Part Two: The Clarence Thomas Story

Robert is joined again by Miles Gray for part two of our four part series on Clarence Thomas. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Yes, who of course I would suck Elon Musk for
the right amount of money, which is what six million
dollars or more? Miles, what number did you just throw out.
I'm not gonna lie about what I said. I'll say
it again. I'll call bucks. Wow. No, definitely not. You
know why, because I'll turn it into a story. I'll

(00:22):
make money, Like on the back of that. I'm just
launching on the I Heart radio network in April. I
fucked Elon Musk. No money, A lot of money in
the world space x X Miles Gray and Elon Musk
a match made in hell. You really cornered me. See

(00:46):
you have me on the show just to get me
to say some ship like that as wild? Anyway, I
do it for It was not difficult, That's all I
got to say. I think I would throw out ten
million first, but I would go as low as six.
That's good, I think. I don't tell us tell him that, No,
I don't mean. I don't mean to like, you know,
cheap in it. I would realistically, I think for it

(01:06):
to really work for me, I'll probably do it for
like six fifty wow, Jesus, so like two car payments? Yeah,
or at least like a PS five and no that
is good. Yeah, PS five would be nice. Yeah if
he just what if he just shows up at your
house with a PS five and controller, Well then you

(01:27):
know what I'm telling Alexa to put on some smooth jazz.
There we go, smooth jazz that should move with with
Elon Musk. Oh, yeah it's me and uh you know,
uh David Sanborn. You see, I think I would try
because I'm younger than him, so it's probably he can't
tell the difference between me and a teenager. Um. I
would put on like like Austrian yodeling albums and try

(01:51):
to convince him it's what like the kids were into
these days. It's like everybody on Reddit loves these yodeling
albums Elon, and then try to see even get him
to tweet about like his favorite yodelers. I bet we
could do it like just running. So you want to
run an OP on him? Okay, I want to get
paid first, like payment payment is first, and then fucking
with him a little bit. Well, you gotta we have

(02:11):
to run an op on someone to show like the
veracity of our claims, like there's strength to the business model,
you know, where you can be like, this is actually
how our marketing works, Like we run ops on celebrities
and they unwittingly support your products. Yeah, so big yodeling,
get at me right if you want to get it
on the ground floor. If you're representing a yodeler, uh

(02:34):
and you want Elon Musk to tweet about them, I
probably can't make that happen. But I like really famous
like child who yodeled in Walmart. Like I feel like
Elon Musk would be like doubt, Oh yeah that kids
all that kids like forty three now and he's all
like his yodeling is all sucked up because his voice
change because oh yeah, because he went like he went

(02:57):
like hard right too. I think he's he's he's a
proud right now. Yeah. So what you're saying is Elon Musk,
we love him, I'm sure. Um. Well, welcome to Behind
the Bastards, the podcast that is three and a half
minutes in. Um we talk about bad people. This week
we're talking about Clarence Thomas. Um so, boy, how do

(03:20):
how do we get from there to hear um good stuff?
So in nineteen seventy one, Clarence Thomas enters Yale Law School. Um.
You know, he graduates from that that school he goes
to and fucking Wooster right. Um, and he's a pretty
for those years he's in Wooster, he's a pretty hardcore
like black nationalist activist. Um. But in nineteen seventy one

(03:44):
he enters Yale. He is one of twelve black students
on the entire campus, thanks to an affirmative action program
recently instituted in the school that mandated ten percent of
the class not be white kids. You will remember but
that it was in the nineteen sixties when Yale removed
their secret caps on Jewish students. So like Yale is

(04:04):
so I always say a little bit behind the curve
on integration. So yeah, this program helps him get into Yale. UM,
but it also makes clear the fact that he had
gotten into Yale through an affirmative action program makes him
feel as if he has a target on his back. Uh. Quote,
you had to prove yourself every day because the presumption

(04:26):
was that you were dumb and didn't deserve to be there.
He later added. As much as it had stung to
be told I'd done well in high school despite my race,
it was far worse to feel that I was now
at Yale because of it, um, Which yeah, man, that's
that's that's the whole thing. But also like, it wasn't
your lack of ability that would have kept you out
of Yale earlier. It was that somebody had to force

(04:46):
Yale admissions to accept people who weren't like right, Like,
that is the thing. It's not that you couldn't do Yale.
It's that Yale had to be forced to do. Yeah. Yeah,
but yeah. Anyway, Thomas has always been and a pretty
conservative guy by personality. Even when he was a radical,
it was kind of rooted in very traditional ideas he

(05:08):
had about the family and about gender roles. Um. He
remained religious as hell even after he left the Cemitary Seminary,
the Bill Gates Semen School. Uh. He felt discipline and
an authoritarian upbringing were important for kids to have. But
he was also a registered Democrat because his family was,
and because he supported the civil rights movement, because you know,

(05:28):
there weren't like that's what you did, right, Like, that's
what his family did. Like that was the only reasonable
option as he saw it. For a very long time. Um,
it was at Yale then that Clarence finally starts moving
away from politically aligning himself with liberals. He's never really
been a liberal, right, but he votes with them, and
like yeah, um, he starts to make that actual move

(05:50):
towards a conservative political party, uh, and towards conservative more
like more of an open embraced conservative ideology. While he's
at Yale, and I'm gonna quote again from the New Yorker.
Here at Yale, Thomas developed an understanding of racism that
he would never shake. Whites, Southern and northern, liberal and conservative,
rural and urban are racists. Racism, Thomas would tell students

(06:10):
at Mercer University in nineteen ninety three, has has complex
into a certain degree undiscoverable roots. Not knowing its beginning,
we can't know its end. The most that can be
hoped for is that whites be honest about it. Honesty
is demonstrated through crude statements of personal animus or intellectual
suggestions of racial inequality. Dishonesty is demonstrated through denial of

(06:31):
one's racism and sympathetic extensions of help. Dishonesty lulls black
people into a false sense of security, assuring them that
they are safe when they are not. One of Thomas's
favorite songs is the nineteen seventy one hit Smiling Faces,
sometimes by the Undisputed Truth. It's classic lyric Smiling Faces.
Smiling Faces tell lies resonates with his experience of northern

