITY. SO SNOWFLAKES…TAKE A HIKE! Your hallucinations and beliefs are just exactly that. Take it from a Religion major from the oldest state university in the land. Like Dylan said a long time ago…”you say you lost your faith. you know it’s not like that. you had no faith to lose, and you know it. you just wanted to be on the side that’s winning.”
Now look up ‘mystery’ in the dictionary since all religions speak on the MYSTERY of God. While you’re at it…look up liar and hypocrite, and you may be on your way to the truth. Glad to help. Bring on the thumbs down, since telling the truth offends so GODDAMN many of my fellow citizens.