Speaker 1: Yes, who of course I would suck Elon Musk for
Speaker 1: the right amount of money, which is what six million
Speaker 1: dollars or more? Miles, what number did you just throw out.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie about what I said. I'll say
Speaker 1: it again. I'll call bucks. Wow. No, definitely not. You
Speaker 1: know why, because I'll turn it into a story. I'll
Speaker 1: make money, Like on the back of that. I'm just
Speaker 1: launching on the I Heart radio network in April. I
Speaker 1: fucked Elon Musk. No money, A lot of money in
Speaker 1: the world space x X Miles Gray and Elon Musk
Speaker 1: a match made in hell. You really cornered me. See
Speaker 1: you have me on the show just to get me
Speaker 1: to say some ship like that as wild? Anyway, I
Speaker 1: do it for It was not difficult, That's all I
Speaker 1: got to say. I think I would throw out ten
Speaker 1: million first, but I would go as low as six.
Speaker 1: That's good, I think. I don't tell us tell him that, No,
Speaker 1: I don't mean. I don't mean to like, you know,
Speaker 1: cheap in it. I would realistically, I think for it
Speaker 1: to really work for me, I'll probably do it for
Speaker 1: like six fifty wow, Jesus, so like two car payments? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least like a PS five and no that
Speaker 1: is good. Yeah, PS five would be nice. Yeah if
Speaker 1: he just what if he just shows up at your
Speaker 1: house with a PS five and controller, Well then you
Speaker 1: know what I'm telling Alexa to put on some smooth jazz.
Speaker 1: There we go, smooth jazz that should move with with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. Oh, yeah it's me and uh you know,
Speaker 1: uh David Sanborn. You see, I think I would try
Speaker 1: because I'm younger than him, so it's probably he can't
Speaker 1: tell the difference between me and a teenager. Um. I
Speaker 1: would put on like like Austrian yodeling albums and try
Speaker 1: to convince him it's what like the kids were into
Speaker 1: these days. It's like everybody on Reddit loves these yodeling
Speaker 1: albums Elon, and then try to see even get him
Speaker 1: to tweet about like his favorite yodelers. I bet we
Speaker 1: could do it like just running. So you want to
Speaker 1: run an OP on him? Okay, I want to get
Speaker 1: paid first, like payment payment is first, and then fucking
Speaker 1: with him a little bit. Well, you gotta we have
Speaker 1: to run an op on someone to show like the
Speaker 1: veracity of our claims, like there's strength to the business model,
Speaker 1: you know, where you can be like, this is actually
Speaker 1: how our marketing works, Like we run ops on celebrities
Speaker 1: and they unwittingly support your products. Yeah, so big yodeling,
Speaker 1: get at me right if you want to get it
Speaker 1: on the ground floor. If you're representing a yodeler, uh
Speaker 1: and you want Elon Musk to tweet about them, I
Speaker 1: probably can't make that happen. But I like really famous
Speaker 1: like child who yodeled in Walmart. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: Elon Musk would be like doubt, Oh yeah that kids
Speaker 1: all that kids like forty three now and he's all
Speaker 1: like his yodeling is all sucked up because his voice
Speaker 1: change because oh yeah, because he went like he went
Speaker 1: like hard right too. I think he's he's he's a
Speaker 1: proud right now. Yeah. So what you're saying is Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: we love him, I'm sure. Um. Well, welcome to Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards, the podcast that is three and a half
Speaker 1: minutes in. Um we talk about bad people. This week
Speaker 1: we're talking about Clarence Thomas. Um so, boy, how do
Speaker 1: how do we get from there to hear um good stuff?
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy one, Clarence Thomas enters Yale Law School. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, he graduates from that that school he goes
Speaker 1: to and fucking Wooster right. Um, and he's a pretty
Speaker 1: for those years he's in Wooster, he's a pretty hardcore
Speaker 1: like black nationalist activist. Um. But in nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: he enters Yale. He is one of twelve black students
Speaker 1: on the entire campus, thanks to an affirmative action program
Speaker 1: recently instituted in the school that mandated ten percent of
Speaker 1: the class not be white kids. You will remember but
Speaker 1: that it was in the nineteen sixties when Yale removed
Speaker 1: their secret caps on Jewish students. So like Yale is
Speaker 1: so I always say a little bit behind the curve
Speaker 1: on integration. So yeah, this program helps him get into Yale. UM,
Speaker 1: but it also makes clear the fact that he had
Speaker 1: gotten into Yale through an affirmative action program makes him
Speaker 1: feel as if he has a target on his back. Uh. Quote,
Speaker 1: you had to prove yourself every day because the presumption
Speaker 1: was that you were dumb and didn't deserve to be there.
Speaker 1: He later added. As much as it had stung to
Speaker 1: be told I'd done well in high school despite my race,
Speaker 1: it was far worse to feel that I was now
Speaker 1: at Yale because of it, um, Which yeah, man, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's the whole thing. But also like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: your lack of ability that would have kept you out
Speaker 1: of Yale earlier. It was that somebody had to force
Speaker 1: Yale admissions to accept people who weren't like right, Like,
Speaker 1: that is the thing. It's not that you couldn't do Yale.
