"The full story of his confirmation thus raise questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning."
—Strange Justice
Who has two thumbs, at least used to have a bizarre fixation on some weird-ass porn, a wife with ties to domestic terrorists, a slew of ethical problems that should have him resigning (or at least recusing), and a seat on the Supreme Court?
Hint: he also has a proclivity for leaving pubes on cans of Coke.
If you guessed Clarence Thomas, spot on!
Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson wrote Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas way back in 1994—thirty years ago!—but it's still relevant today, despite everything that has happened. Sometimes, seeing the path a person's life has taken up to a point is a pretty solid indicator of how they will continue going forward. Spoiler alert: we know less about his porn habits, but he's certainly become a much more problematic figure on the Supreme Court.
This book is also heavily drawn on in the Behind the Bastards podcast episode about Thomas; while this is a good episode, I can't say I'm huge on the series. Certainly some good, unique source material is used though, as The Prisoner in His Palace. about Saddam Hussein is another book I picked up after hearing about it on there and, like this one, both are odd readings, but quite fascinating.
Now, onto Clarence Thomas, the man who disrespects Thurgood Marshall's legacy with every second he spends on SCOTUS. Thomas' appointment by George HW Bush was preceded by the appointment of David Souter—in 2024, we know a thing or two about contentious Supreme Court placements; Souter was not this, making him a disappointment to more ideological conservatives.
Next time around, Bush Sr. promised, he would appoint someone more pleasing to his segment of the party. Enter Clarence Thomas.
By this point in his life and career, Thomas has decided conservatives are on the ascendancy and the smart money is hitching his wagon to theirs.
This attitude is important. During at least some of his public speeches, Thomas has spoken to the importance of his grandfather—his grandfather who wanted him to go get educated, return to Pin Point, Georgia, and act in a manner that would help his own community. Thomas did not do this and, instead, he has taken advantage of the old man's tongue being forever silenced in order to rewrite his memory and excuse himself for behavior that likely has the man rolling in his grave.
His reliance on his grandfather, the man he cites as the most influential in his life, was due to the absence of his own father and his ensuing poverty-stricken upbringing—which improved, but still did not near comfort with Anderson. Despite Anderson being more well-off than his birth mother, he lived in a rather miserly way—as accounts of driving a truck without a heater on frozen winter days attest to.
As Mayers and Abramson point out, Thomas' later focus on traditional conservative family values come across as more wishful than based in reality. Like the shittiness of being dragged out into a beaten-to-hell, uncomfortable work truck or the lack of a family that showed some of those traditional, warm loving traits imagined in an ideal family, these are troublesome experiences I can't help but feel a degree of understanding and empathy for when I think of a young Thomas.
This isn't to say Myers Anderson, his grandfather, was a warm, fuzzy kind of guy. The conditions Clarence and his brother grew up in would be considered abusive by today's standards, quite possibly even by the standards of his time, with the children having to endure hard labor, beatings, and being denied affection. Anderson did support the local NAACP and building Civil Rights Movement, so I guess he's got that going for him, but it's the kind of upbringing that would be haunting and difficult to escape.
Odd that such a man would become the most influential in Thomas' life, per him, but given how Anderson's memory has been rewritten post-mortem, it's also a bit of a reminder of, as Jim Morrison put it, how death makes "angels of us all." I have some thoughts about how people rewrite their memories of the dead after losing the person and how much someone keeps their memories faithful as opposed to self-serving, but those are thoughts for another day.
During his academic years, Thomas excelled—though he also dabbled into some pretty hardcore racial ideology. At one early point, he went into a seminary, but after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing an ensuing remark made by a white classmate in support of genocide against Black people, Thomas was understandably turned off and decided to leave.
Apparently, he was borderline obsessed with The Autobiography of Malcolm X after—while a valuable read, this is definitely one of those books that would make me raise an eyebrow if someone told me they had read it repeatedly or commonly referenced it, though I guess given my own oddball comparative religion shelf, I'm not in much of a place to judge.
It is also worth noting that thanks to the trailblazing work of those who had come before, like Thurgood Marshall, Thomas was able to benefit from colleges being forced to open admissions to all races. This is a good thing.
Thomas has a very complex relationship with affirmative action and the like, however: despite benefiting in order to get into college, he was stung by the assumption by many white classmates that he was only there due to lower academic standards for Black students. This was not true, notably, as he had excelled in academic work, but if racists were smarter, they wouldn't be racist so unfortunately, this was the kind of shit Thomas had to deal with. It also brought up bitter childhood memories—Gullah, a sub-dialect of Creole was his first language, and he was mocked for it as an adolescent.
He was sensitive and hyperaware of being highlighted as different, or so it would seem: this matches up. His parents were more or less absent, his grandfather believed in discipline and beatings but not praise and affection, and even at school where he excelled, he was mocked for his manner of speaking, his intelligence was shrugged off, and he faced routine discrimination and insults for his skin color—and the discrimination he faced wasn't just from white students. Thomas is particularly dark-skinned and he was nicknamed ABC by other Black children—for "America's Blackest Child."
Even on the Supreme Court, he is known for being taciturn and despite his (kooky) wife's political activities, the man himself seems somewhat reclusive. To me, it all makes sense: from childhood and even up to this day, he has felt alone and attention is a negative.
Unlike most growing up, he did not learn good and bad attention, for Thomas attention generally meant punishment or mockery and scorn. It makes sense this would develop, and it raises the question of whether the current methods of calling out his bullshit have any chance of getting through to him, such as when he's petitioned to recuse, or if this sort of endeavor just redoubles his resolve.
