Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Anita Hill: the Left’s Modern Alger Hiss
Townhall.com ^ | April 22, 2016 | Mark Paoletta

Posted on 04/22/2016 7:24:45 AM PDT by Kaslin

On Saturday night, HBO debuted its account of the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings. While it was billed as “meticulously researched” by the leftist screenwriters and Hollywood executives behind the film, Confirmation rewrites history to advance the myth that Anita Hill was a victim of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas. The fictional “docudrama” that twists and omits key facts, and in some cases, outright makes things up, is yet another attempt by the left to establish through persistence what could not be established through evidence.

At the end of Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, polling done by Pew and others showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the newly confirmed Justice and disbelieved Anita Hill. That belief was warranted. The overwhelming evidence introduced at the confirmation hearings supported Thomas. A dozen of Thomas’ female former coworkers testified in support of him – a fact that HBO conveniently elides. Meanwhile, Hill and her corroborating witnesses failed to present a consistent or coherent story.

Despite the shortcomings of her account, Hill continues to shill her story two and a half decades later. Some may cite her persistence as proof that she told the truth. After all, why would she lie? And even if she did lie, why should she continue to double down on her lies decades later?

But if recent history is any judge, we know that sometimes people lie with even less reason than Hill had. Recent false accusations against Duke Lacrosse players and University of Virginia fraternity members illustrate this point. We don’t know why Crystal Mangum lied when she accused three Duke Lacrosse players of rape. Nor do we know why “Jackie” concocted a story of being raped by several fraternity members. We do know that when subjected to scrutiny both of these stories, like Hill’s, fell apart. Given the lack of any apparent reason for the lies in these two scandals, it seems possible that Hill, an admitted liberal partisan, lied during the Thomas hearings. (If you want proof of her partisan views -- and on the subject of sexual impropriety by public officials no less -- look no father than her 1998 Meet the Press interview when she excuses away Bill Clinton’s behavior toward Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willy.)

We know too that sometimes people persist in lies for decades. Alger Hiss’s lifelong protestations that he was not a Soviet agent illustrate the point. A beloved figure of the Beltway elite and journalists who saw him as a hardworking and brilliant public servant at the State Department, Hiss was actually a Soviet spy who had betrayed his country. When Whittaker Chambers, himself a former Soviet Agent, testified in 1948 that he had known Hiss as a communist agent, Hiss denied the allegation. But Chambers produced proof in the form of old documents written in Hiss’ handwriting, along with copies of State Department documents on microfilm, and Hiss was eventually convicted for perjury. Still, most of official Washington refused to believe.

It wasn’t until thirty years after the riveting and dramatic testimony between Hiss and Chambers, that Allen Weinstein’s 1978 book Perjuryauthoritatively documented in detail Hiss’s treason. Only then did some of his former supporters begin to doubt his account. (After the fall of the. Soviet Union and the brief opening of Soviet archives, the Venona papers established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hiss had a code name ALES and was indeed a Soviet spy.)

Yet Hiss continued to protest his innocence until his death. One might admire his audacity, but it does not change the facts. Hiss was a Soviet spy, and he lied about it for decades.

Likewise Anita Hill’s persistent lies cannot change the facts. We may never know why she lied about Clarence Thomas or why she has persisted in that lie for two and a half decades. But we know that Hill’s are not the only prominent allegations to fall apart under scrutiny, and we know that Hill is not the first person to double down on false statements for decides.

Like Hiss before her, Hill cannot substitute persistence for evidence. And the evidence shows that Hill lied.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: anitahill; clarencethomas; hbo; supremecourt
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021 next last

1 posted on 04/22/2016 7:24:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I saw a big sign on a bus here that said “one voice can make a difference”.

er, but it didn’t. Last I check, Clarence was still on the SC.

Haters are gonna watch it and with a little luck a few of them will drop from their high blood pressure.


2 posted on 04/22/2016 7:29:37 AM PDT by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I bet it got even lower ratings than “Girls,” the perverse (and canceled) Lena Dunham vehicle that brought in only 300,000 viewers per episode.


3 posted on 04/22/2016 7:31:13 AM PDT by montag813
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
After all, why would she lie? And even if she did lie, why should she continue to double down on her lies decades later?

Simple answer: It is what the left does and for the same reasons that bears $#*+ in the woods.

4 posted on 04/22/2016 7:31:28 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I think Huma is the new Alger Hiss.


