SAUNDERS: Clarence Thomas is still on the big bench. Big Media want to get even
WASHINGTON — The New York Times, Washington Post and other media biggies will never stop going after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed in 1991 despite Big Media’s best efforts to drag his good name through the mud.
If at first you don’t succeed, the saying goes, try, try again. Now the Times and the Post are going after one of Thomas’ law clerks, Crystal Clanton.
The Times on Thursday posted a very long read under the headline “How Justice Thomas’s ‘Nearly Adopted Daughter’ Became His Law Clerk.”
The story represents a new low for journalism.
Clanton, 29, is conservative activist who graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School on a full merit scholarship. Because Clanton used to work for Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, who referred to Clanton as her “nearly adopted daughter,” the justice’s decision to hire Clanton strikes critics, the Gray Lady reported, as “blatant favoritism, if not nepotism.”
Nepotism? How can that be? Clanton is not a member of the Thomas family. She’s not well-connected like Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughter, who has a job lined up with Justice Elena Kagan.
No surprise: The Kagan pick has not rated the breathless coverage reserved for Clanton.
Clanton had a harsh childhood. According to The New York Times, her father was acquitted on charges that he beat her 18-month-old brother to death. Clanton’s grandmother, who died in 2018, told a court she raised the little girl.
That is, Clanton seems like a fitting candidate for Thomas given his open preference for “clerks from modest backgrounds” — such as his own.
Clanton, 29, also is an easy target because in 2015 when she was involved with the conservative Turning Point USA, she was accused of sending racist texts, including one that read, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.” Within days she was out of Turning Point.
At the time, Clanton told The New Yorker she did not recall sending the texts and they do not reflect her beliefs, which is neither a confirmation nor a denial.
So I’ll assume that in a stupid racist moment Clanton wrote a stupid racist text, which was preserved and used against her.
Later, the Thomases, a biracial couple, took in Clanton because they knew the text did not represent who she is. I’m guessing the Thomases also know what it is like when Democrats decide they can say practically anything about you, secure in the knowledge that they themselves won’t be held to any standard.
Think about the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., watching as law professor Anita Hill accused Thomas of making sexual overtures toward her. Thomas was confirmed, but he must spend the rest of his life knowing that the left will use Hill’s accusations even though there was little evidence to back up Hill’s story.
What’s worse, the willful blindness or lack of self-knowledge?
In The Atlantic, Megan Garber gushed about accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “She offered evidence. He offered grievance. She spoke science. He spoke politics,” Garber wrote.
Evidence? Ford couldn’t say when or where Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. She could not name a witness who would back up her story. She didn’t present “nearly” evidence.
The mightiest paper in the world just went after a law clerk to get to her boss. Is there anything The New York Times wouldn’t do to smear Clarence Thomas?
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.