The confirmation of Clarence Thomas is not only a personal victory for an honorable man who was the victim of a savage 11th-hour ambush by feminists in special-interest groups and in the media. His confirmation was also a resounding defeat for the feminists who had been working night and day for 100 days to defeat him.
When the feminists and the liberals couldn’t defeat Thomas fairly, they tried a last-minute dirty trick. Anita Hill first tried to do it secretly and anonymously; it seems not to have occurred to this Yale Law School graduate that an accused has the right to confront his accusers. When that didn’t work, she went public.
The American people looked behind the pretty face of Anita Hill, the biased reporting of Nina Totenberg and the rest of the liberal media, and the demonstrations of Molly Yard, Eleanor Smeal, Betty Friedan, Kate Michelman, and Patricia Schroeder, and saw the ugly face of feminism. Women as well as men, blacks as well as whites, sized up Anita Hill as a spiteful liar and roared their verdict into Capitol Hill.
The feminists are now trying, with the help of their friends in the liberal media, to put their “spin” on the weekend ordeal we all experienced — they claim that all this TV exposure has “raised our consciousness about the problem of sexual harassment.” Actually, it has raised our consciousness about the way the feminists use false charges of sexual harassment to destroy a man who stands in their way.
Anita denied under oath that a Judiciary committee staffer told her that she wouldn’t have to go public with her charges because Thomas would withdraw before the Senate vote. Then, or advice of her lawyer, she reversed her story. This is a key point because it provides sensational evidence that the “Iron Triangler” (Senate staffers, pressure group$, and the media) was in a conspiracy to blackmail Thomas into withdrawing.
The American people found her obscene, bizarre story inherently unbelievable,
It was not believable that Clarence Thomas, who had won the respect of every other woman who had ever worked for him, could have behaved the way she related; and it was just as unbelievable that any woman could have behaved the way she did, maintaining a friendly relationship with him after she left his employ.
The whole idea of, painting a lawyer as a “victim” of words spoken in the workplace shows how out of touch with the real world the feminists are. The American public has a great big heart and unlimited empathy with all sorts of victims — but lawyers are not on their list of people they feel sorry for.
Which was more ridiculous: trying to pass off a lawyer as a “victim” of some bad words in the workplace? or depending on Senator ted Kennedy to carry the flag of righteous indignation against, sexual harassment?
Feminist ideology has been telling us for 20 years that women want to be treated Just like men. Now, when it. suits their goals, the feminists put on a crybaby act, and tell us that women are afraid to say “no” to any man in the workplace.
The feminists are demanding to have it both ways. After preaching that there isn’t any difference between men and women, now they want to turn around and claim sexual harassment if a man talks to them like “one of the boys.”
The whole assumption is so patronizing — and, indeed, sexist — because it implies that women can’t handle uncomfortable situations without, the help of Big Brother government. If a girl can survive high school, she ought to be able to deal with the office.
The feminists are crying that the Republican Senators treated Anita Hill badly. on the contrary, the Republican Senators treated Hill with undeserved courtesy and kindness. They didn’t call her back on Monday and cross examine her about the discrepancies between her story and the dozen women who testified Sunday with first-hand knowledge of her at EEOC.
The Republican Senators didn’t go into Anita Hill’s personal life at all! They didn’t bring out her years of close friendship with a Metzenbaum staff member or her reputation as a feminist activist at the University of Oklahoma Law School, or the big salary increase she received from Clarence Thomas at EEOC. They didn’t even ask her if she is pro-abortion, when a simple “yes” answer would have revealed the motivation for her attack on Clarence Thomas.
Feminists are blaming the rejection of Anita Hill’s accusations on the circumstance that the Senate has 98 men and only two women. It was not because the Senators are men that, they voted for Clarence Thomas, but because their constituents by the thousands demanded that Thomas be confirmed.
There are more women voters than men, and if women want to elect women they surely can do it. Three women ran for the U.S, Senate last year (in Rhode Island, Illinois and Hawaii) and they all lost.
All three had the enthusiastic support of the party and President Bush, they had plenty of money and full funding from the Republican National Committee, and pol1s showed that the Democratic incumbents could be defeated. All three women lost, and many believe they lost principally because they were feminists.