(06:52):
white liberals. Among the virtues of the Reagan administration, he
has said, was the fact that no one there was
smiling in your face. So wow, if we're taking Thomas's
experience on this, like what the way he describes it
is that he goes to seminary everyone there is super
racist and like conservative, and he hates that. But then
he goes to like fancy northern liberal towns and schools,

(07:16):
and everyone there is just as racist but pretends not
to be. And he decides, well, I guess I prefer
the unabashed racists. I mean this, there's no point there, right, Uh,
there's not no point there, no, not at all to

(07:37):
what he's saying. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, they're I mean, look
at just what we what we saw in with people
donning kenta cloth and taking a knee and for what
just to always come back and like, well, you know,
qualified immunity, let's not go too far anything. And you're like, well,
what was that? And again to his point a false

(07:57):
sense of security. Uh uh and we and we are
not we are, in facting the opposite of that. And
then on the other side of it, he's like, man,
these people, you know where the funk they're at. Yeah,
you know where all the Reagans people are coming from
because they are racist to ship. Yeah, and they don't
say ship because they they're racist and they know it,
they know the rules of racism. Yeah. Um. So in

(08:21):
the end, Yale winds up leaving a pretty harsh taste
in his mouth. His grades are We don't really know
exactly what his grades are, right, He has remained like
people will say that he was kind of a a
middle of the road student. We don't really know, because
his academic records remain sealed at his urging. Uh. Journalists

(08:41):
who spoke to his professors repeat the same story. He
was a pretty average student. Upon leaving Yale, he applied
to a number of high end law firms, but he
was not hired by any of them. Um. And this
is probably less a factor of his grades than the
fact that he was middle class and black. Right, he
doesn't have connections to these big money law firms that
he's trying to get jobs with, which is ultimately why

(09:02):
Yale people get hired. It's not just that they went
to Yale, and it's certainly not their grades. It's that
their dad is somebody who's connected to people who run
the law firm, or they make friends or whatever. Right Um.
Years later, Thomas would tell a law school class quote,
since my reason for going to law school in the
first place was to return to Savannah to assist in
righting the wrongs which I felt existed there throughout my childhood.

(09:23):
I can't say this was a high point. If anything,
I was steeped in frustration. And this is definitely a
thing where he's like lying, like hell, because over the
last couple of decades, since his emergence is a public figure,
Thomas has made a big deal about how he got
into law because he wanted to join the crusade for
civil rights and again like right wrongs that he'd seen
as a kid. This was a big part of the

(09:44):
pitch he made his grandfather Um. And this is again
very untrue because the one job Thomas was actually offered
right out of Yale was at a Savannah law term firm,
and he had spent the summer interning at this firm,
and they did a lot of that kind of work,
and he turns the job down because it doesn't pay enough. Um. Now,

(10:05):
Clarence was ultimately willing to take a job that paid poorly,
but not one that would let him serve his community
in Savannah. Instead, he takes a low paid job with
Jack dan Forth, the Republican Attorney General of Missouri. Now
dan Fourth, he's this kind of thing that doesn't exist anymore.
He was like a liberal Republican and he was on

(10:26):
his own concerned with the fact that again he's the
Attorney General of Missouri. On his own, he's like, Wow,
this staff is too fucking white. We need to have
some people who are not white guys around here. So
he hires Clarence Thomas because he's like, I think, as
the a G we need to have like black lawyers
representing people too. Because it's probe Missouri, um, which is good. UM.
Thomas does not like this because it's smacks of affirmative action,

(10:48):
which he deeply resented, and because again he wants a
high paid legal career and this is not that um.
And you know, he is initially not really super enthused
by this offer, I either, but he eventually decides to
take it, and his friend Clarence Martin later told Jane
Mayer quote, by the time he went to Missouri, he
was very disillusioned. He didn't want the attorney general's job.

(11:09):
He never wanted to be part of the government, and
in fact, he resented it. He wanted to be this
great trial lawyer in private practice, but he lost his
self confidence after all the Atlanta firms turned him down.
So yeah, that's uh, that's the call that he makes
is to get his start in Republican politics with this
guy Dan Forth. Um. Now, because it's Missouri, he has

(11:31):
to pass the state bar to do it, which is like,
you know, you got to do an exam in every
state to be able to do law ship there, um
because lawyers. Yeah, yeah, it's a whole thing. Um. So
while he countered what you might hear on TikTok, apparently
that's not true. But now I know, you know, you
can't just do it in once. Yeah, you can't just
do it in one state. Miles your your state of

(11:53):
of of the District of Columbia law certificate that you
have printed out above your desk, um c O. M
b I A. Um, so yeah, he's got to spend
the summer like cramming to pass the bar exam in Missouri.
So he winds up crashing at the house of a St.

(12:16):
Louis in Double, a CP chairperson, while he crams all
summer for the exam. Um. At the end of the summer,
he tries to pay her and she told tells him
to quote, help someone who is in your position in
the future. Um, basically pay it forward. Yeah. So Thomas
joins the Dan fourth administration as a Conservative Democrat, but
in short order he starts to see how this low paid,

(12:38):
entry level position with the Republican Party might lead him
to the kind of clout and wealth that he sought.
The key would be remaking himself as a political conservative.
Cindy Faddis, who knew him when he worked for Dan fourth,
recalled he said that he thought he'd have an advantage
as a Republican. Thomas is said to have stated, if
I belonged to the Republican Party, I could go farther.

