There is an albatross around Joe Biden’s neck, and her name is Anita Hill.
In 1991, Biden was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. As such, he was in the captain’s chair when Hill, a former employee of Thomas’s, came forward to accuse the judge of sexual harassment.
Apparently, as chairman of the committee, Biden should have stopped everything at that point, taken Hill’s testimony at face value, and declared Thomas’s nomination null and void. He then should have taken to the steps of the Capitol, awarded Hill a medal of bravery, and galloped into history as a feminist icon.
Instead of doing any of that, Biden conducted the hearing in a fair, bipartisan fashion. That decision is now coming back to bite him.
In an op-ed for The New York Times on Thursday, Hill resurfaced to relish a bit more of her second 15 minutes of fame. In the column, Hill accused the Democratic candidate of failing to take her accusations against Thomas seriously.
“If the Senate Judiciary Committee, led then by Mr. Biden, had done its job and held a hearing that showed that its members understood the seriousness of sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence, the cultural shift we saw in 2017 after #MeToo might have began in 1991 — with the support of the government,” Hill wrote.
“If the government had shown that it would treat survivors with dignity and listen to women, it could have had a ripple effect,” Hill continued. “Instead, far too many survivors kept their stories hidden for years.”
Oh brother.
Look, this isn’t about defending Joe Biden. It would be, though. It would be, if he had the intestinal fortitude to stand up straight and say, flat-out, “Look, I did nothing wrong. There was a hearing, Anita Hill had her day, and her testimony had very little credibility. Case closed. Move on.” Then we would defend him all day long, Democratic candidate or not. That would show some character.
Instead, he’s out there bending over backwards to tell the world how “wrong” he was and how “unfair” Hill’s treatment was. Unfair? Wrong? The fact that the Senate took her seriously at all was unfair and wrong – to Clarence Thomas.
At one point, Biden made the absurd statement that Hill should not have had to talk to “a bunch of white guys” about her harassment complaints. Imagine being that desperate to win the presidency, that you would say something so patently idiotic.
FBI investigators in 1991 concluded that Hill was lying. Thirteen women who worked for Thomas came forward to say that they’d never seen nor experienced any sexual harassment from the judge. Meanwhile, Hill’s corroborating witnesses were a shameful bunch of liars, including one who insisted that the harassment of Hill had begun…before Hill ever worked for or met Thomas!
Alas, in the “Believe All (Liberal) Women” era, Hill is a martyr and a woman wronged. Biden is being unfairly accused of perpetrating that wrong, but hey, if he doesn’t have the guts to stand up for the truth, then he can roast in the #MeToo fire for all we care.
