I agree that Kamala Harris could eventually be a good candidate outside California, but that she isn't really there yet, just as Stacey Abrams isn't really popular outside Georgia. I'm still leaning a little more toward Susan Rice, Amy Klobuchar, or maybe Melinda Gates. This week.
On a different angle relating to women and the coming campaign ...
Tonight PBS aired 'Created Equal,' a two-hour hagiography of US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The film portrays him as a heroic black martyr unjustly accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment during Senate confirmation hearings chaired by Joe Biden in 1991. It was made by a conservative associate of Steve Bannon and funded by conservative foundations.
It was ominous to me for the look it gives into the likely strategy of the pro-Trump far right in the election. They will once again use the religious anti-abortion movement to fill the courts with anti-Roe judges, reminding them to disguise their true opinions just as Thomas did.
As with all the divisive social media campaigns in 2016, they will seek to sow dissension, shift blame, and distract from the real issues of social justice. The more they can muddy the waters and make all the candidates look equally dubious, the more they hope to reduce voting by low-news, low-enthusiasm voters, especially those who might otherwise have turned out for the older black Democratic networks who came out so strongly for Biden in states like South Carolina, or the Latino networks that were mobilizing for Sanders.
By focusing on the single accusation against Biden by Tara Reade, they hope to divert attention away from Trump's own egregious misbehavior with women over decades. Then by focusing on Biden's role in the Clarence Thomas hearings vs. Anita Hill, they hope to give the impression that many old-school macho men are falsely accused, when they're 'only kidding around,' doing what all good old boys do.
Nauseating, but perhaps instructive, especially for observers who may not remember the details of US political battles of past decades.
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https://duckduckgo.com/html/&q=%22Clarence%20...
‘Created Equal’ Review: A Justice of Few Words Finds His Voice
Clarence Thomas is usually silent on the Supreme Court, but he had plenty to say to some friendly filmmakers ...
The producers, Michael Pack and Gina Cappo Pack, spent more than 30 hours interviewing Thomas and his wife, Virginia. Simply getting to watch Thomas expound on his thoughts for an extended length of time constitutes its own kind of novelty — a surprise that begins to wear off when it becomes clear that Thomas will mostly be rehashing the life story he already recounted in his 2007 memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”
That memoir was a fascinating document — shrewdly evasive yet occasionally revealing. This new film, by contrast, is about as revelatory as a campaign ad. The only talking heads are Thomas’s and Virginia’s; no other perspectives are offered. Funders for the project include conservative foundations ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/movies/cre...
Clarence Thomas speaks, but leaves many questions unanswered, in documentary ...
... “Created Equal” is, by design, a lopsided affair, with Pack ... clearly sympathetic to Thomas’s self-characterizations. Pack makes no attempt, for example, to present arguments that might counterbalance the claim of a lynching, however metaphorical. The comparison is drawn, somewhat absurdly, between Thomas’s treatment and the treatment of Tom Robinson, the character falsely accused — and convicted — of rape in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
There is no mention, for instance, of other women who might have corroborated Hill’s claims. ...
But “Created Equal” isn’t that kind of documentary. Rather, it’s meant as an opportunity for Thomas to have his full say, without challenge.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/...
How Clarence Thomas won me over — cinematically if not ideologically ...
Let it be noted: I am not the core audience for “Created Equal.” I abhor many of Thomas’s opinions on the court, particularly regarding reproductive rights, gun control, voting access and campaign finance. I was angry when it was revealed that the all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee led by Joe Biden in 1991 chose not to hear public testimony from witnesses who might have corroborated Hill’s story. I’ve been dubious of Thomas’s silence during Supreme Court proceedings, chalking it up to disinterest, insecurity or petulance. Like my colleague Michael O’Sullivan, who reviewed “Created Equal,” I wish the film had probed more deeply into the particulars of his intellectual evolution and challenged the most self-justifying aspects of his narrative. But, even with those misgivings, I enjoyed “Created Equal” ... Thomas’s life story is riveting, from its roots in the Gullah culture of coastal Georgia to intergenerational psychodrama worthy of the ancient Greeks. ... I thought back to “RBG,” the adoring documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg that became the hit of the summer in 2018, and 2014’s “Anita,” about Hill’s career-long fight for gender equity. If I could accept those uncritical films of two women I already admired, why shouldn’t I be able to find value in a similarly one-sided portrait of someone with whom I vehemently disagree?
Make no mistake: “Created Equal” is a one-sided portrait. The film’s director, Michael Pack, is a longtime conservative filmmaker, whose documentaries include “Hollywood vs. Religion” and “Inside the Republican Revolution,” and who led the right-leaning think tank the Claremont Institute for two years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl...
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas by Corey Robin review ...
An original assessment of a controversial figure ... who believes only money can free black America ...
Clarence Thomas, the longest serving justice of the supreme court, is Donald Trump’s favourite judge. He is also, along with Brett Kavanaugh, one of the few members of the court most of us have heard of – mainly due to the accusations brought against both men by women. ...
Thomas’s politics are based on his belief that the state can do nothing for African Americans other than perpetuate an underclass and that positive discrimination can only disable black men (there is no room in Thomas’s “dreamscape”, as Robin puts it, for black women). ...
Placing his judicial opinions at the centre of his black nationalism, and his black nationalism at the centre of his identity as a black man, Robin makes what he calls Thomas’s “invisible justice visible”, and in doing so he reveals the invisibility of Thomas himself. Robin takes for his epilogue the words of the unnamed black protagonist in Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” ...
