Sometimes you come across an article so serially erroneous and illogical that it's better to respond to each distortion point by point and forsake traditional composition. Maureen Dowd's bush-league vitriol toward Justice Clarence Thomas in her February 14 New York Times column is such an article. (In addition to being Black History Month, February seems to be Bash Clarence Thomas Month.)
"After 10 years in the shadows, after a mute decade on the bench, Clarence Thomas had a black-tie coming-out party last night."
So when I met Thomas at a publicized speech in 1999 and saw him speak on C-SPAN several times thereafter, this was all illusory. Does Dowd think I shook hands with a doppelganger that proceeded to impersonate his Honor at other venues?
As for the muteness dig, how does inquisitive frequency bear on juridical quality? This seems an extraneous stylistic preference; if anything, Thomas's relative silence confirms his deliberative maturity.
"The Garbo of the Supreme Court talked. And talked. And talked."
This reminds me of Ben Stiller's line in Your Friends and Neighbors: "I'm accused of speaking." (The context was a bit different.) Yes, Thomas actually engaged in substantive utterances during a speech. I take it Dowd would've preferred some pseudo-sophisticated minimalism a la John Cage's "4'33." (Thomas's speech can be read here.)
"And what Justice Thomas said was pretty bellicose. Rejecting the president's call for compromise and harmony, he said, u2018Today there is much talk about moderation,' but there is an u2018overemphasis on civility.'"
It was less bellicose than affirmative, but bellicosity's not so bad anyway. Quite often, a prescription of "etiquette" or "civility" seeks to instill docility in the face of injustice – what Thomas referred to as "yielding to a false form of civility." (Don't be uppity with these objections to tyranny; it's just uncouth!)
"As Bill Clinton went to Harlem seeking validation from a mostly black crowd, Clarence Thomas went to the Hilton seeking validation from a mostly white crowd."
A good sign of critical enfeeblement is the resort to psychoanalysis; there's often a strong strain of condescension in it. Of course motivational speculation can have merit; once words like "validation" start being used, though, the road to ink blots is near. (Dowd appears to be slouching in her New York Times picture; is this indicative of a woman with low self-esteem? I don't know and would find it arrogant to conclude so.)
"Many of the whites who crowded around Clarence can't stand Bill [Clinton]. And many of the blacks who crowded around Bill [in Harlem] can't stand Clarence."
This has lots of rhetorical appeal and zero significance other than reflecting the political orientations of white American Enterprise Institute supporters and some black Harlem residents. And what's with the first-name reference to Thomas? I doubt Dowd knows him – so much for her critique of his civility.
"As Ebony magazine recently wrote of Justice Thomas: u2018Why does it appear that he consistently votes for issues supported by racists and archconservatives, and opposed by . . . almost all blacks?'"
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said of Barry Goldwater: "While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racist." Dowd shares King's penchant for fallacious argument. (Call it the fallacy of guilt by functional concurrence.) I'm sure white supremacists share my opposition to antidiscrimination laws. Does this entail my endorsement of their toxic creed? That'd be a no.
Oh, the Left: so much resentment, so little rationality.
February 23, 2001
Myles Kantor lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.