5 posted on 04/22/2016 7:34:14 AM PDT by Williams (Dear God, please save us from the Democrats. And the Republicans.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Vigilanteman

Also the stuff she described while embarrassing really didn’t arise to sexual harassment, considering they were close friends. Basically she claimed he talked to her about sex and asked her out. Some of it was really stupid.


6 posted on 04/22/2016 7:36:11 AM PDT by Williams (Dear God, please save us from the Democrats. And the Republicans.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: montag813

Girls was cancelled? I somehow missed that news. Thanks for the info.


7 posted on 04/22/2016 7:38:24 AM PDT by xp38
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace [yea, hang your head because I mean you Biden, you lying prick]. It’s a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks, who in any way deign to think for themselves. And it is a message, that unless you kowtow to the old order, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured … by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.

8 posted on 04/22/2016 7:41:28 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Having watched these hearings live, here is the whole story in a nutshell IMHO.
Thomas befriended and mentored Hill who was in every way a lackluster lawyer. He took her into govt. because her law firm was going to fire her.

She fell in love with the guy but instead he married a red haired white woman, a cardinal sin to black women. She tried to get even by backstabbing him. The leftist feminist monsters got hold of her and dragged her into testifying publically in an effort to “Bork” him. Didn’t work. She got paid off through a professorship at some university out west.
And there we are.


9 posted on 04/22/2016 7:46:31 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: montag813
I bet it got even lower ratings than “Girls,”

My reaction as well. Millennials and Xers don't care, and Boomers already know whether they believe Hill or Thomas, and would not be swayed by such agitprop.

10 posted on 04/22/2016 7:51:26 AM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Jimmy Valentine

Very succinct and quite true. Excellent summation.

I watched the hearings and found Ms. Hill to be quite un-credible.

Justice Thomas comported himself as quite distinguished and the accusation seemed wholly vapid and without merit.


11 posted on 04/22/2016 7:56:36 AM PDT by rjsimmon (The Tree of Liberty Thirsts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Remembering the Clarence Thomas/ Anita Hill hearings, watched and listened to live, I am quite curious.
Whereever did HBO manage to conjur up the spirit of Josef Goebbels to direct this travesty? Who else could have produced such a twisted “MOVIE”?
Just curious.


12 posted on 04/22/2016 7:57:02 AM PDT by CaptainAmiigaf (New York Times: "We print the news as it fits our views.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Williams

Do you think the hotsauce irritates her vajayjay since hitlary puts it on everything she eats?


13 posted on 04/22/2016 7:59:11 AM PDT by longfellow (Bill Maher, the 21st hijacker.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Williams
Yep. She did a great job of preparing the country for Billy Bob and Monica by further defining deviancy down.

More than a quarter century later, most of us still remember Coke cans, pubic hairs and Long Dong Silver, even if we can't remember the particular context.

Even if Thomas actually said those things (doubtful, given Hill's chronic lying), we were supposed to believe it was such a big deal then whereas Billy Bob's actions in the Oral Office were no big deal a few years later.

14 posted on 04/22/2016 8:01:23 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Williams

“I think Huma is the new Alger Hiss.”

Exactly. Their comparison is BS. Hiss was an agent of a murderous foreign despot.


15 posted on 04/22/2016 8:08:50 AM PDT by Dalberg-Acton
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Jimmy Valentine

If memory serves, she’s gone through several college positions, and I don’t think she’s ever actually made professor. Another figure who thinks past “laurels” make up for present-day incompetence.


16 posted on 04/22/2016 8:52:56 AM PDT by M1903A1 ("W shed all that is good and virtuous for that which is shoddy and sleazy... and call it progress")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

She lied because she’s a LIB and Thomas isn’t
She still lies because she is still a LIB, and Thomas still isn’t.


17 posted on 04/22/2016 10:52:13 AM PDT by 5th MEB (Progressives in the open; --- FIRE FOR EFFECT!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Williams

Huma might be the new Harry Hopkins.


18 posted on 04/22/2016 3:08:33 PM PDT by doberville
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Nuff said!

Justice Thomas, his wife and Anita Hill.

19 posted on 04/22/2016 5:41:24 PM PDT by Islander7 (There is no septic system so vile, so filthy, the left won't drink from to further their agenda)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
At the end of Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, polling done by Pew and others showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the newly confirmed Justice and disbelieved Anita Hill.

But the constant drum beat of the leftist media against Thomas changed that poll in the opposite direction after a year. One must ask why this movie now? Perhaps with Justice Scalia's death it time to try take out Justice Thomas

20 posted on 04/23/2016 4:04:28 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine's brother ("Hillary Clinton is a congenital liar." - William Safire)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson