Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Anita Hill and the despicable "olive branch" of Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence


As ABC News is reporting, Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence, recently left a phone message for Anita Hill:

Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginny Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.

That's right, Virginia asked Hill to apologize for what she did. What did she do? She testified at Clarence's Senate confirmation hearings that he had sexually harrassed her in the workplace, when she worked for him both at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the '80s.

It may be the case that there is no definitive evidence to support either side -- Clarence denied the accusation, as he has denied it ever since, and claimed he was the victim of a "high-tech lynching" -- but there is absolutely no reason for Hill to apologize for anything. As she told ABC News:

Even if it wasn't a prank, it was in no way conciliatory for her to begin with the presumption that I did something wrong in 1991. I simply testified to the truth of my experience. For her to say otherwise is not extending an olive branch, it's accusatory... I don't apologize. I have no intention of apologizing, and I stand by my testimony in 1991.

Good for her. Good for standing firm. Virginia claims that "no offense was ever intended," but she basically accused Hill of lying, of smearing her husband, and there was certainly no indication that she believes any of Hill's story. It would be one thing to seek to get past what happened by first acknowledging on her end that, at the very least, her husband had behaved inappropriately. It is quite another to heap the blame on Hill and, from that basis, extend an "olive branch."

Utterly, utterly despicable.

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posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at 9:30 AM

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4 Comments:

  • and thats what she should have done. that witch was so out of line even calling her let alone asking for an apology.

    and I bet her trick ass husband was in on it.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:39 AM  

  • What fine line and who is going to stop her or him for that matter?
    I believe we are in the early stages of seeing our beautiful country go the way of a Banana Republic.

    By Anonymous Heather, at 2:57 AM  

  • Which is fitting since we've all gone bananas.

    By Blogger Capt. Fogg, at 9:55 AM  

  • I think that "olive branch" had a lot of thorns.

    By Anonymous George Arndt, at 7:39 PM  

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