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Paperback
Publisher: Broadway
There is no more powerful, detested, misunderstood African American in our public life than Clarence Thomas. Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas is a haunting portrait of an isolated and complex man, savagely reviled by much of the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia, to elite educational institutions, to the pinnacle of judicial power. His staunchly conservative positions on crime, abortion, and, especially, affirmative action have exposed him to charges of heartlessness and hypocrisy, in that he is himself the product of a broken home who manifestly benefited from racially conscious admissions policies.
Supreme Discomfort is a superbly researched and reported work that features testimony from friends and foes alike who have never spoken in public about Thomas before—including a candid conversation with his fellow justice and ideological ally, Antonin Scalia. It offers a long-overdue window into a man who straddles two different worlds and is uneasy in both—and whose divided personality and conservative political philosophy will deeply influence American life for years to come.
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| Like a mirror, Thomas reflects what we want to see, good or bad |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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There is perhaps no other Supreme Court Justice is recent memory who has remained as enigmatic and inscrutable as Justice Clarence Thomas. The man simply bubbles over with contradictions and a truly remarkable Horatio Alger story that almost defies belief. Merida and Fletcher attempt to explain and explore who Thomas is, what shaped his life, his values, and his beliefs, and to try and sort truth from fiction; a tall order for someone so polarizing and who speaks publicly so infrequently. To many in the African-American community Thomas is a sellout who has betrayed their community and has forgotten his roots. But along the way the authors' well-researched account finds faults and flaws with Thomas. Evidence is found that supports Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment and there is little they find that can reconcile Thomas's cognitive dissonance regarding his embrace of conservative dogma and the way he has benefited from affirmative action. Their attempts to probe Thomas's psyche similarly fall somewhat flat; a problem compounded by the fact that Thomas says and writes so very little about himself to analyze. What emerges is someone who is a bit like Thomas Jefferson; someone who says one thing but does another.
Ultimately "Supreme Discomfort" demonstrates how racially charged the topic of Justice Thomas is. There have been several books written about the man, yet none seems to really understand or explain him. Like many black conservatives Thomas is easy to demonize and criticize, yet we still have no understanding of what thoughts, ideals, or experiences led him to embrace conservativism. Liberals see Thomas as a race traitor while conservatives point to him as a role model for blacks. Rather than actually representing anything Thomas has become a mirror, reflecting what we want to see in our society, but ultimately representing nothing because he remains remote and aloof, a stranger to all but himself. And rather than examining Thomas's opinions to gain insight into his thoughts and characters, the authors avoid doing so for reasons they never clearly articulate. Perhaps they have read them and seen them as providing nothing; instead reflecting back at us what we want to see.
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| The Enigma Machine |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Clarence Thomas is an enigma. Reportedly garrulous and engaging with people he trusts, on the Court he is notoriously silent and disengaged, playing with a pencil, cleaning his fingernails, staring at the ceiling or whispering to Antonin Scalia during legal sessions. Although he is an accomplished Constitutional scholar, Thomas does not join his fellow justices in questioning petitioners and in 18 years on the bench has yet to write a single important decision. And of course as a famous recipient of affirmative action that gave him the opportunity to rise to the highest court in the land, he is steadfastly against extending those same advantages to anybody else, deserving or not.
With the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings underway as I write this and many conservative lawmakers accusing her of being too Latina, it's a propitious time to revisit the confirmation of the last justice to be nominated because of his race. The authors, two black reporters with no racial agenda of their own, make it clear that Anita Hill's allegations were most likely accurate if somewhat overblown. The damage to Thomas's reputation by having his most private behavior exposed to the nation is a scarlet letter that Thomas will never live down -- people either love him or hate him, and for most of his fellow African-Americans it is the latter.
True to his enigmatic persona Thomas refused to be interviewed for this book, so the authors constructed their portrait from talking to everyone from his family members and schoolyard friends to his fellow Supreme Court justices. The picture that emerges is no less baffling than his public image.
Thomas's judicial philosophy is one of "originalism," believing the Constitution should be taken at face value and used to decide all issues before the court... the equivalent of biblical literalism, which the authors make clear Thomas also believes. This is ironic because the Constitution both allows slavery and forbids women's suffrage, two issues that even Thomas probably admits (privately) are valuable changes. Thomas comes down squarely on the side of power and wealth in every dispute between rich and poor, yet he himself was bullied as a youth as the only poor black student in a privileged white Catholic school. He is pro-death penalty but anti-abortion, pro-states rights but against slavery, pro-rule of law but voted to give George W. Bush unconstitutional war powers.
