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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Supreme
Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas by Kevin Merida and
Michael Fletcher |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Conflicted Kevin
Merida and Michael Fletcher collaborated on an intriguing book titled, Supreme
Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. Readers won’t learn much
about Thomas’ jurisprudence in this book but will come away with an
interesting portrait of his character and attitude. By the last page, I realized
that I have not yet come across or read about such a complex and conflicted
person. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 9, “The Aftermath:
Thomas’s Love Affair with the Right,” pp. 210-215: Thomas
arrived at the Supreme Court badly bruised and unsure of himself. He was
exhausted, he told his clerks, unable to focus. “Getting the heck beaten out
of you,” he later recounted, “is quite distracting.” Instead of having a
chance to “dust yourself off,” as Thomas clerk Chris Landau put it, “you’re
facing one of the toughest jobs in the country as your prize.” The
awkward ceremonies that surrounded his confirmation only heightened the
unease. First, there had been the lavish White House celebration of Thomas to
which three hundred guests were invited, including Thomas’s family and friends
from Georgia and celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone and baseball great
Reggie Jackson. The day before the South Lawn event was to take place, Chief
Justice William Rehnquist’s wife, The
White House had been in a difficult spot. It didn’t want to offend Rehnquist
and his colleagues, but most of the people closest to Thomas were already in
town and poised to celebrate after such a difficult battle. For Thomas
himself, the situation was agonizing. There also was a political reason to
proceed quickly: Who knew how many journalists and activists on the left were
still pursuing tips and rumors about the justice-in-waiting? White House
advisers didn’t want to take any chances that the confirmation might unravel
with new revelations before Thomas could actually take his seat on the bench. On
October 18, 1991, the White House “swearing in,” as the South Lawn gala was
billed, had all the trappings of an official court induction. Thomas placed
his hand on a Bible as the president looked on and Justice Byron White
presided. Most of the guests did not know that this so-called swearing in
would not be the one that counted. It was left to White, filling in for
Rehnquist, to set the record straight with a pointed reference to the fact
that Thomas would become the 106th justice only when he took the judicial oath. The
court’s term already had begun, and Thomas recognized he was behind. He was
eager to get sworn in. Hastily arranged at Thomas’s request, the judicial
oath was administered privately at 12:05 p.m. on October 23, 1991, in
Rehnquist’s office. Only Thomas’s wife, Virginia, and Senator Danforth
attended. The other justices didn’t learn they officially had a new colleague
until later that afternoon when Rehnquist sent them a terse one-paragraph
memo. “I administered the oath at this time so that Justice Thomas could
begin his duties and get his clerks and staff on board,” the chief wrote. “A
public investiture will still take place on November 1, as previously planned.” Rehnquist,
a Wisconsin native known for his devotion to the Green Bay Packers and his
enjoyment of the game charades, was not in a festive mood. He was still
mourning his wife of thirty-eight years and not keeping regular office hours.
Administering the oath ahead of schedule had been a favor to Thomas, and he
made that clear. This
was not a comfortable time for Thomas, whose insecurities now included how he
would be viewed by his fellow justices. “You are here now,” one of them
assured him, “and what you do here is all that matters.” But convincing
himself was more difficult. He paid the requisite courtesy visits to his
colleagues’ chambers, happy to accept whatever advice was offered. Lewis F.
