Legacy of Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearing: A Better Workplace, Coarser National Dialogue
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus recalls covering Anita Hill’s allegations against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing 20 years ago this month.
“As we sat at the press table during the most explicit testimony, the New York Times reporter turned to me, a stricken look on his face, and asked how we were going to write about all this, given our newspapers’ notorious queasiness about sexual matters,” Marcus writes for the Washington Post.
The stories were published “unexpurgated,” spurring “a coarsening of the national dialogue,” Marcus writes. The hearings also heralded “an intensifying of the partisan divide.”
But she also sees some benefits. Hill’s testimony about alleged sexual harassment by Thomas helped publicize the issue and embolden women. “The workplace of 2011 may not be perfect, but it is a better, fairer place,” she says.
She notes a second, more personal benefit. Marcus met her husband, a committee staffer for a Democratic senator, while she was covering the hearing.