(13:00):
After that, the change was rather sudden and jarring, as
this quote from the book Strange Justice makes clear. Clarence Martin,
who visited Thomas and Missouri found the Transformation, and his
formerly liberal friend with whom he had worked only the
summer before, to be quite remarkable. Gone was Thomas's college
dorm room poster of Malcolm X, replaced by an oversized
poster of a Rules Royce. No longer dwelling on being

(13:22):
shut out of private practice, Thomas now had a new
avenue for his ambitions as a Republican. He told Martin
he planned a big future in politics. I remember him
sitting with his feet up on the desk smoking a cigar,
said Martin. I saw a change in Clarence. Then he said,
the Republicans are going places in the next ten years,
and I'm going to attach my wagon to their star.
Martin forgave Thomas's apparent ideological expedients. In many ways. He

(13:46):
was already conservative and his social views, Martin noted. And
he really admired dan Forth. I'd ask him, how can
you become a Republican? And he'd say, blacks need to
be on both sides, and these people are in power.
It was a matter of practicality, all right. So we've
got to the part where he became Darth Vader. He's
doing that he's going. And it's interesting because Dan fourth

(14:07):
is you could draw a line between Dan fourth and
his current position because Dan fourth is very anti abortion. UM.
But Dan fourth is also again a liberal Republican and
one of the weirdest things that we really don't have anymore,
he's ideologically consistent. So he is also an anti death
penalty crusader. So he's a Republican who is like really

(14:28):
violently against the death penalty and against a portion um,
which at least suggests that he's yeah, being consistent in
the things that he's claiming. UM. But yeah, this is like,
this is where Thomas gets his start in politics. Um. Now.
One of his colleagues at the Savannah law firm where
he had done his interning, a guy named Fletcher Farrington,

(14:50):
who later supported his nomination to the Supreme Court, insists
that Thomas was not a quote complete opportunist, but that
quote to some extent, his politics were shaped by his ratunities.
At the core of everything, then, is the fact that
Thomas's real goal, more than anything, was to attain a
position that gave him wealth and prestige. As Farrington put it,
his ambition was not to make a particular change in society,

(15:12):
but to go as far as he could go. And
I think that is something, you know, despite the fact
that his grandfather winds up disappointed in him for not
helping his community. Um, that's something that's very consistent with
the upbringing he has. Right, All that matters is the work.
All that matters is like getting the best position you
can and right, you need to move further than I
was able to write. Yeah, I mean he definitely is

(15:34):
his grandfather's son. Um. All right, you know what, now
I'm rooting for him again. Now you're back on board.
You're back on board, alright, c C. Well, we are
about to get to the Reagan administration, which I know
is your favorite period in American politics. My dad's explanation
why they were unhoused people when I asked him as
a four year old, Oh good, was he because Reagan

(15:56):
closed the institutions? Guy? I was like, I remember being
a bum like four year old person and like, you know,
we're like giving food to like someone house people. Was like,
why did some people have to live there? And my
dad's because of Ronald Reagan? And I'm like what I'm for,
I don't know what that means. And I remember saying
that ship in like first grade, and like my teachers like,
who the funk are you? That's amazing? That's good stuff.

(16:23):
You know what else is good, miles? Capitalism, which is
the real reason why all people aren't able to live
indoors um Capitalism, Miles, sweet lady, capitalism. Have you ever
felt like the world's not getting hot enough fast enough

(16:44):
in England? And going forty degrees celsius? That's not that high?
Forties a low number. Well is crypto. All of these
products and services will help keep those numbers high. Put
them on the board. Maybe put him on the board.
How are you doing, Sylphie? Is that good? It made

(17:04):
you smile? So I'm look, I can go back to
come anytime. That's that's always an option that's on the table,
on the table. We can bring Dr Kellogg right back
into it. Yeah, yeah, let's take Kellogg back. America's great
come doctor. Speaking of America's great come doctor, try these
products and services. Oh we're back. Clarence Thomas was good

(17:31):
at his first job in government, by which I mean
he pleased all of the people he needed to get
another job in government that was better. Uh. It is
worth noting that at one point, while he is working,
as you know, a lawyer in the AG's office in
the state of his era, Rovie Wade comes up his boss. Obviously,
dan Forth opposes the ruling and he challenges it in
a court case dan Fourth v. Planned Parenthood. It was

(17:54):
later noted by colleagues that Clarence Thomas expressed no particular
interest in this case. So at least at this point
to work with him when there's like a big fight
over planned parenthood in their office, are like, yeah, he
didn't really give a ship. Um. Now, this is not
to say that Thomas didn't talk about abortion during this
period in his life. His mother recalled him saying that
he opposed abortion on demand because if she'd had one,

(18:16):
he wouldn't exist. Um. Now, that said that said at
another point, his sister has an abortion because the doctor's
already had several kids, and a doctor warns her she
might die if she carries this fetus to terms that
she had some kind of health condition. Right. Um, And
Clarence is said to be understanding of this. Um. So again,

(18:38):
if you're looking for kind of like a very clear
like line between the guy who ends Roe v. Wade
and this dude, it's not in his actual opinions on
Roe v. Wade because more than anything, he barely seems
to have one right. Um. So, one interesting thing about
Thomas's career is that for a Supreme Court judge, he
basically doesn't spend any time in court arguing cases. Um,

(19:02):
that is not his job. He wants to be a
great trial lawyer, right, he wants because like that's where
the fucking money is. Um, But he doesn't ever really
do that the time he's been he's in he's works
for dan Forth for about two and a half years,
and this is the only time in his entire career
as a judge where he is litigating anything, or his
entire career in law where he litigates anything at all. Right,

(19:22):
so these are not interesting cases. His first major victory
was an argument restricting the use of vanity license plates
by rich people. Uh. He was noted, right, like, if
that's not really a big deal, you know. Um. He
was noted by some as being the office clown, though,
which is consistent with a number of recollections of people
who worked with him over the years. Now, depending on

(19:44):
who you ask, you might also consider him an office bully. However,
the person that he spent the time bullying in the
office was John Ashcroft, So I'm not going to say
that this goes in the bastard column for him. I
think it's completely fine to bully John. Yeah, alright, alright,
maybe you got a point here come back that gets

(20:05):
that gets you one year out of hell if we're
going by Catholic rules. Yeah. Um so obviously John Ashcroft,
if you don't know, was a religious weirdo who was
like a man built entirely out of hang ups. Um
and Clarence Thomas, as we are we will discuss, loves

(20:27):
to make extremely sexual jokes and comments to his coworkers.
So a big part of what he do is deliberately
try to flush fluster John Ashcroft by bringing up things
that are inappropriate. Um. Now again, Fuck. I will be
honest here. I am a little bit drawing a line there,
because all the writing on his time with Ashcroft said