Speaker 1: It's that Yale had to be forced to do. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah. Anyway, Thomas has always been and a pretty
Speaker 1: conservative guy by personality. Even when he was a radical,
Speaker 1: it was kind of rooted in very traditional ideas he
Speaker 1: had about the family and about gender roles. Um. He
Speaker 1: remained religious as hell even after he left the Cemitary Seminary,
Speaker 1: the Bill Gates Semen School. Uh. He felt discipline and
Speaker 1: an authoritarian upbringing were important for kids to have. But
Speaker 1: he was also a registered Democrat because his family was,
Speaker 1: and because he supported the civil rights movement, because you know,
Speaker 1: there weren't like that's what you did, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: what his family did. Like that was the only reasonable
Speaker 1: option as he saw it. For a very long time. Um,
Speaker 1: it was at Yale then that Clarence finally starts moving
Speaker 1: away from politically aligning himself with liberals. He's never really
Speaker 1: been a liberal, right, but he votes with them, and
Speaker 1: like yeah, um, he starts to make that actual move
Speaker 1: towards a conservative political party, uh, and towards conservative more
Speaker 1: like more of an open embraced conservative ideology. While he's
Speaker 1: at Yale, and I'm gonna quote again from the New Yorker.
Speaker 1: Here at Yale, Thomas developed an understanding of racism that
Speaker 1: he would never shake. Whites, Southern and northern, liberal and conservative,
Speaker 1: rural and urban are racists. Racism, Thomas would tell students
Speaker 1: at Mercer University in nineteen ninety three, has has complex
Speaker 1: into a certain degree undiscoverable roots. Not knowing its beginning,
Speaker 1: we can't know its end. The most that can be
Speaker 1: hoped for is that whites be honest about it. Honesty
Speaker 1: is demonstrated through crude statements of personal animus or intellectual
Speaker 1: suggestions of racial inequality. Dishonesty is demonstrated through denial of
Speaker 1: one's racism and sympathetic extensions of help. Dishonesty lulls black
Speaker 1: people into a false sense of security, assuring them that
Speaker 1: they are safe when they are not. One of Thomas's
Speaker 1: favorite songs is the nineteen seventy one hit Smiling Faces,
Speaker 1: sometimes by the Undisputed Truth. It's classic lyric Smiling Faces.
Speaker 1: Smiling Faces tell lies resonates with his experience of northern
Speaker 1: white liberals. Among the virtues of the Reagan administration, he
Speaker 1: has said, was the fact that no one there was
Speaker 1: smiling in your face. So wow, if we're taking Thomas's
Speaker 1: experience on this, like what the way he describes it
Speaker 1: is that he goes to seminary everyone there is super
Speaker 1: racist and like conservative, and he hates that. But then
Speaker 1: he goes to like fancy northern liberal towns and schools,
Speaker 1: and everyone there is just as racist but pretends not
Speaker 1: to be. And he decides, well, I guess I prefer
Speaker 1: the unabashed racists. I mean this, there's no point there, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's not no point there, no, not at all to
Speaker 1: what he's saying. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, they're I mean, look
Speaker 1: at just what we what we saw in with people
Speaker 1: donning kenta cloth and taking a knee and for what
Speaker 1: just to always come back and like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: qualified immunity, let's not go too far anything. And you're like, well,
Speaker 1: what was that? And again to his point a false
Speaker 1: sense of security. Uh uh and we and we are
Speaker 1: not we are, in facting the opposite of that. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side of it, he's like, man,
Speaker 1: these people, you know where the funk they're at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know where all the Reagans people are coming from
Speaker 1: because they are racist to ship. Yeah, and they don't
Speaker 1: say ship because they they're racist and they know it,
Speaker 1: they know the rules of racism. Yeah. Um. So in
Speaker 1: the end, Yale winds up leaving a pretty harsh taste
Speaker 1: in his mouth. His grades are We don't really know
Speaker 1: exactly what his grades are, right, He has remained like
Speaker 1: people will say that he was kind of a a
Speaker 1: middle of the road student. We don't really know, because
Speaker 1: his academic records remain sealed at his urging. Uh. Journalists
Speaker 1: who spoke to his professors repeat the same story. He
Speaker 1: was a pretty average student. Upon leaving Yale, he applied
Speaker 1: to a number of high end law firms, but he
Speaker 1: was not hired by any of them. Um. And this
Speaker 1: is probably less a factor of his grades than the
Speaker 1: fact that he was middle class and black. Right, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have connections to these big money law firms that
Speaker 1: he's trying to get jobs with, which is ultimately why
Speaker 1: Yale people get hired. It's not just that they went
Speaker 1: to Yale, and it's certainly not their grades. It's that
Speaker 1: their dad is somebody who's connected to people who run
Speaker 1: the law firm, or they make friends or whatever. Right Um.
