What were the lessons learned from Anita Hill with regards to Kavanaugh?

I still remember the moment of the “pubic hair on my coke.”

KAVANAUGH: Purely partisan politics?

As in listening to a radio broadcast of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, when his former colleague Anita Hill recalled a moment of the two of them together when Thomas made his little quip to her.

MY COLLEAGUES AND I couldn’t quite believe anybody could be that lame in thinking such a line would be humorous. Or that Thomas could actually think that such talk would make him appealing to women.

But it really happened, the Senate eventually confirmed Thomas to his appointment that he still holds nearly 30 years later, and I’m sure there are political people out there who think the lesson learned from the whole “Thomas affair” is that such allegations are outlandish and best ignored.

Because, hey, we’ve had a misogynistic sort on the Supreme Court for all these years now, and it hasn’t brought an end to the Republic. Similar to how I’m sure they’re also thinking that it doesn’t matter what President Donald Trump (the man who supposedly thinks the way to appeal to women is to “grab ‘em by the pussy”) may have done in his life.

It only matters when Bill Clinton does it, because he has partisan leanings they are directly opposed to. Taking him down politically is the whole purpose, along with destroying anybody who might be remotely like him in any way.

GORSUCH: Does he need Trump allies on ct?

ALL THESE THOUGHTS have been popping into my head a lot with the hearings taking place concerning the political fate of Brett Kavanaugh. He’s the man whom Trump wants to put on the Supreme Court of the United States – in large part because of a belief he’ll shift the partisan leanings of the court sufficiently enough that the ideologues can start making good on their more-than-four-decade-old desire to do away with the 1973 ruling that made abortion a legitimate medical procedure.

So to try to take him down, we’ve learned about the woman who says that back when she was 17 (and Kavanaugh also was a teenager), he tried to molest her. She had to fight him off.

As if that isn’t sufficient, we’re now learning of another woman who remembers back to her freshman year of college in the mid-1980s when she says fellow student Kavanaugh used a college party to expose himself and try to get her to touch his genitals.

GARLAND: Some still bitter he's not on ct?

We actually have some people making the claim of, “How many women have to come forth before we see Trump’s appointee as unfit for such a position?”

ALTHOUGH I ALSO don’t doubt that Trump-types will never make such an concession – and not only because they just don’t care what these women say Kavanaugh did to them.

It’s all about the fact that Trump himself wants to be able to reform the Supreme Court in his own image, and needs as many people of his partisan persuasion to be appointed to the high court.

He has the one appointment he got because the Senate successfully managed to keep former President Barack Obama from filling the vacancy caused by the death of Antonin Scalia – an act that some find disgraceful. Although I’m sure the ideologues think the real disgrace is that Obama got to make two other appointments – and we now have Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in life-time legal posts.

Now, the conservative strategy is to ensure that Sotomayor and Kagan ultimately become isolated – and we get a whole slew of Supreme Court rulings of the future that come down to 7-2 votes. Which could happen if Trump is the one who gets to pick a replacement someday for 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

WHILE THE OPPOSITION will do what it can to thwart Kavanaugh – and theoretically any other opening there might be on the Supreme Court. Perhaps some think they can literally take back the high court seat they want to believe should be held by Merrick Garland (the man Obama tried to pick for the court, but couldn’t).

THOMAS: Does he need companion?

The shame of all this is that the women themselves become a sideshow. The reality of what happened to them all those years ago becomes irrelevant – to the point where back in 2010, Virginia Thomas (Clarence’s spouse) had the nerve to publicly demand that Hill apologize for letting the world know about his awkward-bordering-on-tacky sense of humor

Are we going to get similar demands in the future of the women who now are coming forth to tell their stories of back when they knew Brett Kavanaugh?

While it may be true that his behavior as a young man wasn’t much different from other males, it really doesn’t excuse him. And the fact that we already have Thomas on the high court doesn’t mean we need to have another boor to keep him company!

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Cain headed on path toward political immortality, if not electoral victory

CAIN: Clarence, Jr.?

With the women coming out of the woodwork to say that business executive-turned-presidential dreamer Herman Cain sexually harassed them, political pundits are also cropping up to compare him to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

I’ll be the first to admit that my initial reaction to learning that a woman said Cain treated her inappropriately because of her gender made me recall the days of two decades ago when Thomas faced the accusations of Anita Hill, who claimed he behaved crudely (the Coca-Cola can?) in her presence.

IT WAS JUST a few weeks ago that The Nation gave us a commentary, with an unnamed silhouette on the cover and the headline, “We STILL Believe Her.”

They didn’t have to name Hill. We knew who they were referring to. This still lingers in our national memory, and likely will not go away.

Which means that Cain may wind up with the same fate. He has risen above the pack in ways that will ensure he will be remembered – regardless of whether he actually wins the GOP presidential nomination for the 2012 electoral cycle.

What always struck me about the whole Clarence Thomas affair was the degree to which the conservative ideologues took the whole issue seriously, and in fact continue to hold a grudge whenever the issue comes up.

I KEEP WANTING to shout to these people, “You won, quit whining.”

Because it is true. Clarence Thomas got confirmed by the Senate as a Supreme Court justice, despite the allegations that indicated he personally was a boor and not exactly of the temperament that we’d like to think is maintained by our nation’s high court.

Yet it is the conservative ideologues who continue to bear a grudge. They don’t want to forget the attack, which ultimately was unsuccessful. In short, they’re bad winners.

They’re even worse losers – as we have seen by the way they conducted themselves during the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The people who are screaming the loudest now about Cain being mistreated will be the ones who a year from now will be leading the “Impeachment!” attack against Obama – should he manage to prevail in next year’s election cycle (which is a very real possibility so long as the ideologues prop up extremists such as Cain as their presidential hopeful).

WHICH MEANS I fully expect the ideologues to go out of their way to prop up Cain’s image – no matter how many attacks he sustains in coming months. Even long after this campaign cycle is over, we’re going to hear trash talk from the ideologues about the people who would dare to criticize Cain.

Heck, a part of me views pundit Ann Coulter’s recent comments about the difference between “good blacks” (like Cain) and the kind of African-American people who would deign to side with less-conservative movements than hers as being just the beginning of such rancid rhetoric.

Now I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what to think of the women who have come forth against Cain. I’m not sure if he did or didn’t act like a crude twit towards these ladies, and I haven’t really gone out of my way to check into their claims to see if they’re credible.

Perhaps it is because I realize it doesn’t matter much if they’re credible.

FOR THE CONSERVATIVE ideologues have already made up their minds. They are willing to overlook the great moral flaws of any individual who is willing to put the “right” letter (“R,” not “D”) after their names and vote the “proper” (claiming morals, even though they usually stand for intrusion into peoples’ personal business) way on various issues confronting our society. They are going to take up the “Cain Crusade” and will try to elevate him into some tragic example of a great figure who was “taken down” by those liberal freaks who can’t see the world in their own narrow view.

Of course, the fact that such views (anybody who thinks it is a “joke” to electrify the U.S./Mexico border is a nitwit worthy of our derision) put him outside the real mainstream of our society means he’s not about to win the GOP presidential nomination. The fact that he still gains significant support in certain polls shows how out-of-touch many of those GOP-leaning voters are.

But Cain has gained a certain sense of immortality. I don’t know if The Nation will be doing some sort of graphic on their website (or whatever technology is in use) to say two decades from now we believe the women who criticize Cain.

But he definitely has made himself more significant than, say, Michele Bachmann. Does anyone remember that there was a brief moment a couple of months ago when her campaign was taken seriously?

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