(20:48):
was that he attempted to like deliberately try to fluster him. Um.
But I'm bringing up the sex stuff because one of
the most important things to know about working with Clarence
Thomas is that the man loves Miles, loves pornography. Absolutely

(21:08):
huge porn guy. I don't think you're ready for what
a porn guy Clarence Thomas is? What I mean? What
what would I even I'm trying to even think of
what I would describe if you said, what's a porn
guy to you? Yeah, somebody who has like a couple
like who subscribes to some magazines that we're going like

(21:28):
old school physical media days and has like you know,
like like a shelf of tapes. Okay, this is interesting,
This is interesting, miles. Um. I'm going to describe to
you what Clarence Thomas does about porn later and you
tell me if you think porn guy is the right
thing to call him. But okay, that's fine. And look,
you know I'm not you know, do you? But yeah,

(21:49):
I'm this guy. Okay, we'll talk about that in a
minute now. Thomas's relationship with his mother was strained for
completely understandable reasons. He grows up in a primarily male environment,
and he seems to have gone from awkward around women
to sometimes hostile around women when he was a black
civil rights activist. He came from the camp who saw

(22:09):
sexual equality as not a worthy battle, like it's about
racial equality. We're not here to fight for sexual equality.
That's a bad idea, um for for here for liberation
kind of yeah, exactly again, this is every It's like
the suffragettes in the twenties being like women need to vote,
well just white women really like you or you or
you certainly not you, but um not that was all

(22:33):
of them, just like not that but anyway, like this
is this is it's never perfect, yes, move It turns
out movements that make meaningful achievements are often filled with
people who still believe shitty things. Um so yeah, when
when he starts going to Yale and he starts to
turn away from those activists beliefs, he keeps the chauvinism.
One female CLASSMATEE later recalled, at that time, I didn't

(22:55):
know the word male chauvinist, But now looking back, I
can say he defined the term. He barely spoke to women.
He was so condescending and accustomed to them being subservient
that when I'd offer an opinion in a conversation it
irritated him. When I talked, he'd just ignored me. He'd
only talked to the men. He thought women belonged in
the kitchen. So he does marry a woman Cathy ambush Um,

(23:18):
which is a funny name to have ambush Uh, and
they stayed together for something like a decade. She is
very traditional, which suits him. She's super Catholic, but Catholics
are liberal right traditionally in American politics, so she's also
she's very traditional. She is kind of the I'm gonna
stay at home and like be a homemaker type wife,

(23:38):
but also she's deeply committed to being a political liberal
and this becomes a huge source of tension for them. Now,
as I've said before, Thomas is loudly conservative in his
social values. He rails against premarital sex. He had He
apparently told enough friends that it got out to reporters
that he would leave his wife if she cheated on
him immediately. Um, Like this is just the thing he

(23:59):
taught about people. Um. At the same time, he has
a somewhat unhinged obsession with pornography and more of the point, Miles,
he has a little bit of a habit of sharing
it with his coworkers. And I'm gonna quote now from
Strange Justice. Well, Thomas argued against premarital sex and adultery,
telling one friend that he would leave a wife on
the spot if she was unfaithful to him. He also

(24:21):
showed an unusual interest in talking about sex and gross
and explicitly anatomical language, according to several college classmates. By
the time he reached Yale Law School, Thomas was known
not only for the extreme crudity of his sexual banter,
but also for avidly watching pornographic films and reading pornographic magazines,
which he would describe to friends in lurid detail. An

(24:42):
interest in pornography might ordinarily be considered a private matter,
but colleagues recalled that Thomas was notable for the unusually
public nature of his enthusiasm for pornographic materials. His detailed
descriptions of the movies and magazines he had seen were
an open form of socializing during these years that seemed
funny to some, offensive to others, and odd to many.

(25:02):
Oh oh boy, So it's been a rough road so far,
but we finally got to the funny part where it's
not funny. Play by play of these pornos he's watching. Look,
this ends obviously in sexual harassment and a woman getting
attacked on a national stage, and that is not funny.

(25:22):
But the fact that he is in college, like showing
up at parties and being like, you guys got to
hear about this fucking porno. I just watched to like
mixed groups of people who are like, what the fuck, dude.
So honestly, I'm and I'm thinking with the vanity plates,
it just feels unnecessary and it's a it's a smack
in the face of the proper bureaucracy we're trying to want. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(25:43):
hold on, hold on, hold on. Do you guys know
what gape? Uh? Never mind, all right, it's butth hole stuff.
You ever seen a facial? Man, I'm telling us on
this one. I don't know what I was looking at
the video. I don't know what I was looking at.
I was like, is that a wind sock? I don't know.

(26:04):
Colleagues spills some coffee on his shirt and he's like,
so I was watching some German stuff the other night.
Let me tell you. I mean now that you mention it.
I didn't mention anything. I said, I'm sorry I spilled
something on you. Um god, yeah it is. This is
part of a broad and a really weird and unsettling
pattern for Thomas friends and co workers. And again this

(26:27):
is a lot of this comes from the book Strange
Justice by Jane Mayer, and I think Jill Abramson is
her name. UM. Two reporters. Jane, we've talked about a lot.
She's a huge reporter on the Koch Brothers. Um. They
find so many people with stories of Clarence talking in
explicit detail about porn that he watches. It is like
a normal thing in his life. Um, and friends and

(26:49):
co workers are called that. Most of the time. At work,
he's a quiet man. He's very polite, very respectful, very normal,
and then every now and then he just kind of
goes bug fuck in ways people around him don't really
know how to cope with. One friend told Jane Mayer quote,
one percent of the time he would go off the
deep end. He'd say stuff I can't possibly repeat, stuff

(27:12):
that would turn your ears red, things having to do
with a person's anatomy. He'd say things like suck out
of my ass with a straw all the time. But
this was different. It was a lot worse, And I
don't feel comfortable talking about Wait, wait, wait, this guy
just set the fucking floor as sucks out of my asshole.
That's the normal ship. Yeah, oh my god. I mean

(27:33):
even in my joking, I was still being like Coya
a little bit, but I mean it's the graphic detail
that mix. And he's also has like this, he occupies
this weird space of like a sexually repressed, like teenager
kid and he's like, yeah, you know what, I kind
of nasty ship I watch. Yeah, let me tell you

(27:54):
about this weird ship I saw at the porn theater.
And I think that is like he is a connoisseur
of pornograph the There are people who like worked at
porn theaters in d C with stories of him coming
into written things like he goes in for the weird ship,
like he is an obsessive consumer of this. He finds
like baffling and bizarre porn and then he just like

(28:14):
talks about it at work in the government. Um, just
like and also like it's like a fucking weird character
from a fucking like comedy where it's like my boss
is really like time, like he's like this and then
he goes off the deep end. Yeah, yeah, it's bizarre. Um.