Speaker 1: Years later, Thomas would tell a law school class quote,
Speaker 1: since my reason for going to law school in the
Speaker 1: first place was to return to Savannah to assist in
Speaker 1: righting the wrongs which I felt existed there throughout my childhood.
Speaker 1: I can't say this was a high point. If anything,
Speaker 1: I was steeped in frustration. And this is definitely a
Speaker 1: thing where he's like lying, like hell, because over the
Speaker 1: last couple of decades, since his emergence is a public figure,
Speaker 1: Thomas has made a big deal about how he got
Speaker 1: into law because he wanted to join the crusade for
Speaker 1: civil rights and again like right wrongs that he'd seen
Speaker 1: as a kid. This was a big part of the
Speaker 1: pitch he made his grandfather Um. And this is again
Speaker 1: very untrue because the one job Thomas was actually offered
Speaker 1: right out of Yale was at a Savannah law term firm,
Speaker 1: and he had spent the summer interning at this firm,
Speaker 1: and they did a lot of that kind of work,
Speaker 1: and he turns the job down because it doesn't pay enough. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Clarence was ultimately willing to take a job that paid poorly,
Speaker 1: but not one that would let him serve his community
Speaker 1: in Savannah. Instead, he takes a low paid job with
Speaker 1: Jack dan Forth, the Republican Attorney General of Missouri. Now
Speaker 1: dan Fourth, he's this kind of thing that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: He was like a liberal Republican and he was on
Speaker 1: his own concerned with the fact that again he's the
Speaker 1: Attorney General of Missouri. On his own, he's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this staff is too fucking white. We need to have
Speaker 1: some people who are not white guys around here. So
Speaker 1: he hires Clarence Thomas because he's like, I think, as
Speaker 1: the a G we need to have like black lawyers
Speaker 1: representing people too. Because it's probe Missouri, um, which is good. UM.
Speaker 1: Thomas does not like this because it's smacks of affirmative action,
Speaker 1: which he deeply resented, and because again he wants a
Speaker 1: high paid legal career and this is not that um.
Speaker 1: And you know, he is initially not really super enthused
Speaker 1: by this offer, I either, but he eventually decides to
Speaker 1: take it, and his friend Clarence Martin later told Jane
Speaker 1: Mayer quote, by the time he went to Missouri, he
Speaker 1: was very disillusioned. He didn't want the attorney general's job.
Speaker 1: He never wanted to be part of the government, and
Speaker 1: in fact, he resented it. He wanted to be this
Speaker 1: great trial lawyer in private practice, but he lost his
Speaker 1: self confidence after all the Atlanta firms turned him down.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's uh, that's the call that he makes
Speaker 1: is to get his start in Republican politics with this
Speaker 1: guy Dan Forth. Um. Now, because it's Missouri, he has
Speaker 1: to pass the state bar to do it, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, you got to do an exam in every
Speaker 1: state to be able to do law ship there, um
Speaker 1: because lawyers. Yeah, yeah, it's a whole thing. Um. So
Speaker 1: while he countered what you might hear on TikTok, apparently
Speaker 1: that's not true. But now I know, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't just do it in once. Yeah, you can't just
Speaker 1: do it in one state. Miles your your state of
Speaker 1: of of the District of Columbia law certificate that you
Speaker 1: have printed out above your desk, um c O. M
Speaker 1: b I A. Um, so yeah, he's got to spend
Speaker 1: the summer like cramming to pass the bar exam in Missouri.
Speaker 1: So he winds up crashing at the house of a St.
Speaker 1: Louis in Double, a CP chairperson, while he crams all
Speaker 1: summer for the exam. Um. At the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: he tries to pay her and she told tells him
Speaker 1: to quote, help someone who is in your position in
Speaker 1: the future. Um, basically pay it forward. Yeah. So Thomas
Speaker 1: joins the Dan fourth administration as a Conservative Democrat, but
Speaker 1: in short order he starts to see how this low paid,
Speaker 1: entry level position with the Republican Party might lead him
Speaker 1: to the kind of clout and wealth that he sought.
Speaker 1: The key would be remaking himself as a political conservative.
Speaker 1: Cindy Faddis, who knew him when he worked for Dan fourth,
Speaker 1: recalled he said that he thought he'd have an advantage
Speaker 1: as a Republican. Thomas is said to have stated, if
Speaker 1: I belonged to the Republican Party, I could go farther.
Speaker 1: After that, the change was rather sudden and jarring, as
Speaker 1: this quote from the book Strange Justice makes clear. Clarence Martin,
Speaker 1: who visited Thomas and Missouri found the Transformation, and his
Speaker 1: formerly liberal friend with whom he had worked only the
Speaker 1: summer before, to be quite remarkable. Gone was Thomas's college
Speaker 1: dorm room poster of Malcolm X, replaced by an oversized
Speaker 1: poster of a Rules Royce. No longer dwelling on being
Speaker 1: shut out of private practice, Thomas now had a new
Speaker 1: avenue for his ambitions as a Republican. He told Martin
Speaker 1: he planned a big future in politics. I remember him
Speaker 1: sitting with his feet up on the desk smoking a cigar,
Speaker 1: said Martin. I saw a change in Clarence. Then he said,
Speaker 1: the Republicans are going places in the next ten years,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to attach my wagon to their star.
