Today brings the PBS debut of the must-see documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words. Thomas walks us through his extraordinary life, which began in Georgia in crushing poverty, explains the rage he felt at Catholic school when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered and his resultant turn to radical black nationalism in college, then his turn back to the right and his subsequent rise.
Thomas has, as you would expect, a lot to say about the 1991 circus that attended his hearings to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, over which Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden presided. The film, directed by Michael Pack, includes a clip of Biden spouting gobbledygook, to which Thomas replies, “One of the things you do in hearings is you have to sit there and look attentively at people you know have no idea what they’re talking about. I have to be perfectly honest with you — you sit there, and you have no idea what they are talking about.”
I wrote here about all of the ways the documentary gives the lie to the media’s portrayal of Justice Thomas.