In South Carolina, group backs Anita Hill for 20th year

[hue]

Source: Reuters


By Harriet McLeod

COLUMBIA, South Carolina | Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:59pm EDT

(Reuters) - For two decades, women in Columbia, South Carolina have gathered annually for an "I Believe Anita Hill" party, at first out of anger and then to celebrate what they considered a milestone in the fight against sexual harassment.

In October 1991, Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him at the Department of Education and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Thomas, who denied her charges, was confirmed despite Hill's testimony before the U.S. Senate, but the crowd of 500 that turned out Thursday night for an "I Believe Anita Hill" soiree marking the hearing's 20th anniversary said her words had made an impact on women.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/22/us-southcarolina-hill-idUSTRE79L1NQ20111022

---

20 years ago one brave woman stood up alone against Clarence Thomas....

[The Wielding Truth]

1. Clarence Thomas has not helped his credibility by lying(big time)on his tax return.

[EFerrari]

2. And Joe Biden brushed aside other witnesses whose testimony

backed Hill up. That was so wrong.

Hill spoke at Hunter for an anniversary event. She was brilliant as ever. It's up at CSPAN. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/HillR

Watching and listening to her, it occurred to me that Thomas didn't go after her because he wanted to sleep with her but because he must have been jealous of her. She was the whole package and he was a great big fake.

[DURHAM D]

3. Anita didn't just stand up against Clarence Thomas -

she stood up to the men of the Senate Judiciary Committe both Democrats and Republicans.

I will never forget the circus Sen. Biden made out of the process and the target that he made of her. I will never forgive him for it.

[No Elephants]

4. Any idea why Biden did that?

[The Wielding Truth]

5. On Joe's decision to back off more testimony I found this..

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/biden-and-anita-hill-revisited/

He made decisions, they wrote, based on his views of respect for a person’s privacy about what and wouldn’t be let into the hearings – including the pornography rentals and Mr. Thomas’s thin legal record. (At Saddleback, Mr. Obama, a former law professor at the University of Chicago said, “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation.”)

(At one point, Senator Biden’s aides and then he told Ms. Abramson and Ms. Mayer that digging in too deep on Mr. Thomas’s intellectual legal prowess would’ve been a problem. One aide said, “it was a racial thing.” Mr. Biden himself said, “There was in fact a concern about whether or not to make the guy look stupid – what would happen if you embarrassed him.”)

In one interview, the two wrote that Mr. Biden said later that he had tried to be a statesman, to uphold decency standards. In the end, however, he conceded that his motivations might have been “misplaced.” On excluding the pornography issue alone, they quoted Mr. Biden as saying that he acted, “in fairness to Thomas, which in retrospect he didn’t deserve.”

[DURHAM D]

7. The circus was because Biden liked the attention.

He was planning another run for the Presidency and thought it would raise his profile to be seen as all important and in control from the Chair of the Committee.

And, the truth is he was just not that good on women's issues. Remember that he was originally anti-choice.

[seabeyond]

6. i think it was obvious she was believable, and he was trash. but unless a woman has a camera

on it (and even sometimes that won't be enough), she is the ho... and he is the innocent, picked on.

a lot of disgusting men sittin there questioning here.

that was a tough one for me to watch, when i was so young.

[DURHAM D]

8. About Anita Hill -

had she not been thrust into the spotlight from those hearings she likely would of spent her entire academic career at the University of Oklahoma law school. She was not without ambition but she is rather shy.

A member of the Oklahoma State Senate introduced a resolution at the beginning of every session directing the University of Oklahoma to fire her. As far as I know the resolution never received any votes but that of the asshole and a few of his friends each year. Finally, after five years of that crap Anita resigned from OU and moved on.

Meanwhile the rest of the world had a much needed discussion about sexual harassment that would not of happened had it not been for Anita. She is my (s)hero.

[Hydra]

9. Anita did that when I was still a kid

But when I was old enough to understand, I knew she wasn't lying, and I knew the rest of the good ol' boys were protecting one of their own and the privilege to be assholes.

I think it's a mark of how authoritarian our society is that many people think she was lying simply because the boys said she did.

[xchrom]

10. recommend