Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [66]
As friends and family members telephoned me from around the country, the question first and foremost on their minds was “What is going to happen next?” I had no answer for them. “All I can do is wait to hear from the Senate,” was my only response.
Over dinner with Eric and Shirley, I discovered that the stress of the day had not taken away my appetite. Though I only now appreciate it fully, this was the last time I would eat in a public restaurant with some sense of anonymity. After dinner I went home alone to a ringing telephone and an answering machine full of messages, some worse than I had anticipated—death threats and threats of rape or sodomy. People felt free to leave the most cruel and revolting messages imaginable. Yet not all the messages were of that kind. Many, mostly those from women, were words of encouragement. Some were delightful, like the one from two “older women,” as they described themselves, “friends, one black, one white,” who wanted me to know that they were behind me and were praying for me. Amazingly, that one message of support undid the damage of all the threats.
Halfway through the playback, the tape jammed and I lost the remaining messages. This was symbolic to me in the days to come of the many things that had seemed to go wrong in the past few days. But the broken message machine did not stop the telephone from ringing constantly. After talking to my mother, I turned off the ringers and went to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Unlike its reaction to my confidential statement, the Senate’s reaction to a public airing of my claim was swift, and in some cases outright hostile. This kind of resistance did damage and disservice in a number of areas. Of course, the immediate denunciations of my claim and their unsupported comments about my character harmed me personally. But they also misinformed the public about the issue of sexual harassment and disparaged the right of a private citizen to become involved in matters of public significance. And Senate efforts to press the nomination at all costs threatened the integrity of the nomination process itself.
Because both Democrats and Republicans acted irresponsibly, their behavior said less about party politics than politics in general. It was politics in general that showed its face in the arrogant statements of the senators. Their resentment that public pressure had forced them to change their internal policies was clear. And to many around the country, even those who did not identify with the harassment experience, the Senate’s attitude suggested that their own experiences might well be dismissed if the Senate found those experiences unpopular or unpleasant. They saw a Senate out of touch with the lives of its constituents. Those who knew firsthand or related to the harassment issue recognized that it was the senators’ resentment at being accountable to the public that had caused them to attack me. The side of public life that the people witnessed during the hearing was contemptible but true. And nothing painted the unpleasant picture more vividly than the senators’ own words.
One of the first reactions to my statement that I heard was from Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini, who said the following during a press conference on the afternoon of October 7, a short time after my own press conference was ended.
If you’re sexually harassed you ought to get mad about it, and you ought to do something about it and you ought to complain, instead of hanging around a long time and then all of a sudden calling up anonymously and say “Oh, I want to complain.” I mean, where is the gumption?
Later, more than one person would