Anyway, I digress: Thomas didn't blame his white classmates as much as the system of the expanded civil rights movement, including the affirmative action that had helped him. This would help explain his dabbling with Black separatism, at least for a time, in college, as well. More directly, it helps to explain why we have seen him routinely attack affirmative action and civil rights laws during his tenure on the court.
Post-college, Thomas, if memory serves, is offered a job in his old hometown—which would have been, likely, what his grandfather desired as well as the 'giving back' bit he expected from Thomas in exchange for paying for his college, but no dice.
Instead, we discover that Thomas is much more opportunistic than that, which would ultimately lead to him selling out his conscience to the highest bidder—his own inconsistent application of principles on the Supreme Court in decisions depending on whether conservatives will benefit is a great testament to that. It also is indicated by the, loosely paraphrased, quote about Thomas saying he intended to hitch himself to conservatives as he thought this was the more profitable avenue in life.
Personal gratification for Thomas takes precedence over ideological consistency or working to create fair, equitable chances for the downtrodden. Just look at Thomas' relationship with his sugar daddy and Hitler fan Harlan Crow.
Anyway, Thomas ends up working for Jack Danforth, a republican Attorney General from Missouri and this is when he begins to work his way up into the Reagan administration, tapping into his credentials as a poor Black conservative so he could sell destructive policies more palatably to the poor. In 1989, he was appointed to a Court of Appeals, and a few years later, after Thurgood Marshall announced his resignation, he was appointed to replace him.
Notice anything of significance missing? If you guessed actual legal experience that would qualify him for the highest court in the land, good guess!
Earlier in the book, Marshall's response to finding out who was appointed to succeed him is described:
"A reporter asked whether he thought Bush had an obligation to appoint another minority justice in his place. 'I don't think that should be a ploy... an excuse...' ... 'An excuse for what?' Marshall's acid response left no room for misunderstanding. Without ever uttering a name, the justice explained, 'Doing wrong. I mean for picking the wrong kind of Negro... My dad told me way back... that there's no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They'll both bite.'"
Looking at Thomas' service on the court, hard not to see what Marshall meant and agree. Thomas is a strange person, certainly a strange justice, and the kind of guy I have to say: doesn't belong near the amount of power he has.
This is particularly concerning because of the decisions he's made over the years as well as the quote at the beginning about the problems with truth being a sacrifice on the road to victory. From decisions that have undermined fundamental civil rights to a wife who was involved with supporting the January Sixth organizers that went on to commit a domestic terrorist attack on the nation's Capitol, to even the lies that got him his place on the Supreme Court, Thomas' willingness to disregard the truth in a scorched earth approach where victory is all that matters is particularly relevant considering the damage we're seeing from lies being spread.
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth laces up its shoes," and just look at this week: first we get conspiracies from republicans about legal Haitian immigrants grilling up dogs and cats. Then the city comes out and confirms it is not true. Then the claim gets repeated by the former president. Threats and harassment start coming. The vice presidential nominee for republicans adds that immigrants are spreading HIV. Threats and harassment build along with claims the US is going to start building camps.
And now schools are being shut down and evacuated in that area due to threats, which is baffling and horrifying, but thankfully it's the weekend so schools are closed so ta day or two of peac—nope, the hate rhetoric about Haitians is still going on and now hospitals are getting bomb threats and both the republican contender for president and vice president refuse to say a word to calm down their frenzied, rabid base.
I guess, in typical fashion, Donald's made such a shitshow of this week that almost everyone has forgotten about his shitshow at Arlington National Cemetery with his campaign member getting into a scuffle (legally read: assaulting) a military member.
The truth matters. Doubling down on lies and allowing worse matters.
Whether it be the horrors of the bigotry and hatred being churned up in Springfield, the horrors of a party that seems to have embraced the nazi platform, the horrors of the January Sixth domestic terrorist attack, or the horrors of knowing there's a Supreme Court justice whose wife helped encourage and organize that, with his silent complicity and apparently more than silence since he has "directed" defense for Trump's lawyers—as a country we're at a point where we can't keep turning. a blind eye and burying our heads in the sand to the awful things going on around us.
Especially in an election year where we can make our opinions known at the ballot box to ensure there aren't any more idiotic presidential appointments to SCOTUS—between Thomas, Alito, and the Trump trio, we've already got the damn thing stacked with Federalist Society picks.
I mean, come on, a libertarian think tank in 2024 helping to guide our country's judicial philosophy? It's a bit like trying to dig up some milk from the Great Depression for my breakfast cereal. It ain't going down well and it's gonna cause some serious internal problems.
—
—Even Scalia, himself notoriously far to the right, once remarked of Thomas, I believe per The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin (yes, the guy who cranked one out during a Zoom meeting with the New Yorker), "Look, I'm an originalist—but I'm not a nut!"
—The porn stuff doesn't seem so fun now, but Thomas had a weird fixation. Long Dong Silver in particular was one of his big things and so was kind of 'freak' porn I guess you might call it? The videos he watched, at least, seem to have followed this pattern of being more along morbid curiosity than 'I'm gonna go hit up Rosy Palm and her five sisters.' The centerfolds that he apparently used more or less like wallpaper, however, sound a little more disturbing and somewhere between juvenile and just unpleasant to the eye. Can't say I envy anyone who had to smell that place, probably lots of crispy socks there.
—The "who put this pubic hair on my Coke?" line was apparently a bit of a routine thing. I guess nothing gets the juices flowing like, uh, yeah, I can't even begin to wrap my head around that thought process for a pickup line. I just imagine a lot of women thinking, "Why is your dick near the soda can and what did you put in my drink while I wasn't looking?"
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