Quote of the Day (Anita Hill, Opening a New Era in American Life)

“My working relationship became even more strained when Judge [Clarence] Thomas began to use work situations to discuss sex. On these occasions, he would call me into his office for reports on education issues and projects, or he might suggest that, because of the time pressures of his schedule, we go to lunch to a government cafeteria. After a brief discussion of work, he would turn the conversation to a discussion of sexual matters.”—Anita Hill, in her opening statement at the Senate confirmation hearings on Judge Clarence Thomas, October 11, 1991

Anita Hill then proceeded to catalog, in sometimes graphic detail, what those “sexual matters” were, transfixing—and revolting—Americans as they sat in front of their TV sets, watching the Senate Judiciary Committee reconvene its hearings on Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court, this time to consider Hill’s charges that her former boss had pressed for dates when she worked for him a decade before.

At the time of the hearings, individual political leanings largely determined whether you believed Thomas or Hill. Not much has changed in the two decades since, at least in that respect.

I should hasten to stress, in that respect only. The high-profile case gave greater prominence than ever before to the nature of sexual-harassment law as it had been developing over the last decade of litigation and decisions.

Out at lunch one day during the hearings, I heard a boyfriend and girlfriend discuss what constituted sexual harassment:

HE: “Okay, so you work for me and I say, ‘That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing.’ Is that sexual harassment?”


SHE: “No, because it’s the dress, not me.”

HE: “Okay. Now what if I say, ‘You look pretty’?”

SHE: “Hmmmm…still okay, I guess.”


HE: "Okay. How about, 'You look good enough to eat'?"

SHE: “BINGO!” 

I suppose conversations such as this, in one form or another, occurred all over America at this time. The same thing happened, with considerably higher stakes, in the business world. An attorney friend of mine told myself and a couple of other college friends that his large company had decided to settle a couple of cases in the immediate aftermath of the Thomas-Hill controversy. In the wake of the hearings, the mere fact that a male boss had slept with a female subordinate, he said, had made these sexual-harassment lawsuits harder to defend.

The case had repercussions in the political arena as well. Senator Bob Packwood was driven from office for improper advances on at least 10 women. Most famously, by the end of the decade, Bill Clinton would face impeachment, brought about partly as a result of sexual-harassment legislation he himself had signed into law.

Ironically, a boomerang from the case may have upended the career of one of those who expressed disbelief about Hill’s story. Finding that GOP primary voters now considered him a RINO (Republican in Name Only), Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter sought refuge as a Democrat. But last year, Democratic primary voters cast him out. For feminists who loathed how he had grilled Hill nearly 20 years before, revenge was all the sweeter for the long delay.