Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [86]
As the ranking Republican, Senator Thurmond also had his say in an opening statement. He, too, decried the problem of sexual harassment, but only briefly. The highlight of his statement was a chronicle of the nomination process that preceded this round of the confirmation process. His commitment to the nominee was clear in his praise for Thomas’ integrity. Thurmond even asserted that not one of the witnesses had had anything bad to say about his character, though Thomas himself would later contradict Thurmond’s assessment of the process by claiming that throughout his nomination claims of personal wrongdoing ranging from “drug abuse” to “anti-Semitism” to “wife-beating” had tainted the process. Yet to overpower the effect of my allegations, Thurmond recast Thomas as a person of unquestioned character, notwithstanding every other reservation voiced about his character. Thurmond followed his praise of Thomas with an attack on my statement, asserting that I had “chose[n] to publicize” my allegations the day before the vote, falsely indicating that I had voluntarily gone to the press with a claim and that the Senate had been unaware of it before the press stories appeared.
Each opening statement perfectly reflected what was about to take place. Biden spoke of fairness and objectivity and the desire to establish a proper procedure for getting to the truth. Thurmond’s statement, on the other hand, laid out the objectives of the Republicans, which were to bolster the credibility of the nominee and to discredit my testimony. The Republicans charged ahead doing just that. Meanwhile, over the next few days, the committee’s Democratic members bent over backward to show an impartiality that seemed at times honorable and at other times, if not cowardly, then certainly oblivious to the Republicans’ tactics of misrepresentation.
While the Democrats set up a zone of neutrality between themselves and my statement, the Republicans fully embraced Thomas and all of his behavior in order to prove him not simply “innocent” but “the best man for the job.” Once the cameras rolled, tempers started to flare and any sense of decorum was soon lost, as the senators either forgot the rules or deliberately avoided them. What followed was a chaos that pretended to order, a chaos disguised only by the politeness of the titles used to address the committee members, the stated rules of order, and the timekeeping.
The very first clash about process occurred when the Republican senators sought to introduce my statement of September 25 into the record during Judge Thomas’ remarks on Friday morning, well before my actual appearance. Though contrary to Biden’s early indications, Thomas was the first to speak. I agreed to that deviation from the process, but refused to allow the statement to be used prior to my appearance. Notwithstanding the leak, it was my statement, and I wanted it introduced when I was introduced. What soon surfaced was clear evidence of the senators’ anger that “their” process was being disturbed by a woman who was of no political significance, alleging behavior that they claimed was so far outside their own experience as to be incomprehensible and perhaps irrelevant.
After listening to Thomas’ “categorical denial” of all the behavior, an irate Senator Hatch denounced the decision to delay introduction of the statement and declared that no one was going to tell him what was to be admissible evidence in the hearing or when it would be admitted. He was prepared to decide on an ad hoc basis what was fair, and fairness to him meant the