Posted on 10/04/2005 9:20:05 PM PDT by KevinNuPac
Justice Clarence Thomas' Electronic Lynching Helps Harriet Miers
By Kevin Fobbs
One of the most unique Supreme Court feeding frenzies on record was the confirmation hearings for now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Because of his sacrifice U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, who is filling a key court seat, will not have to undergo his televised hardball treatment. What America saw was this seemingly uncontrolled feminist agenda on open display to take no prisoners in its attempt to destroy Thomas and polarize America for generations to come.
Americans sat spellbound and watched the Senate proceedings wondering when the feminist smoking gun would be produced and show the nation the alleged damaged goods that then President Bush had nominated to the nation's highest court. The minority community leaders like Rev. Jesse Jackson were in lock step with the National Organization of Women (NOW) and their defense of Anita Hill, who had been allegedly sexually harassed by Thomas. Of course Rev. Jackson is quite familiar with sexual harassment, but the nation would not know about his sexual shenanigans until later in the next administration.
Liberals wanted their version of a Supreme Court justice and it was not supposed to be Clarence Thomas. After all he did not articulate their liberal-speak. He had supposedly abandoned his "Democratic roots." He was not supposedly of the same stripe as the recently deceased Justice Thurgood Marshall -- who had almost single handedly won the historic 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case which struck down the Separate but Equal doctrine that had plagued Black America for generations.
What was Thomas thinking? And, more importantly, what President George H. W. Bush was thinking was that in America there is more than one type of American and certainly more than one type of black American. Could it be conceivable that by naming a black conservative to the bench the president was in fact producing the exact result that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of when he was fighting for a melting pot that reflected all Americans of every type, complexion, and political philosophy? Or were the liberals who were trying to engineer Judge Clarence Thomas' personal destruction only interested in the highlights from King's speech...sort of the Cliff Notes version?
Instead this non-Democrat who had seemingly "forgotten his roots," this conservative black judge, who was so bold as to believe that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted and not used as a legislative football, would take a seat away from a "liberal" nominee! ...How awful indeed.
Liberals wanted a nominee that all the current polls would decide -- a poll of the people with NOW standing on the sidelines with ultimate veto power.
The president ignored the polls. Even upon naming Clarence Thomas, many liberals and feminists wailed and even likened him to the second coming of the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan or at least his illegitimate child. They clearly felt that he would turn back the clock on all civil rights decisions and close out the century and ring in the new one with an era of repressive segregationist and sexist legal tyranny.
Of course it did not occur. But there was a direct benefit from Justice Clarence Thomas' Senate torture chamber treatment. It gave birth to a phrase that has been used in the media ever since Thomas himself described the confirmation proceedings as an "electronic lynching". When he used the "lynch" word, most black Americans understood perfectly what he meant. Many Americans began to understand that perhaps these liberals and women's rights groups that were so determined to "electronically lynch" him were going overboard in their fervent misguided demonizing zeal.
After that point America began to listen carefully to the confirmation hearing testimony and examined the real reason for the tirades. It soon became clear...His only major faux pas was that he was a dreaded "Conservative Black."
He was not shy about saying who he was. Justice Thomas' confirmation crucifixion was actually the beginning of a new conservative movement in urban America. This new movement helped hundreds of Americans and soon thousands to come to understand that liberals and liberal organizations in America could no longer think that they could speak for all black people. Liberal organizations like the National Organization of Women could no longer bully women conservatives into believing that their interests were the interests of all women.
Now, with another key seat up for grabs on the U.S. Supreme Court, another President Bush has made a selection that will rile up the liberals and they will try to recruit the minority community leaders to just come along and say what they are told to say and to believe what they are told to believe.
But this time there will be no electronic lynching going on in the Senate confirmation hearing. There are thousands of urban men and women who are conservative, and who know the truth and can weigh and evaluate as well as discern the liberal hysteria sell job being sold as fact. The liberals' sharpened knives will not work on this nominee She is not going to be a push over. President Bush described her as "a pit bull in size 6 shoes."
She's tough and if minorities feel that she is oblivious to the concerns and challenges that exist within urban communities, they should look at the facts. According to a recent USA Today article Miers supported a plan to increase minority representation on Dallas City Council. John Wiley Price, an African-American activist and member of the Dallas County Commissioners Court, recalled that Miers, while on the Council, was a firm supporter of a federal judge's plan to redistrict council elections to increase minority representation.
But she did not stop there. Miers pressed for minority inclusion in the Texas State Bar. In fact in 1992 she advocated for more representation of women and minorities.
I think Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson will be hard pressed to marginalize Miers as uncaring of minorities when they are faced with the fact that she started a program to raise funds for minority students and also worked to help the poor obtain legal services. Does that sound uncaring? It is exactly the type of community service and diversity that liberals like Rev. Jackson has been clamoring about. As a matter of fact, Miers helped launch a Free Legal Services Program that began as three clinics and have now grown to nine clinics.
She is not disconnected. She is connected to America. She, like Thomas, believes in the Constitution as the framers designed it. Sorry NOW and all the liberals who would want to engage in another feeding frenzy -- there's nothing to feed on. She's solid as a rock and tough as nails and thanks to Justice Clarence Thomas, there are a lot of conservative minorities who are standing ready if needed in the Calvary.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist to the Detroit News. He is also the daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385).
Clarence Thomas used the phrase "high tech lynching". You'd think this guy would have done his homework. Even to this day I remember him saying it.
I well remember the Clarence Thomas inquisition, and Anita Hill's testimony. I called her Anita Shill back then, because that's what she was for the opposition to Justice Thomas, with her charges of sexual harrassment, yet she didn't think it important enough at the time to report him, and she certainly could have.
Exactly! I kept wondering if he was referring to something new that Justice Thomas had said. But no, he has merely misrepresented the original and powerful phrase used by Clarence.
Nobody remembers this now, but the Clarence Thomas hearings were Arlen Specter's finest moment in the Senate. He caught Anita Hill perjuring herself and nailed her on it.
Specter is easy to dislike, but he, more than any other Senator, was responsible for Thomas's successful confirmation.
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