In short, Thomas's career on the court is nearly two decades of puzzling kowtowing to wealth and power which puts him in the minority on most decisions, relegating his dissents to historical footnotes rather than legal precedent. His willingness to turn a blind eye to injustice is one reason for the growing "Impeach Clarence Thomas" movement and ample evidence that his machine-like literalism is at odds with the very definition of "judging."
The authors delve deep into Thomas's life looking for explanation, but find only troubling hints: his membership in a charismatic evangelical church, his officiating at Rush Limbaugh's (third) wedding, his fear of snakes, his fanatical devotion to his 62" flat screen TV. Apparently Thomas loves nothing better than to take his forty-foot RV around the country, "camping" in various Wal-Mart parking lots. The portrait that emerges is of a man way, way out of his depth on the court, with a $200,000 per year appointment for life.
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| Hypocricy of Calling yourself an "Originalist." |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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Rather than repeat what many of the reviews have said, I would just say that the focus should be on some of the cases decided by the Supreme Court and where Justice Thomas fits in the bigger picture, i.e., the impact that the Court's rulings have on society.
How is it that Clarence Thomas can decipher exactly what the Framers of the Constitution intended and apply it to contemporary conditions? The fact is that the Framers disagreed on what the Constitution says. The rise of the first 2 political parties was all about strongly disagreeing about interpreting the Constuitution.
So more than 200 years later, Thomas and his fellow ideologues are going to tell us what the Framers intended? That type of arrogance is what has alienated so many from respecting some members of the Court, especially when they decided Bush v. Gore. Such a demented view relies upon the general public's ignorance on the history of the Court and its role in the American political system.
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| A compartmentalized, angry man |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The authors show how Thomas is divided to the point of having a compartmentalized personality. This is especially, but by no means limited to, his use of sexual language, as witnessed by the Anita Hill case.
Re that, they talked with several moderate GOP Senators who supported Thomas and now indicate they regret it. And, without going into the confirmation hearings as much as Mayer/Abramson, it seems clear that, if Biden had rolled the dice differently and had Angela Wright testify, Thomas would never have been confirmed.
That said, it seems Thomas has had many a chip on his shoulder long before we got to 1991. The authors do a good job of pointing out that many of these chips are directed toward certain sub-groups within black America, based on skin tone, class or money within black America. I'm sure they were able to handle this better than white authors could.
That said, contrary to 1- and 2-star reviewers, this book is in no way a hatchet job. As for Thomas' judicial philosophy, it's clear they're not commenting at all on it one way or the other. They're not even commenting on whether he's "right" or "wrong" to spin his childhood, and its various influences, the way he does.
At this stage in Thomas' life, this is probably the best, most well-rounded biography we can expect.
What I learned from this is that Thomas seems fueled by anger more than anything else; I sometimes wonder if the thin skin he can exhibit is a shell that's about to implode. Beyond that, he seems quite conscious of the compartmentalized subselves he has, with different ones presented to different people.
Beyond my disagreement with his political stances, I feel kind of sorry for him.
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| Supreme Disappointment |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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In Supreme Discomfort the authors Merida and Fletcher try hard to create a biography of Justice Thomas based on interviews with childhood associates, former classmates, extended family, and former law clerks, in addition to crafting a social science construct to his background. However, using this approach produces a book that tells the reader less about the purported subject than about how he is viewed. More effort is spent trying to put Thomas into a category of being angry and resentful of slights than seeking to flesh out the nuances of this very complicated figure.
The authors delve into the fact that Thomas is reviled as an Uncle Tom in the black community, but do little to explain either Thomas' views or his antagonists other than a for or against basis. In a late chapter they bring Henry Louis Gates Jr. into the discussion to argue that affirmative action is good, but do not look at Thomas' writings and speeches where he argues for an approach based on merit and economic factors over race.
The authors seem to want to stress what they think Thomas should be, rather than examine their subject's own views. There is more of a discussion of Justice Scalia's pizza preferences than the nuances of Textual Originalism that in many cases leads both justices down different paths. Jan Crawford Greenberg does a much better job looking at what the justices actually do and their legal philosophies in Supreme Conflict.
The narrative flow of the text is somewhat choppy going forward and backward chronologically without warning, as if the two authors were writing different sections. There are a few nice anecdotes, such as the gag eyeballs tossed to clerks "keep an eye on things", but otherwise the authors seem to accept the consensus views of the media. Ken Foskett in Judging Thomas does a better job explaining the work of the EEOC and the Court, goes into extensive genealogical and historical background of Pin Point, and had more access to the subject. However, of the three biographies Supreme Discomfort, Judging Thomas , Thomas' own My Grandfather's Son, the autobiography is by far the best written and edited, although by necessity it stops when Thomas joins the court.
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