(28:35):
There are rumors that he was abusive in his first
marriage physically abuses abuse. If there are not allegations from
his ex wife that I am aware of. And it's
kind of to be honest, I from what I have seen,
at least, I don't think there's a lot there um,
at least not that I ran into. Meyer and Abramson
note that like in there and again they're very critical biography.

(28:58):
He receives custody of their son after the divorce, um,
which is why they think that he there might not
have been anything to get like, these are just rumors
around him, as opposed to like somebody making an allegation.
So they are out there, you can find them. I'm
not aware of like much solid there um he does.
This is actually kind of something we're really worth noting.

(29:19):
He's make sure to take custody of his son after
the divorce, which is him breaking this one cycle in
his family history, right right, He is the he is
the man, the father in his family line who does
not hand over his fucking kid, not his son. Not
well exactly right, Yeah it doesn't. He doesn't have a daughter,

(29:40):
so yeah, we don't know about that. Yeah you're you
are right, Miles. It has not been completely tested. You lucky,
you must sign um now there are rumors. Oh sorry,
Aeric said that now at any rate, Dan Fourth, the
guy he's been working for, becomes a U. S. Senator
in nineteen seven the seven, and Thomas leaves. His employee

(30:02):
has an opportunity to go with him. Did he see?
But he's like, that would be in his mind kind
of a lower prestige job than working for a state
attorney general. Um. And more to the point, Dan Fourth,
before he leaves, helps Thomas get a job in the
private sector. This is like the high paid lawyer job
he's been wanting all the time, as a lawyer representing

(30:23):
them on Santo Chemical Corporation. Yeah, this is like the
one lawyer job he does other than like politics. Ship
and it's Monsanto. Hey, I mean that's what he wanted, right,
He wanted his big, cushy earth fucker jobs. Does he
fox the ship out of the earth? Now? Obviously Monsanto

(30:48):
has done a number of questionable things. I don't really
see evidence that Clarence was super directly involved in it.
His job was much more um, his job was much
more like rudimentary, sort of like mechanic. His job was
much more mechanical. He was registering herbicides with the e
p A. Right, he was the guy who was like
like interfacing with the e p A in order to

(31:09):
handle the registration of product project products. Um, so he's
not like, he's not like the trigger man they send
out when they poison people, right, Like, he's the guy
who's who's like doing this very kind of like meat
and potatoes role exactly. He's like they're like, oh, wow,
mon Santo, you must do some yeah yeah, like with

(31:29):
sate and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, big stuff. He
just fucking registers him. He fucking filled out paperwork. Can't
even commit crimes, right, Oh my god, get away from
your such a fucking nerd. You don't even you just
register the fucking round up. Get out of here. So
the main benefit of this job is that it doubles

(31:50):
his salary, which obviously allows him to live in much
more comfort while he waits for his next political break,
which comes near the end of nineteen seventy nine. Now
this was through Dan Fourth again, who taking a real
shine to Clarence Dance for Dan Fourth decided that he
wanted to integrate his Senate staff, and he asked Thomas
if he wanted a job as a legislative assistant. Clarence
agreed on the condition that he worked on absolutely no

(32:12):
quote black issues, right, And this is a big part
of what he liked about Thomas. Thomas does not want
to work on black issues. He said, Okay, I'll okay. No,
Dan Fourth is not saying that you want a job,
and Thomas is like, the only way I'll do that
is if I'm not doing black stuff. Right. This is
part of why he wants. He likes working from Ansanto

(32:33):
because he gets experienced in environmental and energy like law,
and he wants to do that because it's not, well,
there's money, and it's also not at all associated with
like civil rights. It's nothing, has nothing to do in
people's So it's like it's like comfortable in that sense
that he doesn't have to that have to reckon in
his consciousness versus like, no, I think it's your right
to poison people. Yeah. And also I think he doesn't

(32:56):
want to get like pigeonholed, right, Like I don't want
to just be the like the black guy who does
black law stuff, right, Like if I'm going to be,
I don't want to. Also, Yeah, that's also what he's saying,
which is again directly the opposite of what he claimed
to his grandfather. He wanted to do as a lawyer anyway. Uh.
He seems to have been good at this job. Again,

(33:17):
not particularly noteworthy, although legislative assistants generally aren't. Uh. The
one thing that his colleagues really recognized in Clarence was
his remarkable ambition. Mayor and Abramson write quote, less than
a year after arriving in Washington, over lunch with the
reporter in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post Dispatch,
Thomas mentioned that he had his eye on a better job.
John Sawyer, now the papers Washington bureau chief, recalled being

(33:40):
astonished when Thomas, who was an affable but completely unknown
aid to a freshman senator, announced that the spot he
wanted was nothing less than a seat on the U. S.
Supreme Court. So he's he is gunning for the job
that he gets pretty much from the beginning of his
time over here. Yeah, Yeah, he's he's he figures out
that this is like pas stable for him if he

(34:00):
kind of makes the right in roads with the Republican Party,
and it's like a fucking laser from this point and
he's incentivized in the darkest fucking ways, and it's also
wild to think that the reason like he even gets
his head turned in this direction of like law or
politics is because you know, he got rejected by the

(34:22):
Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. I guess the form of
Atlanta private like like law firms and ship like guys
like oh really, yeah, really, okay, I've got something for you.
Then yeah, I got ideas. So Thomas makes his mind
up early on to play to the right in order
to secure himself a more prestigious career, but he also

(34:44):
finds himself increasingly in ideological step, not just with conservatives,
but with the extreme fringes of the right wing, which
we're actively moving in to take over from liberal Republicans. Again.
This is the last era against in which liberal Publicans
are influential. In other episodes we've talked I mean we're
talking about Dan Forth now, who was one liberal Republican.

