Betty Winston Bayé: After 20 Years, A Phone Call - But The Wrong One.

After 20 years, a phone call - but the wrong one
By Betty Winston Bayé

You might think that with the mid-term elections so close at hand that a front line tea party activist like Virginia “Ginni” Thomas would have her hands full leaning on rich anonymous donors to get her ideological soulmates elected to Congress.

But that's apparently not the case. On a recent Saturday, at 7:31 a.m., perhaps while her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was still asleep or was out fetching the newspaper or walking the dog, Ginni Thomas left a message on Anita Hill's phone at Brandeis University. It said, in part, “Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach out across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometimes and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. … And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us to understand why you did what you did. OK. Have a nice day.”

Have a nice day? The call was bizarre and out of the blue — coming nearly 20 years after Hill went public and charged that her former boss had sexually harassed her, thus casting doubt on Thomas' fitness to be confirmed by the Senate to sit on the highest court in the land. Initially, Hill believed the call was a hoax. But after several days, she alerted campus police and asked them to alert the FBI, after which Ginni Thomas acknowledged that she had indeed placed the call.

Hill, maintaining the same calm demeanor she exhibited 20 years ago when being ruthlessly grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee, was actually kind to Ginni Thomas. She said, “I appreciate that no offense was intended, but she can't ask me for an apology without suggesting that I did something wrong, and that is offensive.”

“Cat fight! Cat fight!” is how some may categorize this strange episode. But any woman who has ever received such a call — or who, in a fit of rage or insecurity, has ever placed such a call — is bound to wonder what led up to someone as politically astute as Ginni Thomas making such an impolitic call, and especially to a lawyering woman.

Was there a fight in the Thomas household the night before? Did Justice Thomas mumble Hill's name in his sleep? Or is this just a case of Ginni Thomas, after 20 years, still nursing a grudge — or possibly, still wondering somewhere deep in her soul if Anita Hill told the truth about her man? If so, an argument can be made that Ginni Thomas is a sore winner. She does after all have the man, and her man has the job.

Justice Thomas has always denied Hill's assertions that he sexually harassed her and was into porn and dirty sex talk. In fact, Thomas played the racial trump card when he insisted he was the victim of a “high tech lynching.” But from a woman's perspective, one could argue that it was Hill who got lynched by a pack of white men in the Senate, and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, most of all. A Republican back then, Specter, as they say, ripped into Hill with his implications that Hill was a delusional bitch, a woman scorned, and someone who was so unappealing physically and otherwise that she could only fantasize that such a man as Clarence Thomas would waste time talking dirty to her, showing her pornography or asking her out for a date. Compare Anita Hill to the lovely Ginni Thomas, who sat stoically behind her man during the confirmation hearings, and who, Specter strongly implied, would ever choose Hill?

Clarence Thomas was entitled to his defense and his defenders, but a lot of women, progressive and conservative, were appalled and never forgave Specter — not for going after Hill, but for doing it in the fashion that he did. A lot of women, me among them, are delighted that Specter, who switched parties, was defeated in the Democratic primary this spring.

Personally, I believed Hill and I believe that Clarence Thomas is what he is. All I need to know about Thomas, I gather from his votes on the high court, from what he's said and written about himself over the years, and what others say and write about him. I'm thinking that after 20 years, if anybody owes Anita Hill a call, it's not Ginni Thomas, but Clarence Thomas.

Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.

Editor's comment: Yes the call was C-R-E-E-P-Y, but then halloween is around the corner. ;-)