Speaker 1: Martin forgave Thomas's apparent ideological expedients. In many ways. He
Speaker 1: was already conservative and his social views, Martin noted. And
Speaker 1: he really admired dan Forth. I'd ask him, how can
Speaker 1: you become a Republican? And he'd say, blacks need to
Speaker 1: be on both sides, and these people are in power.
Speaker 1: It was a matter of practicality, all right. So we've
Speaker 1: got to the part where he became Darth Vader. He's
Speaker 1: doing that he's going. And it's interesting because Dan fourth
Speaker 1: is you could draw a line between Dan fourth and
Speaker 1: his current position because Dan fourth is very anti abortion. UM.
Speaker 1: But Dan fourth is also again a liberal Republican and
Speaker 1: one of the weirdest things that we really don't have anymore,
Speaker 1: he's ideologically consistent. So he is also an anti death
Speaker 1: penalty crusader. So he's a Republican who is like really
Speaker 1: violently against the death penalty and against a portion um,
Speaker 1: which at least suggests that he's yeah, being consistent in
Speaker 1: the things that he's claiming. UM. But yeah, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is where Thomas gets his start in politics. Um. Now.
Speaker 1: One of his colleagues at the Savannah law firm where
Speaker 1: he had done his interning, a guy named Fletcher Farrington,
Speaker 1: who later supported his nomination to the Supreme Court, insists
Speaker 1: that Thomas was not a quote complete opportunist, but that
Speaker 1: quote to some extent, his politics were shaped by his ratunities.
Speaker 1: At the core of everything, then, is the fact that
Speaker 1: Thomas's real goal, more than anything, was to attain a
Speaker 1: position that gave him wealth and prestige. As Farrington put it,
Speaker 1: his ambition was not to make a particular change in society,
Speaker 1: but to go as far as he could go. And
Speaker 1: I think that is something, you know, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that his grandfather winds up disappointed in him for not
Speaker 1: helping his community. Um, that's something that's very consistent with
Speaker 1: the upbringing he has. Right, All that matters is the work.
Speaker 1: All that matters is like getting the best position you
Speaker 1: can and right, you need to move further than I
Speaker 1: was able to write. Yeah, I mean he definitely is
Speaker 1: his grandfather's son. Um. All right, you know what, now
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for him again. Now you're back on board.
Speaker 1: You're back on board, alright, c C. Well, we are
Speaker 1: about to get to the Reagan administration, which I know
Speaker 1: is your favorite period in American politics. My dad's explanation
Speaker 1: why they were unhoused people when I asked him as
Speaker 1: a four year old, Oh good, was he because Reagan
Speaker 1: closed the institutions? Guy? I was like, I remember being
Speaker 1: a bum like four year old person and like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're like giving food to like someone house people. Was like,
Speaker 1: why did some people have to live there? And my
Speaker 1: dad's because of Ronald Reagan? And I'm like what I'm for,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. And I remember saying
Speaker 1: that ship in like first grade, and like my teachers like,
Speaker 1: who the funk are you? That's amazing? That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: You know what else is good, miles? Capitalism, which is
Speaker 1: the real reason why all people aren't able to live
Speaker 1: indoors um Capitalism, Miles, sweet lady, capitalism. Have you ever
Speaker 1: felt like the world's not getting hot enough fast enough
Speaker 1: in England? And going forty degrees celsius? That's not that high?
Speaker 1: Forties a low number. Well is crypto. All of these
Speaker 1: products and services will help keep those numbers high. Put
Speaker 1: them on the board. Maybe put him on the board.
Speaker 1: How are you doing, Sylphie? Is that good? It made
Speaker 1: you smile? So I'm look, I can go back to
Speaker 1: come anytime. That's that's always an option that's on the table,
Speaker 1: on the table. We can bring Dr Kellogg right back
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, yeah, let's take Kellogg back. America's great
Speaker 1: come doctor. Speaking of America's great come doctor, try these
Speaker 1: products and services. Oh we're back. Clarence Thomas was good
Speaker 1: at his first job in government, by which I mean
Speaker 1: he pleased all of the people he needed to get
Speaker 1: another job in government that was better. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: worth noting that at one point, while he is working,
Speaker 1: as you know, a lawyer in the AG's office in
Speaker 1: the state of his era, Rovie Wade comes up his boss. Obviously,
Speaker 1: dan Forth opposes the ruling and he challenges it in
Speaker 1: a court case dan Fourth v. Planned Parenthood. It was
Speaker 1: later noted by colleagues that Clarence Thomas expressed no particular
Speaker 1: interest in this case. So at least at this point
Speaker 1: to work with him when there's like a big fight
Speaker 1: over planned parenthood in their office, are like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: didn't really give a ship. Um. Now, this is not
Speaker 1: to say that Thomas didn't talk about abortion during this
Speaker 1: period in his life. His mother recalled him saying that
Speaker 1: he opposed abortion on demand because if she'd had one,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't exist. Um. Now, that said that said at
Speaker 1: another point, his sister has an abortion because the doctor's
Speaker 1: already had several kids, and a doctor warns her she
Speaker 1: might die if she carries this fetus to terms that
Speaker 1: she had some kind of health condition. Right. Um, And
Speaker 1: Clarence is said to be understanding of this. Um. So again,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for kind of like a very clear
Speaker 1: like line between the guy who ends Roe v. Wade
Speaker 1: and this dude, it's not in his actual opinions on
Speaker 1: Roe v. Wade because more than anything, he barely seems
Speaker 1: to have one right. Um. So, one interesting thing about
Speaker 1: Thomas's career is that for a Supreme Court judge, he
Speaker 1: basically doesn't spend any time in court arguing cases. Um,
Speaker 1: that is not his job. He wants to be a
Speaker 1: great trial lawyer, right, he wants because like that's where
Speaker 1: the fucking money is. Um, But he doesn't ever really
Speaker 1: do that the time he's been he's in he's works
Speaker 1: for dan Forth for about two and a half years,
Speaker 1: and this is the only time in his entire career
Speaker 1: as a judge where he is litigating anything, or his
Speaker 1: entire career in law where he litigates anything at all. Right,
Speaker 1: so these are not interesting cases. His first major victory
Speaker 1: was an argument restricting the use of vanity license plates
Speaker 1: by rich people. Uh. He was noted, right, like, if
Speaker 1: that's not really a big deal, you know. Um. He
Speaker 1: was noted by some as being the office clown, though,
Speaker 1: which is consistent with a number of recollections of people
Speaker 1: who worked with him over the years. Now, depending on
Speaker 1: who you ask, you might also consider him an office bully. However,
Speaker 1: the person that he spent the time bullying in the
Speaker 1: office was John Ashcroft, So I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: that this goes in the bastard column for him. I
Speaker 1: think it's completely fine to bully John. Yeah, alright, alright,
Speaker 1: maybe you got a point here come back that gets
Speaker 1: that gets you one year out of hell if we're
Speaker 1: going by Catholic rules. Yeah. Um so obviously John Ashcroft,
Speaker 1: if you don't know, was a religious weirdo who was
Speaker 1: like a man built entirely out of hang ups. Um
Speaker 1: and Clarence Thomas, as we are we will discuss, loves
Speaker 1: to make extremely sexual jokes and comments to his coworkers.
Speaker 1: So a big part of what he do is deliberately
Speaker 1: try to flush fluster John Ashcroft by bringing up things
Speaker 1: that are inappropriate. Um. Now again, Fuck. I will be
Speaker 1: honest here. I am a little bit drawing a line there,
Speaker 1: because all the writing on his time with Ashcroft said
Speaker 1: was that he attempted to like deliberately try to fluster him. Um.
Speaker 1: But I'm bringing up the sex stuff because one of
Speaker 1: the most important things to know about working with Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas is that the man loves Miles, loves pornography. Absolutely
Speaker 1: huge porn guy. I don't think you're ready for what
Speaker 1: a porn guy Clarence Thomas is? What I mean? What
Speaker 1: what would I even I'm trying to even think of
Speaker 1: what I would describe if you said, what's a porn
Speaker 1: guy to you? Yeah, somebody who has like a couple
Speaker 1: like who subscribes to some magazines that we're going like
Speaker 1: old school physical media days and has like you know,
Speaker 1: like like a shelf of tapes. Okay, this is interesting,
Speaker 1: This is interesting, miles. Um. I'm going to describe to
Speaker 1: you what Clarence Thomas does about porn later and you
Speaker 1: tell me if you think porn guy is the right
Speaker 1: thing to call him. But okay, that's fine. And look,
Speaker 1: you know I'm not you know, do you? But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm this guy. Okay, we'll talk about that in a
Speaker 1: minute now. Thomas's relationship with his mother was strained for
Speaker 1: completely understandable reasons. He grows up in a primarily male environment,
Speaker 1: and he seems to have gone from awkward around women
Speaker 1: to sometimes hostile around women when he was a black
Speaker 1: civil rights activist. He came from the camp who saw
Speaker 1: sexual equality as not a worthy battle, like it's about
Speaker 1: racial equality. We're not here to fight for sexual equality.
Speaker 1: That's a bad idea, um for for here for liberation
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, exactly again, this is every It's like
Speaker 1: the suffragettes in the twenties being like women need to vote,
Speaker 1: well just white women really like you or you or
Speaker 1: you certainly not you, but um not that was all
Speaker 1: of them, just like not that but anyway, like this
Speaker 1: is this is it's never perfect, yes, move It turns
Speaker 1: out movements that make meaningful achievements are often filled with
Speaker 1: people who still believe shitty things. Um so yeah, when
Speaker 1: when he starts going to Yale and he starts to
Speaker 1: turn away from those activists beliefs, he keeps the chauvinism.
Speaker 1: One female CLASSMATEE later recalled, at that time, I didn't
Speaker 1: know the word male chauvinist, But now looking back, I
Speaker 1: can say he defined the term. He barely spoke to women.
Speaker 1: He was so condescending and accustomed to them being subservient
Speaker 1: that when I'd offer an opinion in a conversation it
Speaker 1: irritated him. When I talked, he'd just ignored me. He'd
Speaker 1: only talked to the men. He thought women belonged in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. So he does marry a woman Cathy ambush Um,
Speaker 1: which is a funny name to have ambush Uh, and
Speaker 1: they stayed together for something like a decade. She is
Speaker 1: very traditional, which suits him. She's super Catholic, but Catholics
Speaker 1: are liberal right traditionally in American politics, so she's also
Speaker 1: she's very traditional. She is kind of the I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stay at home and like be a homemaker type wife,
Speaker 1: but also she's deeply committed to being a political liberal
Speaker 1: and this becomes a huge source of tension for them. Now,
Speaker 1: as I've said before, Thomas is loudly conservative in his
Speaker 1: social values. He rails against premarital sex. He had He
Speaker 1: apparently told enough friends that it got out to reporters
Speaker 1: that he would leave his wife if she cheated on
Speaker 1: him immediately. Um, Like this is just the thing he
Speaker 1: taught about people. Um. At the same time, he has
Speaker 1: a somewhat unhinged obsession with pornography and more of the point, Miles,
Speaker 1: he has a little bit of a habit of sharing
Speaker 1: it with his coworkers. And I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: Strange Justice. Well, Thomas argued against premarital sex and adultery,
Speaker 1: telling one friend that he would leave a wife on
Speaker 1: the spot if she was unfaithful to him. He also
Speaker 1: showed an unusual interest in talking about sex and gross
Speaker 1: and explicitly anatomical language, according to several college classmates. By
Speaker 1: the time he reached Yale Law School, Thomas was known
Speaker 1: not only for the extreme crudity of his sexual banter,
Speaker 1: but also for avidly watching pornographic films and reading pornographic magazines,
Speaker 1: which he would describe to friends in lurid detail. An
Speaker 1: interest in pornography might ordinarily be considered a private matter,
Speaker 1: but colleagues recalled that Thomas was notable for the unusually
Speaker 1: public nature of his enthusiasm for pornographic materials. His detailed
Speaker 1: descriptions of the movies and magazines he had seen were
Speaker 1: an open form of socializing during these years that seemed
Speaker 1: funny to some, offensive to others, and odd to many.
Speaker 1: Oh oh boy, So it's been a rough road so far,
Speaker 1: but we finally got to the funny part where it's
Speaker 1: not funny. Play by play of these pornos he's watching. Look,
Speaker 1: this ends obviously in sexual harassment and a woman getting
Speaker 1: attacked on a national stage, and that is not funny.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he is in college, like showing
Speaker 1: up at parties and being like, you guys got to
Speaker 1: hear about this fucking porno. I just watched to like
Speaker 1: mixed groups of people who are like, what the fuck, dude.
Speaker 1: So honestly, I'm and I'm thinking with the vanity plates,
Speaker 1: it just feels unnecessary and it's a it's a smack
Speaker 1: in the face of the proper bureaucracy we're trying to want. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, hold on. Do you guys know
Speaker 1: what gape? Uh? Never mind, all right, it's butth hole stuff.
Speaker 1: You ever seen a facial? Man, I'm telling us on
Speaker 1: this one. I don't know what I was looking at
Speaker 1: the video. I don't know what I was looking at.
Speaker 1: I was like, is that a wind sock? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Colleagues spills some coffee on his shirt and he's like,
Speaker 1: so I was watching some German stuff the other night.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. I mean now that you mention it.
Speaker 1: I didn't mention anything. I said, I'm sorry I spilled
Speaker 1: something on you. Um god, yeah it is. This is
Speaker 1: part of a broad and a really weird and unsettling
Speaker 1: pattern for Thomas friends and co workers. And again this
Speaker 1: is a lot of this comes from the book Strange
Speaker 1: Justice by Jane Mayer, and I think Jill Abramson is
Speaker 1: her name. UM. Two reporters. Jane, we've talked about a lot.
Speaker 1: She's a huge reporter on the Koch Brothers. Um. They
Speaker 1: find so many people with stories of Clarence talking in
Speaker 1: explicit detail about porn that he watches. It is like
Speaker 1: a normal thing in his life. Um, and friends and
Speaker 1: co workers are called that. Most of the time. At work,
Speaker 1: he's a quiet man. He's very polite, very respectful, very normal,
Speaker 1: and then every now and then he just kind of
Speaker 1: goes bug fuck in ways people around him don't really
Speaker 1: know how to cope with. One friend told Jane Mayer quote,
Speaker 1: one percent of the time he would go off the
Speaker 1: deep end. He'd say stuff I can't possibly repeat, stuff
Speaker 1: that would turn your ears red, things having to do
Speaker 1: with a person's anatomy. He'd say things like suck out
Speaker 1: of my ass with a straw all the time. But
Speaker 1: this was different. It was a lot worse, And I
Speaker 1: don't feel comfortable talking about Wait, wait, wait, this guy
Speaker 1: just set the fucking floor as sucks out of my asshole.
Speaker 1: That's the normal ship. Yeah, oh my god. I mean
Speaker 1: even in my joking, I was still being like Coya
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I mean it's the graphic detail
Speaker 1: that mix. And he's also has like this, he occupies
Speaker 1: this weird space of like a sexually repressed, like teenager
Speaker 1: kid and he's like, yeah, you know what, I kind
Speaker 1: of nasty ship I watch. Yeah, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about this weird ship I saw at the porn theater.
Speaker 1: And I think that is like he is a connoisseur
Speaker 1: of pornograph the There are people who like worked at
Speaker 1: porn theaters in d C with stories of him coming
Speaker 1: into written things like he goes in for the weird ship,
Speaker 1: like he is an obsessive consumer of this. He finds
Speaker 1: like baffling and bizarre porn and then he just like
Speaker 1: talks about it at work in the government. Um, just
Speaker 1: like and also like it's like a fucking weird character
Speaker 1: from a fucking like comedy where it's like my boss
Speaker 1: is really like time, like he's like this and then
Speaker 1: he goes off the deep end. Yeah, yeah, it's bizarre. Um.
Speaker 1: There are rumors that he was abusive in his first
Speaker 1: marriage physically abuses abuse. If there are not allegations from
Speaker 1: his ex wife that I am aware of. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of to be honest, I from what I have seen,
Speaker 1: at least, I don't think there's a lot there um,
Speaker 1: at least not that I ran into. Meyer and Abramson
Speaker 1: note that like in there and again they're very critical biography.
Speaker 1: He receives custody of their son after the divorce, um,
Speaker 1: which is why they think that he there might not
Speaker 1: have been anything to get like, these are just rumors
Speaker 1: around him, as opposed to like somebody making an allegation.
Speaker 1: So they are out there, you can find them. I'm
Speaker 1: not aware of like much solid there um he does.
Speaker 1: This is actually kind of something we're really worth noting.
Speaker 1: He's make sure to take custody of his son after
Speaker 1: the divorce, which is him breaking this one cycle in
Speaker 1: his family history, right right, He is the he is
Speaker 1: the man, the father in his family line who does
Speaker 1: not hand over his fucking kid, not his son. Not
Speaker 1: well exactly right, Yeah it doesn't. He doesn't have a daughter,
Speaker 1: so yeah, we don't know about that. Yeah you're you
Speaker 1: are right, Miles. It has not been completely tested. You lucky,
Speaker 1: you must sign um now there are rumors. Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: Aeric said that now at any rate, Dan Fourth, the
Speaker 1: guy he's been working for, becomes a U. S. Senator
Speaker 1: in nineteen seven the seven, and Thomas leaves. His employee
Speaker 1: has an opportunity to go with him. Did he see?
Speaker 1: But he's like, that would be in his mind kind
Speaker 1: of a lower prestige job than working for a state
Speaker 1: attorney general. Um. And more to the point, Dan Fourth,
Speaker 1: before he leaves, helps Thomas get a job in the
Speaker 1: private sector. This is like the high paid lawyer job
Speaker 1: he's been wanting all the time, as a lawyer representing
Speaker 1: them on Santo Chemical Corporation. Yeah, this is like the
Speaker 1: one lawyer job he does other than like politics. Ship
Speaker 1: and it's Monsanto. Hey, I mean that's what he wanted, right,
Speaker 1: He wanted his big, cushy earth fucker jobs. Does he
Speaker 1: fox the ship out of the earth? Now? Obviously Monsanto
Speaker 1: has done a number of questionable things. I don't really
Speaker 1: see evidence that Clarence was super directly involved in it.