(35:05):
We've talked a lot in the past about Henry Kissinger
appreciator Nelson Rockefeller, who was a Republican and also a
very like a liberal. UM. This is the period in
which those people are being like held underwater until the
bubble stop right Um and two of the people who
are big factors in this are two black conservatives, both

(35:27):
of whom have a huge influence on Clarence Thomas. Now,
one of these guys is Thomas Sowell, an an economist
and a writer who I was given a lot of
this guy's fucking books when I was a little kid. Um.
Sowell raised rage against raged against the double A c
P as a snobby click of elites. Uh. He called
out affirmative action because quote those who were already well

(35:48):
off were made even better off, while the ostensible beneficiaries
were either neglected or made worse off. And it's interesting
to me because, like so Well is kind of calling
out Clarence Thomas because clear he's he's a he's a
middle class kid who, because he's middle class, is able
to take advantage of some of these like affirmative action
programs because he's in a position to do so. That
is what that soul is. I don't think that's a

(36:10):
good reason not to support those programs, but that's what
Soul's arguing. And he's kind of talking directly about Clarence Thomas. Um.
Which is interesting. Now, Um, this does not seem to
have had any influence on Clarence Thomas, who loves Soul
and later said that encountering his ideas was like quote,
pouring half a glass of water on the desert. I

(36:31):
just soaked it up. Now. One thing Soul love to
talk about was the fact that women made less than
men because that's what they wanted. They took easier jobs
so that they could have babies later. So it's fine,
it's all good, Miles, it's all good. They make that
choice for their babies that they're gonna have in the

(36:53):
future because they don't have other opic women, all right,
they want the easier jobs because they can't work so
hard when they make the babies. That's right. What a
hate patronizing. It is a really patronizing. I mean. And
the fact is, like that ship is that thinking still

(37:14):
is that is exists now in substantial way. We haven't
moved that far from fucking cis head. Dudes. Let me
tell you something about a woman's body that I have
no corporal experience with. Certain we're going to have that
thinking used by Clarence Thomas in a terrible Supreme Court decision,

(37:34):
and like, I don't know, three months for he's like
I was watching Doctor Oz instead of vaginas like a
self cleaning oven. That's why they do not need a O. B. G.
Y in. That's a law and medical practice. Yeah, I'm
making it a crime to do medicine miles. You know
what else is a crime? How low the prices are

(37:56):
on our sponsors products? Literally illegal. If you buy any
of these products, the FBI will break down your door
and shoot your dog. And the SEC is coming after
you no matter what. You're fucked. You're fucked. They're on you.
So is that? How is that? Is that the script
that the company sent us? Are we good the version
of it? I think I think Sophie stepped away napping

(38:18):
on the job. I'm just angrily shaking my head at
you because I have no fucking words. So products, thanks ah, products.
So the other black Republican who influenced Thomas in this

(38:38):
period was Jay Parker, a writer and a fire brand
who believed the government should end all state and local
aid for food, clothing, shelter, and everything else. Um now,
so Jay Parker not a great guy, right by that
little description. Here's what's cool. Jay Parker is, obviously, because
of everything we just said, very useful to Reagan Eric
conservatives who come to power shortly after Thomas gets to

(39:01):
d C. But Parker is also very useful to another
group of white conservatives, the apartheid government of South Africa.
Why did why do these why did this group of
people enter the game? Yeah? If this is a cool story, Miles,
who may not be the right word. This is the

(39:22):
thing that happened. Starting in the Nixon administration, South Africa
launched a massive propaganda blitz aimed at shoring up their reputation.
They spent more than a hundred million dollars a year
targeting fast segments of the US population, and this included
in one of its odd chapters, reaching out to Black America.

(39:42):
The apartheid government of South Africa bought several prominent black
organizers to push their cause, generally without wide success. Jay
Parker was one of these guys. And I'm gonna quote
now from Rebecca Davis of Rhodes University. J Parker promoted
the entrance of the Transkay and ven To before taking
on the representation of the South African government, and in

(40:03):
two thousand nine wrote an unrepentant biography telling lye titled
Courage to Put My Country Above Color. William A. Keys,
a former policy advisor to Ronald Reagan was hired by
the South African Embassy to act as pratorious point man
to the U S Black community and was paid almost
four hundred thousand dollars for his services. So this is

(40:24):
number one a thing that a bunch of guys, a
bunch of particularly like black speakers and writers who are
associated with the Reagan administration, take apartheid money, and they
justified by saying, like, well, they're fighting against communism. That's
why j Parker calls his biography putting My Country above color, right, Like, yes,
they are a nightmare racist regime, but it's more important

(40:47):
to fight communism. I was protecting America. Wait, so with
the interest, yes, the interests of the country that enslaved
people like me. I'm that's my priority actually to do
what's in the best interest of that entity more so
than the people that were oppressed. That's how do you
do you get where I'm going? That is literally the
title of Jay Parker's biography should be Yeah, I mean,

(41:11):
they have slaved us. But but but what sir? But communism? Oh? Yes, okay, yeah,
we will. I think at some point we might talk
about like the apartheid government of South Africa's American PR Company.
And because it is a story. J Parker, this guy

(41:33):
who was a bought and paid for instrument of the
apartheid governor, I can't say that enough, is one of
Clarence Thomas's intellectual like icons UM and also a good
personal friend of his. UM. Thomas and Parker like work
together at the Reagan White House UM, and you know
the fact that he befriends Parker winds up being very

(41:54):
good for his career. Thomas gets put on a job,
gets a job on the incoming administration transition team with
the e e o C or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
And since the Reaganites didn't like the idea of equal anything,
this job was about gutting the organization, not running it right.
Like that's why they're they're putting them on there. Obviously