Thomas described in his memoir, A Grandfather’s Son, how [his grandfather] “loomed over us like a dark behemoth, instilling fear and demanding absolute adherence to all his edicts, however arbitrary they might appear to be”. Accepting government aid, Anderson counselled, meant giving up your manhood and he would “prefer to starve to death first”. Depending on government handouts, he further explained, is “a more deceptive” form of slavery. The clarity of Jim Crow was preferable to the mush of liberalism, because hardship and struggle are better for the black man’s sense of self than the culture of dependence and condescension. From his grandfather, Thomas learned not only the value of self-sufficiency but the importance of money. It will be through capitalism rather than the ballot box, Thomas believes, that the black American will be freed. ...
Robin casts doubt on Thomas’s account to the Senate, and details his argument in a chapter explaining the judge’s views on black paternalism. Thomas regarded Hill’s accusations, which he denied, and the subsequent media attention as a form of lynching. ...
The attack on his masculine authority confirmed what he had long suspected about the disempowerment of black men. The father, Thomas says, is “the founder, the originator, the leader”, the “setter of standards”, the “setter of direction” and “the setter of rules”. Thomas considers the effects of being raised without a father figure, Robin argues, to be “devastating”. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/28...
The Supreme Court justice offers a monologue of self-justification in a talking-head memoir that's revealing even when it doesn't want to be. ...
Thomas, dressed in a red tie, light shirt, and blue jacket (yes, his entire outfit is color-coordinated to the American flag), his graying head looking impressive and nearly statue-ready as he gazes into the camera, presents himself as a regular guy, affably growly and folksy in a casual straight-shooter way. And while I have no doubt that’s an honest aspect of who he is, it’s also a shrewdly orchestrated tactic, a way of saying: Don’t try to look for my demons — you won’t find them. ...
Thomas tips his hand, though, when he recalls the moment that a senator asked if he’d ever had a private conversation about Roe v. Wade. At the time, he said no — and now, 30 years later, that “no” has just gotten louder. In hindsight, he’s incredulous that anyone would simply presume that he’d ever had a private discussion about Roe v. Wade. ...
In a Senate hearing, when you say that you’ve never had that kind of conversation, it’s in all likelihood political — a way, in this case, of keeping your beliefs about abortion ambiguous and close to the vest. A way of keeping them officially off the table. In “Created Equal,” however, Thomas is being sincere. He has always maintained that he finds it insulting — and racist — that people would expect an African-American citizen like himself to conform to a prescribed liberal ideology. ...
But talk about an argument that backfires! I’m not a federal judge ... , but I’ve had many conversations in my life about Roe v. Wade. Why wouldn’t I? I’m an ordinary politically inclined American. I mean, how could you not talk about it — ever? Abortion rights, no matter where you happen to stand on them, are a defining issue of our world. And the fact that Clarence Thomas was up for the role of Supreme Court justice, and that he still views it as A-okay to say that he’d never had a single discussion about Roe v. Wade, shows you where he’s coming from. He has opinions and convictions. But he is, in a word, incurious. He’s a go-along-to-get-along kind of guy, a man who worked hard and achieved something and enjoyed a steady rise without ever being driven to explore things. He was a bureaucrat. Which is fine; plenty of people are.
But not the people we expect to be on the Supreme Court. ...
Thomas also explains why, once he had ascended to the high court, he went through a period where, famously, he didn’t ask a single question at a public hearing for more than 10 years. His rationalization (“The referee in the game should not be a participant in the game”) is, more or less, nonsense. But his silence spoke volumes. It was his passive-aggressive way of turning inward, of treating an appointment he didn’t truly want with anger — of coasting as a form of rebellion. It was his way of pretending to be his own man, even as he continued to play the hallowed conservative role of good soldier.
https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/created...
Clarence Thomas Has His Own Constitution ...
By Jeffrey Toobin
June 30, 2016
This year’s Supreme Court term abounded in so much drama—the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the tie votes among the remaining [j]ustices, the liberal victories in the final days—that it was possible to miss a curious subplot: the full flowering of Justice Clarence Thomas’s judicial eccentricity.
Since his stormy confirmation, in 1991, Thomas has been the target of much unfair criticism. Some have argued, for example, that his years of silence during oral arguments meant he was not doing much work at all. In fact, Thomas is the most prolific opinion writer on the [c]ourt ...
The truth is that Thomas’s view of the Constitution is highly idiosyncratic. Indeed, one reason he wrote so many opinions (often solo dissents and concurrences) was that no other [j]ustice, including Scalia, shared his views. Thomas is a great deal more conservative than his colleagues, and arguably the most conservative [j]ustice to serve on the Supreme Court since the nineteen-thirties.
While some [j]ustices are famous for seeking consensus with their colleagues, Thomas seems to go out of his way to find reasons to disagree—often in the most provocative ways. ...
The abortion dissent explains why Thomas is so cut off on the [c]ourt, even from his fellow-conservatives. He doesn’t respect the [c]ourt’s precedents. He is so convinced of the wisdom of his approach to the law that he rejects practically the whole canon of constitutional law. It’s an act of startling self-confidence, but a deeply isolating one as well. Even his ideological allies, who mostly come out the same way on cases, recognize that they must dwell within the world that their colleagues and predecessors created. Thomas, in contrast, has his own constitutional law, which he alone honors and applies. ...
As for Thomas’s place on the [c]ourt, it’s difficult to improve on Scalia’s analysis, which I heard him give at a synagogue a decade ago. Scalia was asked about how his judicial philosophy differed from Thomas’s. “I’m an originalist,” Scalia said, “but I’m not a nut.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/...
