RE: Credo’s Call for Justice Thomas’s Confession

Justice Thomas,

Credo’s call for you to admit that Anita Hill was telling the truth at your confirmation hearing is as silly as your wife attempting to further her own political, tea-party aspirations by impugning Ms. Hill’s veracity with a back-handed olive branch to “bury the hatchet” (in Ms. Hill’s back, so to speak). If you did the things alleged by Ms. Hill, which allegations, despite the committee’s symbolic lynching—not of you, but of Ms. Hill—seemed then and now to have the weight of truth and significant corroborative evidence, we cannot expect you to admit as much. It is, to quote a well-worn but apt cliché, water under the bridge.

The media is in a quandary as to why your wife would do such a thing as leave a disingenuous and spitefully-veiled message to Anita Hill. Perhaps, if you were not a party to her action, her motivation is a mystery to you as well.

I do not find it to be all that mysterious; in fact, I find your wife’s wording to be extremely revealing. She did not say, “what you did to my husband”; she said, “what you did with my husband.” It seems a clear admission, whether conscious or Freudian, of the truth of Ms. Hill’s allegations. Nor does it ring of righteous indignation, but rather of suspicion and jealousy of her husband’s relationship with Ms. Hill. Whether you were privy to her phone message or not, it should give you some pause.

Greater pause, however, should come from the recent machinations of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Your reputation at the hands of Ms. Hill was somewhat sullied, but that pales in comparison to the ruination of your reputation through your work on the Supreme Court—”The Justice who never asks questions,” “Scalia lite,” “Lockstep Ideologue”—these assessments of your performance indicate the state of your reputation, and they have nothing to do with sexual peccadilloes.

I encourage you to embrace my motto: “The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!”

Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia, Justice Roberts—Where would we be if you lifetime-serving, partisan-appointed, Supreme Court Justices followed that simple rule? We would not be in the throes of an unparalleled political and social meltdown brought about by your championing of corporate greed over the interests of the people and their institutions.

Corruption breeds corruption. You are supposed to be the arbiters of equal justice—the protectors of the minority from the tyranny of the majority—the last bastion of intellectual integrity and moral courage when fear and confusion have overwhelmed the populace, corruption has conquered congress, and demagoguery has dominated political discourse. Sadly, at present, no one would accuse the current court of being any of those things. Nevertheless, you have the power to change that. Had hypocrisy been banished from the court, Bush v. Gore could have never been handed down; Citizen’s United could have never been handed down.

I encourage both sides, your wife’s tea-party reactionaries and Credo’s liberal muck-rakers, to forget Anita Hill. Leave her to history. Much more importantly, let us turn our attention to ridding this country, including the highest court in the land, of flagrant hypocrisy, and we will begin the long and arduous work of restoring America.

To begin the quest to rid ourselves of hypocrisy, I quote the central message of the powerful and spiritual song, “Let There Be Peace on Earth” :

“Let it begin with Me!”

“The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!”

Tim McMullen