Powell Jr., who had retired, noted that he and Thomas were two of the few
Southerners to make it onto the high court this century. “You will not be surprised
to find that the work of a justice is demanding,” Powell wrote to Thomas in a
follow-up letter, “and probably will require a good deal of homework as well
as on weekends.” Thomas,
who had gotten a late start on the bench, worked tirelessly trying to prove
himself, to the point that he was sick for two months at the end of his first
term. “When I arrived, I had no staff and no experience with the court
processes,” he later explained. “It was an uphill battle.” On his first day
at work, he was staked out by camera crews. But because he was driving a 1985
Chevy Celebrity with a missing hubcap, he managed not to draw attention to
himself. One cameraman, however, spotted Thomas pulling away from the
court’s parking garage and chased his car down the street. “On your first
day, you show up and you know nothing,” Thomas observed. “Where do you get
coffee? Where are the pencils? How do I get along with the other judges?” There
was no way to know what the justices were really thinking about him. They had
watched the hearings like the rest of What
caught Harry A. Blackmun’s eye was Thomas’s responses to questions about Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling
legalizing abortion. Thomas had said he could not “remember personally engaging”
in discussions of the case and stated flatly to Senator Patrick J. Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont: “If you are asking me whether or not I have ever debated
the contents of it, the answer to that is no, Senator.” Blackmun had written
the Roe opinion and was puzzled by
Thomas’s answers. Wasn’t Thomas a Whether
Thomas just used cleverly crafted language to evade his inquisitors or
deliberately lied about his views of the case remains a matter of contention
among court observers, legal scholars, and advocacy groups. Blackmun’s
interest in Thomas’s confirmation process, however, wasn’t confined to Roe v. Wade, as his papers housed at
the Library of Congress indicate. He had a habit of collecting all manner of
minutiae related to his colleagues—cards, notes, newspaper and magazine
clippings. It’s instructive that the articles and cartoons Blackmun chose to
keep on Thomas mostly relate to the confirmation ordeal, and hardly any of
them are flattering. An editorial cartoon from the Orlando Sentinel, for example, pictures the nine justices with
the script: “Next on the agenda is the issue of sexual harassment. Lucky for
us, we have a resident expert.” Combating
this notion that Thomas was a sexual harasser who had beaten the rap became a
priority of Thomas’s friends. No one was more dedicated to rebuilding
Thomas’s image than his wife. Thomas had barely unpacked his boxes at the
court when the November 11 issue of People
hit the stands, the cover featuring a smiling couple embracing.
“Exclusive,” the cover screamed. “Virginia Thomas Tells Her Story. ‘How We
Survived.’” The entire article, based on a three-hour interview by
correspondent Jane Sims Podesta, was written in the first-person voice of
Ginni Thomas. In it, she divulged her own episode of workplace harassment
before she met Clarence—”it was physical”—and how Clarence, upon finding out
later, implored her to use “the workplace system to alert management to the
problem.” This was meant to underscore that Thomas was not the type to
tolerate sexual harassment. “He gave me the courage to go forward.” As for
Anita Hill, Ginni likened her to the character in the movie Fatal Attraction, “or in her case,
what I call the fatal assistant. In my heart, I always believed she was
probably someone in love with my husband and never got what she wanted.” It
was an extraordinary piece that revealed intimate details of the “hell” the
couple went through, as Ginni described the confirmation process, augmented
by photos of them drinking coffee in their kitchen and snuggling on a sofa
reading the Bible. This
was not the kind of publicity Supreme Court justices normally sought, and it
seemed an odd way for a new justice to begin his tenure. But the People cover story may have said as
much about Ginni as it did about Thomas. Asked by Thomas’s handlers to remain
silent during the hearings, she would now become his chief protector,
seemingly even more deeply mistrustful of the media and those who differed
ideologically than even Thomas himself. She dialed in to radio talk shows to
defend her husband. And not even the passage of time seemed to ease the
impact of the confirmation process on her psyche. Washington
Post reporter
Tom Jackman was surprised by a phone call he got on November 8, 1999, the day
an article he wrote about a Jackman
remembers picking up the phone that November day and hearing a woman on the
line weeping The article, she said, reminded her of the ordeal she and her
husband had been through. She
was obviously distraught. “My husband’s name is Clarence Thomas,” she said. I read half of Supreme
Discomfort before reading Thomas’ autobiography, My
Grandfather’s Son. Then, I completed Supreme
Discomfort. Between these two books, the complexity and conflicted person
who is Clarence Thomas becomes revealed to the wonderment of readers. I
recommend both. Steve
Hopkins, March 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the April 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Supreme Discomfort.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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