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Permit me to assuage my conscience by confessing to sexual harassment. From 1970 to 1983, I held management positions at various newspapers, and I did not maintain an aloof isolation from my subordinates in the office.
If risque jokes were told, I contributed. If we discussed previous employment, my brief tenure as the manager of an X-rated theater sometimes came up. On more occasions than I dare to remember, I participated in brief conversations about the anatomy of women not then present.
That's one thing that scares me about ever getting a real job again. What I then believed was normal workplace camaraderie is now a crime, and I am cursed with a Rabelaisian sense of humor. Maybe it will qualify me for disability status and a pension.
However, the issue in the latest Clarence Thomas controversy is more than mere nostalgia for the days when you could utter double entendres while at work.
The masculine analysis I hear is that if Anita Hill was tormented by Clarence Thomas in 1983, she should have complained then. If that didn't help, she should have quit. Since she didn't quit, she must have believed that her paycheck was more important than her honor. People who trade their honor for money are prostitutes.
The feminine analysis says that Hill had no real choices if Thomas was indeed putting the moves on her, that men just don't understand how threatening they can be.
The truth is that every workplace I've been in is a
hostile environment,
and therefore a violation of
the law.
Men, too, are expected to laugh at the boss's jokes, no matter how dumb or offensive, and are ordered to dress in ways which please the boss's eyes. Also there are implied threats if you don't join a certain organization, or if you hang out with the wrong kind of friends.
If the latest Thomas controversy leads to the elimination of that crap, then I bow to Anita Hill.
But there's another issue. Even if Thomas is guilty as alleged by Hill, does it make him unfit to serve on the Supreme Court?
Once we had a justice who actually believed in the Bill of Rights -- William O. Douglas. He also enjoyed bawdy tales, and late in life, he married a woman much younger. Any modern investigation would disqualify Douglas.
The great lawyer Clarence Darrow was an incorrigible flirt who told his share of raunchy jokes. He wouldn't be fit, either, by the new standard.
During his 30 years on a reactionary Supreme Court,
Oliver Wendell Holmes was known as the Great
Dissenter
for his advocacy of freedom of expression. He
enjoyed burlesque shows and ribald stories. At age 90,
Holmes was sitting on a park bench with a friend when a
comely young woman walked by. Ah, to be 80 again,
Holmes muttered. Obviously unfit under the new
standard.
Something is wrong when we have a system that gives us vacuums like David Souter, and prevents a Douglas, Darrow or Holmes from serving on the Supreme Court.
The solution might be a public attitude similar to that
on marijuana. The nominee could say Yes, I'm sorry to
say that I transgressed once or twice in my youth, but I
quickly saw the error of my ways.
Then the nomination
might be decided on an irrelevant factor like legal
expertise.
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