Did Clarence Thomas know his wife was going to call Anita Hill?

[Hamlette]

I watched the clip with Randy talking about this and it seemed they all believed Clarence did not know she was going to do it. I was kinda shocked.

I think he did.

And I think the two of them cooked the whole thing up to get publicity and money for her "cause".

It might have started out innocently, like years ago she said "I'd like to talk to that woman and tell her how much harm she caused you." Then, as she decided to cash in on the Tea Party the two of them say, "you know what might help you raise lots of money from the right wing hate machine...I mean, conservatives, to remind them how I was mistreated by a liberal woman!"

Hell, if I thought I could get half a million just by leaving a voice mail I'd do it and I bet they get a ton more. They probably thought they'd raise a ton of money from ppl who wanted to influence him but why would they need to? Anyone with enough money to turn his eye already has his vote. So they decided to try this.

The phone message was left at 7:30 am on a Saturday, a time when they were pretty sure Anita would not answer the phone. She didn't want to "reach out" or even talk to her.

And if Anita had not made the call public, they could say "we tried to reach out to her."

On the other hand, maybe I'm just up too late.

[Maru Kitteh]

1. I think you just did way more thinking than Mrs. Thomas has ever, ever done.

that's what I think

btw, who isn't home at 7:30 on a Saturday? I usually am. If the phone rings at that hour, I answer it. I may be pissed. But I answer it.

If anything, I'd be inclined to believe she timed the call specifically to ensure Ms. Hill was at home and to catch her off-guard.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. Thank you for saying what I thought in a much more elegant way!

Of course, both Thomases are stupid enough to have "concocted" this together, so the OP might be on to something. :hi:

[Hekate]

4. The message was left at Prof. Hill's office at the university;that's why she didn't get it until Mon

Creepy, creepy. What a way to start your work week.

Then she had to think about whether this was just a nasty prank, which must have been her first thought; then what to do about it. I gather she let it sit for a couple of days -- it's really good she didn't erase the message, but you know she must have had an awful lot of harassment during and after the hearings. I think she did the right thing to call the campus police, and they did the right thing to call the FBI.

As for Mrs. Thomas -- she and her audience are beyond shame.

Hekate

[MiniMe]

5. Except she called Anita Hill's office phone

not her home phone. This whole thing is very strange.

[RZM]

3. I highly doubt it

I'm guessing the whole thing has been a sore spot with them for years and probably never talked about. The last thing he would want would be to have all of that in the news again.

[tsuki]

6. I wonder if she was in a bath tub with a cocktail? Shades of Martha Mitchell. nt

[pnwmom]

7. My theory is that she's tied up in knots because she suspects

that he's messing around on her. And that causes all these old nasty feelings about Anita Hill to surface -- about what Anita did "with" her husband. So she has a few Bloody Marys and . . .

:shrug:

[aquart]

8. Yeah. She needs to hire a good private detective.

Of course, it's so hard to keep these things quiet these days.

Anybody think a major scandal is waiting to explode in the Thomas house?

[saltpoint]

9. If there's an award for being tacky and graceless, I think

Virginia Thomas is likely to be a strong contender to walk away with it, hands down.

[customerserviceguy]

10. I've been thinking about this for a few days

For starters, it's pretty old news. I doubt that anyone under the age of thirty even remembers it being in the news. This story broke before the Internet, the only on-demand sources of information would have been magazines and newspapers, both heavily edited.

I think Virginia Thomas did this for one reason, she's trying to tell white America that we're NOT in the post-racial society that they thought they were getting when a goodly number of otherwise center-right white voters gave Barack Obama a vote. She was calculating that if there were an apology, it would be a win for her side, as opposition to that apology would be fierce and possibly frightening, or if there were no apology (clearly, the most likely outcome), it would show African-Americans as still being "hostile", even though we elected a black President.

I can't think of any better ulterior motive for what she did.

[Ganja Ninja]

11. People are way over thinking this.

This was like a drunk dial except the woman wasn't drunk, she was crazy. It wasn't a political act, it was an emotional one. There was probably something going on at the Thomas house that triggered it. People do strange things like this when their under emotional stress.

[customerserviceguy]

12. Ok, that might be true

If you can clearly explain what emotional stress she was under. She represents a reich-wing movement that is about to make some gains in the midterm elections, I'm not certain how that represents stress.