There Came The Judge

Clarence Thomas has published his memoirs. Whoopty-damn-do. I confess I haven't read it, but from all reports, it seems that the Judge holds a grudge, or rather an extensive portfolio of grudges. So do I, Judge, so do I. I'm still angry, too.

I have been keeping journals for nigh on thirty years, long before you could get an MFA in Dear Diary, and I have a record. Take this entry:

Sunday, October 13, 1991

The Thomas morass pours like some corrosive syrup out of the radio and TV. Women everywhere are tremendously angered and the gentlemen of the Senate--particularly the Republicans--just don't seem to get it. Neither, of course , does the Judge, who is obviously enraged that the bitch would do him like that. The Republicans presume to rage against some perfidious liberal conspiracy to shoot their candidate down. Thomas calls it an "electronic lynching."

The carefully constructed campaign, which deftly deflects all issues of substance, presents Judge Thomas, a man of considerable dignity (even tho' I believe he's lying his ass off), whose slow, measured voice caresses anecdotes of his upbringing in poverty and oppression by impossibly virtuous grandparents, as a well-nigh heroic figure who had risen to be considered for one of the highest offices in the land by dint of hard work, character, and probity alone. We haven't heard such myth-making since Honest Abe split rails all the way to the White House. And Anita Hill, quietly and full of aggrieved dignity herself, has smashed the construct into kindling and put a match to it as well. The resulting auto-da-fe will likely scorch the inquisitor, heretic, and infidel together.

Whoever is lying has convinced himself and/or herself that he/she is telling the truth.

I must say the Judge has lived down to my expectations. Samuel Alito, at one of those lucrative honorarium appearances, was asked what difference there was between him and Thomas, in terms of legal philosophy.  After enumerating the ways in which they agreed, Alito said, "I'm not a nut job."

The senators still don't get it, either. All the people who voted for Reagan, Bush, and Bushier still don't get it. The rest of us have been getting it in the neck year after year after year. Am I bitter? Hell, yes, I'm bitter. I'm still angry at each individual one of you bastards. Having you around is like having zits at age 50. You all live in your bubbles and no matter how many I pop, another soon appears. Because of bubble people voting the bubble, our nation will have to live with bubbleheads on the highest court in the land for a long, long time.

It may be the simmering pot calling the boiling kettle black, but I lift my coke can (straight, no pubic hair) in salute to your ire, Judge Thomas. From one old grouch with a long memory, to another. May your cup of bile runneth over. Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble.