Anita Hill

My faithful readers will remember that I started at The Sun as a sportswriter more than 30 years ago, and they have heard me describe some pretty unpleasant exchanges with both professional athletes and my fellow sportswriters. For all those years in the locker room and on the sidelines, I believed I had it coming to me. I had chosen a nontraditional field for a woman, and my presence was considered something between an invasion of privacy and an insult. I was a provocation just showing up for work.

The report by Politico over the weekend revealing that GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was accused by two women of sexual harassment while he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association in the mid-1990s has led to swift condemnation -- not of anything Mr. Cain may have done but of the media's appetite for such stories. Some conservative defenders of Mr. Cain, who is at or near the top in most polls of Republican voters, have compared the story to what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas referred to as the “high-tech lynching” he received at his confirmation hearings when he was confronted with allegations of sexual harassment.

This is a story about the reactions some women had to Professor Anita Hill's ordeal.Anita Hill, of course, is the law professor who claimed that Clarence Thomas, now confirmed to be a justice on the Supreme Court, had sexually harassed her when the two worked together some 10 years ago.Hill's charge sparked three days of some of the most dramatic and contentious testimony ever heard in Congress, or on television, and supposedly raised the nation's consciousness...

My faithful readers will remember that I started at The Sun as a sportswriter more than 30 years ago, and they have heard me describe some pretty unpleasant exchanges with both professional athletes and my fellow sportswriters. For all those years in the locker room and on the sidelines, I believed I had it coming to me. I had chosen a nontraditional field for a woman, and my presence was considered something between an invasion of privacy and an insult. I was a provocation just showing up for work.

A lot has been said about this being the year of the woman candidate, and rightly so. Over 60 percent more women are running for Congress this year than two years ago. Many expect to win.In the Senate races, about half the women candidates are likely to win. Eleven are running and, according to the most recent polls, women candidates are ahead in five races. In a sixth race, the woman candidate appears to be closing the gap between her and a male incumbent.Two women candidates (Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein)

THE name Anita Hill now conveys so much more than the woman herself that it can be used as a verb, as in "Let's Anita Hill this thing."That's what many women are saying about the issue of child care, that now that it is in the forefront of national consciousness it is time to act. A march for child care as big as those for abortion rights, one woman said, and it sounded good.At a professional meeting last week, one woman after another talked about the sick sitter, the late sitter, the illegal sitter paid off the books, while the others nodded with sisterly solidarity.

"Race, Gender, and Power in America," by Anita Faye Hill and Emma Coleman Jordan. New York: Oxford University Press. 302 pages. $25It was coincidence that the new book about black women and feminism co-edited by Anita Hill hit the bookstores just 11 days before the Million Man March on Washington. But the timing couldn't have been better.In fact, Julianne Malveaux, a harsh critic of the males-only march idea of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, wrote the foreword to "Race, Gender, and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings."

When Congress enacts a new civil rights bill, Sens. John Danforth, R-Mo., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., will probably get the credit. But we will always think of it as the Hill-Duke Act. Anita Hill and David Duke changed the public opinion environment in the nation in recent weeks, just enough to change the political perspectives and stakes in the debate over civil rights legislation.President Bush vetoed the 1990 civil rights bill. He called each subsequent substitute version "a quota bill" and would not endorse any. Even if it were a quota bill in 1990 (and it was not, in our view)

As a so-called "two-fer" -- black and female, a minority twice over in the professional workplace -- Professor Anita F. Hill came into yesterday's hearing bearing a double burden."

Washington. -- Lurking just below the surface of the tedious legal arguments and lurid sex talk that dominated the Senate's debate over Sen. Bob Packwood's diaries last week was the enduring legacy of Anita Hill.Not that the painful episode two years ago -- when the all-male Judiciary Committee was pilloried for its crude handling of Ms. Hill's sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- was a decisive factor in the diary matter, or even a particularly relevant one.But it contributed mightily to setting the scene for the Packwood drama, and it haunted the entire debate.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of calling an ex after hoisting a few too many can immediately identify with Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who left a message two weeks ago with Anita Hill asking her to apologize and explain herself. Mrs. Thomas was likely not intoxicated (hey, it was 7:30 on a Saturday morning) but perhaps she was tipsy on moral certainty. She heads a conservative political group, Liberty Central, that has taken positions on legal issues — including President Obama's health care reform — that are likely to be considered by the high court.

Clarence Thomas may not be a great Supreme Court justice, but he is the most interesting one of his day to publishers. And he may be a great justice. Two new biographies of him were published last month. Two earlier ones of less than stellar quality came out in 1993 and early this year. A favorable scholarly study of his first five years on the court came out in 1999 (First Principles by Scott Gerber). An unfavorable scholarly study came out last year (The Real Clarence Thomas by Christopher E. Smith and Joyce A. Baugh)

BOSTON - What do we say now? I told you so? It has been nearly 10 years since Anita Hill was called from her Oklahoma campus to testify on Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court. It has been nearly a decade since those hearings set off a stunning national furor about sexual harassment, about what he said and she said. Had Mr. Thomas, the former head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, trod on a woman's rights? Had he harassed her with porn talk? Was she out to get him?

WASHINGTON -- This has not been a good week for American women. It has been bad enough, in fact, that you have to wonder when they are going to use their political muscle.A military jury has handed down a verdict in the case of Sgt. Maj. Gene C. McKinney that seems to send a message that women in the service are taking considerable risk if they complain about sexual harassment.And the White House has come down so heavily on Kathleen Willey that she must wonder why she ever even mentioned her accusation that President Clinton harassed her in the White House.

Six years ago, it was Anita Hill at the center of the frenzy that is the sex-tinged Washington scandal: the round-the-clock media reports, the leaks, the rumors, the dissection of her sexual harassment complaints against former boss Clarence Thomas, who was headed to a seat on the Supreme Court.Today, it's Monica Lewinsky feeling the hot breath of the media ** and the nation in Paula Jones' sexual harassment case against the president of the United States.While Hill has a more personal interest in the case then most, many women are equally engaged in this latest intersection of sex and politics: from women with no connection to public life, to former Colorado Rep. Patricia Schroeder, to the so-called post-feminists such as Christina Hoff Sommers.

Here's something for the early birds: Anita Hill, whose claims of sexual harassment failed to deter the Senate from putting Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, talks about her new book on "Today" (7 a.m.-9 a.m., WBAL, Channel 11). It's called "Speaking Truth to Power."There's a bonus to "Today": if you're not sick of "Riverdance": a performance from the Irish-inspired show of music and fancy footwork.Pub Date: 9/30/97

Here's something for the early birds: Anita Hill, whose claims of sexual harassment failed to deter the Senate from putting Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, talks about her new book on "Today" (7 a.m.-9 a.m., WBAL, Channel 11). It's called "Speaking Truth to Power."There's a bonus to "Today": if you're not sick of "Riverdance": a performance from the Irish-inspired show of music and fancy footwork.Pub Date: 9/30/97

WASHINGTON -- For more than two years, the Senate has done its best to keep Sen. Bob Packwood's troubles on the back burner. But this week, they could be forced front and center, pushing the Senate into the last thing it wants: a replay of the Anita Hill disaster.Mr. Packwood is the Oregon Republican who is alleged to have approached women he was attracted to by grabbing them unexpectedly, forcing himself against them and kissing them.There were other accusations of official misconduct against the senator, including tampering with evidence, but they never caught the public imagination in the same way.Sen.

Dribs and drabs from the notebookUpset by all the polls saying President Clinton's a lock to be re-elected Tuesday? Feel like dishing a little Clinton dirt? Check out tomorrow's "The Zoh Show" on WCBM-AM (680) for an interview with David Brock, author of "The Seduction of Hillary Clinton."Brock's credentials as a conservative and a Clinton basher are well documented. Once described by Texas columnist Molly Ivins as "that wretched little right-wing reporter," he's been on Hillary's case for a good while, reporting on her role in Travelgate and her supposed connections in the suicide of Vincent Foster.

Follow this closely. It gets tricky.First, the PTA of the Thomas G. Pullen Creative and Performing Arts School in Landover invites Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to speak at an eighth-grade graduation ceremony scheduled for this Monday. The principal of the school approves the invitation.Jerome Clark, the school superintendent of Prince George's County, rescinds the invitation after school board member Kenneth E. Johnson threatens to protest the appearance of THAT HORRIBLE NEGRO at the commencement exercises.