GINNI THOMAS STAYS AWFULLY BUSY…. The bizarre right-wing activism of Ginni Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, has taken on a higher profile this year. As she sees it, “there’s a war going on against tyranny,” and in her worldview, the tyrants are America’s elected leaders.
What’s more, Thomas heads an activist group that receives massive, undisclosed contributions from secret donors, some of whom may have cases before the high court.
But Ginni Thomas is also generating headlines with efforts that seem pretty creepy. ABC News’ Jake Tapper had this report late yesterday:
A few days ago, Brandeis University professor Anita Hill received a message on her voice mail at work.
“Good morning, Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” said the voice, “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”
Hill didn’t think the call was real.
“I initially thought it was a prank,” Hill tells ABC News. “And if it was, I thought the authorities should know about it.”
Hill contacted campus police, but it turns out that Thomas really did place the call, saying she was “extending an olive branch” in the hopes of starting a dialog that would lead to an apology.
Of course, this isn’t just creepy, it’s accusatory. There’s no reason to assume Hill has anything to apologize for — if anything, the legal scholar’s credibility remains unimpeachable, which is more than we can say about the strange Thomases.
What’s more, Ginni Thomas’ voicemail didn’t exactly sound like an olive branch. She called Hill’s office at 7:31 a.m. on Oct. 9 — a Saturday morning — to reiterate her assumption that Hill was lying, when there’s no evidence to point to such a conclusion.
The whole thing is so bizarre, I’m finding it hard to wrap my head around it. Is Ginni Thomas trying to embarrass her husband? Is she trying to get her name in the media to help with her activist fundraising? Does she think her husband was lying, and left the voicemail as some kind of bizarre coping mechanism?
For her part, Hill told the NYT, “I appreciate that no offense was intended, but she can’t ask for an apology without suggesting that I did something wrong, and that is offensive.”