(42:15):
this is not really in line with Thomas's promise to
his grandfather that he was gonna fight the good fight
in his own way, but it does bring him closer
to power. So, working as the transition lead for the
e o C, he begins what is unfortunately a continuing
negative trend. Taking his personal opinions on what struggling people

(42:35):
ought to do and forcing them into government policy. So
Thomas has a weird bug up his ass about class
action lawsuits, which had emerged in this period to become
the primary method by which people who are not rich
and powerful held corporations and the government accountable. One of
the first things he does at the e O C
is he sends out a memo suggesting that worker discrimination

(42:56):
suits should have to be proven on a case by
case basis, one by one, rather than being done via
class class action. He also co authors the report in
nineteen eighty that attacks the existing definition of sexual harassment.
The old definition had included unwelcome sexual attention, either verbal
or physical. Thomas argued this was too broad and that

(43:16):
including verbal comments would lead to a quote barrage of
trivial complaints. The report he helped author concluded that the
elimination of personal slights and sexual advances which contribute to
an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment is a goal
impossible to reach. And take it from me, the guy
who has to talk about porn NonStop, it's just gonna

(43:38):
be basically, it's gonna be a mess. Guys. Yeah, I
might as well wear a ball gap and a leather
mask and some restraints. I don't know. That might be
pretty hot, but I don't know. I was just watching
this video gotta thinking like what, First, let me tell
you about the com shots. So imagine there's likely a
tarantula made out of cock heading right towards your face.

(44:00):
And then when it goes off, you know those oreo
ads where you're mixing two of them together and there's
just that splash of the white foam, white foam. Oh no, yeah,
it's mad. It's frothy. It's one of those. It's one
of those frothy it's like the top of a what
what I imagine people drink in Seattle, one of those

(44:22):
foamy lattees exactly exactly. I don't drink those much, but
you know that kind of needs a mustache. He's it's again,
every single thing. It's like you're starting to make sense
of how he moves, Like, of course he sexual harassment
can't be real, because then anything he says is like
gross and over the line and offensive. It's even one

(44:45):
of these is interesting, is they're like in that last line,
you see they're talking about personal slights and sexual advances
contribute to an intimidating, hostile or offencing work environment, offensive
work environment. But they're saying stopping that as impossible, so
why would we try all that hard? Right, Like that's
that's the conclusion, which is amazing, which is wild because

(45:07):
it but then the again, because there's no such thing
as hippo, but they're just they just do whatever they
want because on the other side, it's like, well, we
want to stop every single person from doing this thing though, Yeah,
but it's actually like there's no way, there's no way,
there's no way, you can't even anything, you can't even
do anything about it. Yeah, it's again, this is this
is a broader question. But like when we're talking about
dealing with conservatives and their attempts to funk people over,

(45:30):
there's no point in treating them like they are good
faith actors because their their goal is to restrict you
and do whatever the funk. They want to stop pretending
that that's the case to continue to be like, but
they just said this other thing about a parallel subject
like mother, that's not where they're at. They use the

(45:52):
like the skin of humans to be like it's all
about doing whatever we want to ever, Yeah, it's yeah again,
it's like Clarence Amas being like, I don't believe interracial
marriage is right. Oh, now I want to have one,
so now it's fine. Like though, yeah, like that, he's
it doesn't matter, like bringing it up to like again,
we're kind of acknowledging these things and a number of

(46:13):
hypocrisies because it's important to note it for history, but like,
none of this matters, and an argumentative standpoint, They're not
there to have a good faith conversation. They're there to
exercise power in ways that hurt people. It's not any
kind of consistency of fun. Yeah, it's just yeah, it's cool,
it's cool and good. It's like taking the apartheid South
African government's money, uh, in order to claim that you're

(46:35):
just such an anti communist, this has to be done.
Um So. While Thomas ingratiated himself to the Reagan administration,
he also began increasingly publicizing his existence as a black Conservative.
He joined an organization created by Thomas Sowell and started
giving interviews where he would talk about his hard scrabble
upbringing and how traditional right wing values had gotten him

(46:57):
through a tumultuous childhood of poverty. Now this is not
really true, right, Yeah, there's certainly a number of like
his hard scrabble aspects of his youth and especially his
grandpa's story. But like he comes into his grandpa's middle
class life and is is you know, taken care of
as a result of that hard core conservative values exactly,

(47:21):
And a lot of his recollections of his family later
to conservatives are deliberate lies or at least exaggerations that
he made to sell his image better. He told one
audience quote, where I grew up or when I grew up,
there was more a feeling of responsibility for kids that
you brought into the world. These were values you learned.
The government didn't have a damn thing to do about it.

(47:41):
And like that's the opposite of your childhood, Clarence. You
were like your whole family was like a bunch of dudes,
like being like, no, I'm not I ain't taken care
of that kid. Like that was not the values that
you learned from your family. Clarence. Tis I mean he's
I mean, I mean this, he's a fucking terminator. Yeah,

(48:02):
he didn't give a funk. He's got a figure it out.
It's like all the calculations are made like, lie about
this ship. Lie about this ship. They were looking for it.
The worst of it is when he lies about his sister,
because Clarence Thomas is super fine with throwing members of
his family under the bus for political clout. The book
Strange Justice covers a fateful interview that he had with
the reporter from the Washington Post. Quote. It was in

(48:24):
this interview that Thomas first publicly denounced his sister's reliance
on public assistance. She is so dependent, Thomas told the Post.
She gets mad when the mailman is late with her
welfare check. What's worse, he continued, is that now her
kids feel entitled to the check too. They have no
motivation for doing better or getting out of that situation. Now, Miles,

(48:45):
there's a number of ways this could be fucked up,
but I want to be perfectly clear here. All of
that was a vicious and calculated lie. His sister had
received government assistance at some point. She was not on
welfare when he made this statement, nor had she been
for a particularly expended extended period of time. The only
reason of her period of her life in which she

