The Nine [62]
Thomas’s close ties to the conservative political and business worlds were reinforced by his wife, Virginia, who was already a well-known lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce when they married in 1987, but who came into her own in the 1990s as a senior aide to Richard Armey, the combative Texas Republican who served as House majority leader. In that role, during the 1996 campaign, she sent a memo to senior Republicans in the House asking for damaging information about President Clinton “as soon as possible.” Specifically, she sought any information that would expose “waste, fraud and abuse,” the “influence of Washington labor bosses,” or “examples of dishonesty.” Later, she became director of executive branch relations at the Heritage Foundation.
The best reflection of Thomas’s unique status in Washington, and on the Court, may have come at an unusual event in December 1999. Most of the justices attended awards dinners at places like universities and bar associations, but it seems likely that none of his colleagues ever attended an event like this one.
“We are here this evening to acknowledge the remarkable work of some of the more egregious members of the liberal press corps,” said M. Stanton Evans to open the festivities at the annual dinner of the Media Research Center, a self-styled conservative watchdog organization, at the Monarch Hotel in Washington. The format for the evening was a mock awards banquet “honoring” what the hosts believed were examples of biased reporting. A procession of conservative luminaries “nominated” journalists for the prizes, and other guests “accepted” the humorously named awards, like the “Presidential Knee Pad Award for Best Journalistic Lewinsky.” The tone of the evening was raucous and cheerful. “There is not a vast right-wing conspiracy,” said John Fund, of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. “There’s a narrowly focused one—and it’s in this room!”
After speeches by Michael Reagan, the president’s son and a talk show host, and Oliver North, also at the time a figure in right-wing radio, the climax of the evening came with the presentation of the “I’m-a-Compassionate-Liberal-but-I-Wish-You-Were-Dead Award for Media Hatred of Conservatives.” This award was presented to an obscure columnist named Julianne Malveaux, for saying in a cable television interview about Thomas, “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like a lot of black men do.”
Thomas had been laughing so hard early in the evening that Evans, the MC, said to him, “Justice Thomas, you are a great audience, too.” When Thomas stepped up to the microphone to “accept” the award for Malveaux, he received a standing ovation.
“Thank you,” the justice said, still laughing. “Normally, we are busy. This is a sitting week, so we have cases to decide tomorrow morning at 9:30, and I usually spend this night working. But we realized that this was such an important occasion that we decided it was time to put aside our personal obligations, the Constitution, the work of the Court, our little nephew, to attend…. I am pleased to accept this award on behalf of Suzanne Malveaux.” Thomas had mixed up Suzanne, a CNN correspondent, with her distant cousin Julianne; both are African American women.
As always, the confirmation hearings were never far from Thomas’s mind.