Please read Mollie Hemingway’s piece in The Federalist, “Joe Biden on Anita Hill in 1998: ‘She Was Lying’”. At the time in 1991, there was good reason for 58% of polled Americans believing Clarence Thomas and 24% Anita Hill. All this is forgotten in the recent resuscitation of Anita Hill as the patron saint of #MeToo. The history of the time paints a radically different picture, and exposes Joe Biden to the charge of craven political groveling. Ironically, the lightweights of deep thought on The View brought it to light.
Hemingway compares Biden’s comments on The View with Sen. Arlen Specter’s account from his 2000 memoir.
Specter (deceased in 2012) and Biden were on the Senate Judiciary Committee considering the 1991 Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court. Specter quotes the Biden of 1998 contradicting the Biden of 2019. The 1998 Biden confessed to Specter, “It was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, [Hill] was lying”. The 2019 Biden confessed to leftie high priestess Joy Behar, “I believed her from the beginning”.
So, we have A and not-A, matter and anti-matter, and I still don’t know how to bring the two together without exploding.
Hill’s liberal beatification doesn’t come out of this unsoiled either. Her answers before the committee on cross-examination were, to put it mildly, disturbing, even to those anxious to “Bork” Thomas. She tried to deny prior complimentary comments of Thomas that were corroborated by multiple witnesses. She denied that she knew one witness who said that Hill’s charges “were the result of Ms. Hill’s disappointment and frustration that Mr. Thomas did not show any sexual interest in her”. Later she was forced to admit that she knew the witness after others were willing to come forward with confirmation.
The contradictions don’t stop with denials of knowing people. Her statements before the committee were far more colorful and dramatic than those given to the FBI, something she had trouble explaining.
Then she was asked about a USA Today article that described an arrangement proffered to her by a Senate Democratic staffer for her to make a deposition against Thomas and it would be discreetly divulged to Thomas resulting, presumably, in him asking to withdraw his nomination, all done with anonymity for Hill. It’s a repeat of the 1987 play against Reagan’s nomination of Judge Ginsburg. She denied any knowledge of the offer and became evasive. This is what prompted Biden in 1998 to confess to Specter that she was lying.
Remember, the Thomas nomination came just 4 years after the Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg fights. The Democrats were beginning the slide into the political tar pits for Supreme Court nominations. What worked against Ginsburg was redeployed against Thomas and later against Kavanaugh.
Anita Hill isn’t a saint. The 1998 Joe Biden was correct in catching the putrid smell of her testimony. The 2019 Joe Biden shows another side of the man. He’s a craven politician. If he has to be a SJW (social justice warrior), he can do that.
Joe Biden ain’t “lunch-pail Joe” since the real lunch-pail Joes are the “basket of deplorables” to today’s “woke” Democratic Party. Call him shape-shifter Joe.
Kudos to Mollie Hemingway for removing the vail obscuring both the real Joe Biden and the real Anita Hill.
RogerG