(49:06):
was on government assistance was so she had taken up
working double shifts for minimum ways in a nursing home
in order to not be on public assistance. Right in
the period when he makes these claims, the reason that
she had spent a brief period of time on welfare
was not that she was dependent. It was because she
had had to quit her job when their aunt got
sick and was dying, and she took her aunt in

(49:28):
and took care of her while Clarence Thomas did nothing. Yes,
that's why she was briefly on government assists, Like that
is a fucked up thing to say about goddamn, yeah,
you need help, you need Yeah, there's nothing wrong with

(49:52):
you want to then make up a lie to also
smear the smear your sister and also obscure the fact
that you're in eight ship nephew too, because what he's
saying is that, like, well, she's just been ruined by
welfare and now her kids are being ruined by it.
She's so dependent and the reality is like she is
making the health and well being of a loved one

(50:13):
her responsibility when you wouldn't. And that's why she briefly
had to go on welfare before taking double shifts for
minimum wage in order to get off of it. Like wow,
like Jesus Christ. It's just disgusting too, man, because again,
with his terminator like precision, he is willing at every
turn to co modify his blackness like and weaponize it

(50:36):
in service of further white supremacy. And but then we're
also hearing his fucked up story, this business person who
had never felt he belonged anywhere, and it's like he's
the it's like this like horrible fucking echo of like
American society that manifested back into the form of this
person who has been like, yeah, man, I've seen a

(50:59):
lot of fun because like, you know, fucking America. But
also now I'm here too, let's keep it going. Yeah,
it's freaky, man, It's yeah, he's bad. So the fact
that he was willing to throw his sister under the
bus in such a gross way for such mild cloud
was noted at the time by his colleagues is kind

(51:22):
of sucked up, and he felt defensive enough about it
that he lied to one of his aids and assured
him that the comments had been taken out of context,
and he'd been so upset when that journalist had meanly
quoted him that he had to drive through the night
to apologize to his sister. Now, when they heard this claim,
Jane Mayor and Jill Abramson went to his sister to

(51:42):
ask if he had driven through the night to apologize.
No recollection of that apology, not from m m a um.
So that's cool, um, And obviously this is bad. You
shouldn't do this as a person, to your sister, to
anybody really, but goes over great in Ronald Reagan's Republican Party.

(52:03):
This is a really good way to make your career
as a Republican. UM. He gets offered two different jobs
with the administration. Now, one would have been working as
a low level policy aide, and his work would have
had nothing to do with race. He would be handling
environmental and energy issues. But that work was not glamorous
and it paid for shit. So he turns down the job.

(52:23):
The next gig they offer him is Assistant Secretary for
Civil Rights in the Department of Education. So Part three, Miles,
you and me are going to talk about his entrance
into a presidentially appointed job in the Reagan administration and
his road to the Supreme Court. But Miles, when don't
we talk about your own role road to the Supreme Court? Yeah,

(52:46):
let's do it. Um. This episode will be played at
my confirmation hearing more tribunals, so when the full takeover happens,
I don't know one of them. At Miles of Gray
on Twitter and Instagram and just podcast Daily That guys,
if you like news and politics every day for twenty
day fiance. Have you like weed in reality television? Or

(53:06):
Miles and Jack got mad boosties? If you like basketball?
Three places to see me. I do like the idea
of you standing before the Senate being confirmed as a
Supreme Court justice, and like Ted Cruz is like, now,
Mr Gray, is it true that you uh you you
you've you've ingested an illegal narcotic known as marijuana and
you just push play on an exerpt of this episode

(53:29):
where you're saying sun chips by come chips by sun
chips Yeah, Billy by Billy g Yeah exactly? Is it
true that you said I am a gross fuck turd
on an episode of The Daily Ze guist number four
four three three, Yeah it is. I would have I
would have been like which time? Yeah, I don't know

(53:49):
if I said that exactly? May I said? I may
have said sniffling fucked turd or something like that. I
don't know, but anyway, any other questions are we be good? Okay? Cool?
It would be fun to do, And I'm like, now,
can we get to the gladiator phase of the Supreme
Court confirmation hearing. I can't wait to fight the other
fucking nominees. It would be really it would be really

(54:10):
fun to get confirmed by the Senate because you would
get to repeatedly say to Ted Cruz, didn't didn't a
guy like call your wife ugly? And then you had
to pretend he was awesome for years? How do you
feel about that? How does your wife feel about that?
Are still together? Oh my god? Wow, dude, dude, I

(54:30):
read that thing where like your daughter was like, YO,
leave him mom. Yeah, that's really fucked up. I commend you,
bro for not letting that affect you in any way
visit being totally fine, being so chill with that. Alright, man,
cancoon on three. So Miles, that's our episode. Thank you everyone.

(54:51):
Check out Miles Fiance, the Daily Zeitgeist, and that basketball
podcast with Boosts in the name. I don't know Basketball's langs.
What does that mean? What does that mean? Man? You
can jump? You got vertical vertical takeoff ability. You got
mad boost ees. All right, well, I do have a
package from UPS, but I haven't picked it up from

(55:12):
the place yet. Oh my god, that was such a
boomer joke. Get the funk out you. Sorry, I can't
hear you, Sophie. My ear horn is in the other room.
My Eagles vinyl is about to arrive. Let me tell
you about the Eagles of all the bands. Don Henley,

(55:32):
that's it. That's the name of a guy from the Eagles.
No Miles for me. It's Creedence all the way baby.
Oh my god. But okay, Robert has a book called
After the Revolution. Can buy it ak bras cools on Media.
Okay that episodes sucking over that joke. Thank you, Hey everybody.

(55:57):
Robert Evans here, hosts of Behind the Basstreots in a
bunch of their podcasts. Here to let you know that
Cool Zone Media is going on break next week. This
isn't something we normally do, but as our producer Sophie
is currently on the run from the a t F,
it was the only option. So next week there will
be no new episodes of Behind the Bastards, No new
episodes of it could happen here? Uh no new episodes

(56:20):
of Nothing. We will be back the next week after
the week of the first UM, to continue providing you
with far too many podcasts, So just chill out. Next week,
that's what we will be doing, chilling out and hiding
Sophie from the A t F. Love you all, see
you soon.