Speaker 1: His job was much more um, his job was much
Speaker 1: more like rudimentary, sort of like mechanic. His job was
Speaker 1: much more mechanical. He was registering herbicides with the e
Speaker 1: p A. Right, he was the guy who was like
Speaker 1: like interfacing with the e p A in order to
Speaker 1: handle the registration of product project products. Um, so he's
Speaker 1: not like, he's not like the trigger man they send
Speaker 1: out when they poison people, right, Like, he's the guy
Speaker 1: who's who's like doing this very kind of like meat
Speaker 1: and potatoes role exactly. He's like they're like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: mon Santo, you must do some yeah yeah, like with
Speaker 1: sate and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, big stuff. He
Speaker 1: just fucking registers him. He fucking filled out paperwork. Can't
Speaker 1: even commit crimes, right, Oh my god, get away from
Speaker 1: your such a fucking nerd. You don't even you just
Speaker 1: register the fucking round up. Get out of here. So
Speaker 1: the main benefit of this job is that it doubles
Speaker 1: his salary, which obviously allows him to live in much
Speaker 1: more comfort while he waits for his next political break,
Speaker 1: which comes near the end of nineteen seventy nine. Now
Speaker 1: this was through Dan Fourth again, who taking a real
Speaker 1: shine to Clarence Dance for Dan Fourth decided that he
Speaker 1: wanted to integrate his Senate staff, and he asked Thomas
Speaker 1: if he wanted a job as a legislative assistant. Clarence
Speaker 1: agreed on the condition that he worked on absolutely no
Speaker 1: quote black issues, right, And this is a big part
Speaker 1: of what he liked about Thomas. Thomas does not want
Speaker 1: to work on black issues. He said, Okay, I'll okay. No,
Speaker 1: Dan Fourth is not saying that you want a job,
Speaker 1: and Thomas is like, the only way I'll do that
Speaker 1: is if I'm not doing black stuff. Right. This is
Speaker 1: part of why he wants. He likes working from Ansanto
Speaker 1: because he gets experienced in environmental and energy like law,
Speaker 1: and he wants to do that because it's not, well,
Speaker 1: there's money, and it's also not at all associated with
Speaker 1: like civil rights. It's nothing, has nothing to do in
Speaker 1: people's So it's like it's like comfortable in that sense
Speaker 1: that he doesn't have to that have to reckon in
Speaker 1: his consciousness versus like, no, I think it's your right
Speaker 1: to poison people. Yeah. And also I think he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to get like pigeonholed, right, Like I don't want
Speaker 1: to just be the like the black guy who does
Speaker 1: black law stuff, right, Like if I'm going to be,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. Also, Yeah, that's also what he's saying,
Speaker 1: which is again directly the opposite of what he claimed
Speaker 1: to his grandfather. He wanted to do as a lawyer anyway. Uh.
Speaker 1: He seems to have been good at this job. Again,
Speaker 1: not particularly noteworthy, although legislative assistants generally aren't. Uh. The
Speaker 1: one thing that his colleagues really recognized in Clarence was
Speaker 1: his remarkable ambition. Mayor and Abramson write quote, less than
Speaker 1: a year after arriving in Washington, over lunch with the
Speaker 1: reporter in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post Dispatch,
Speaker 1: Thomas mentioned that he had his eye on a better job.
Speaker 1: John Sawyer, now the papers Washington bureau chief, recalled being
Speaker 1: astonished when Thomas, who was an affable but completely unknown
Speaker 1: aid to a freshman senator, announced that the spot he
Speaker 1: wanted was nothing less than a seat on the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. So he's he is gunning for the job
Speaker 1: that he gets pretty much from the beginning of his
Speaker 1: time over here. Yeah, Yeah, he's he's he figures out
Speaker 1: that this is like pas stable for him if he
Speaker 1: kind of makes the right in roads with the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: and it's like a fucking laser from this point and
Speaker 1: he's incentivized in the darkest fucking ways, and it's also
Speaker 1: wild to think that the reason like he even gets
Speaker 1: his head turned in this direction of like law or
Speaker 1: politics is because you know, he got rejected by the
Speaker 1: Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. I guess the form of
Speaker 1: Atlanta private like like law firms and ship like guys
Speaker 1: like oh really, yeah, really, okay, I've got something for you.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, I got ideas. So Thomas makes his mind
Speaker 1: up early on to play to the right in order
Speaker 1: to secure himself a more prestigious career, but he also
Speaker 1: finds himself increasingly in ideological step, not just with conservatives,
Speaker 1: but with the extreme fringes of the right wing, which
Speaker 1: we're actively moving in to take over from liberal Republicans. Again.
Speaker 1: This is the last era against in which liberal Publicans
Speaker 1: are influential. In other episodes we've talked I mean we're
Speaker 1: talking about Dan Forth now, who was one liberal Republican.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot in the past about Henry Kissinger
Speaker 1: appreciator Nelson Rockefeller, who was a Republican and also a
Speaker 1: very like a liberal. UM. This is the period in
Speaker 1: which those people are being like held underwater until the
Speaker 1: bubble stop right Um and two of the people who
Speaker 1: are big factors in this are two black conservatives, both
Speaker 1: of whom have a huge influence on Clarence Thomas. Now,
Speaker 1: one of these guys is Thomas Sowell, an an economist
Speaker 1: and a writer who I was given a lot of
Speaker 1: this guy's fucking books when I was a little kid. Um.
Speaker 1: Sowell raised rage against raged against the double A c
Speaker 1: P as a snobby click of elites. Uh. He called
Speaker 1: out affirmative action because quote those who were already well
Speaker 1: off were made even better off, while the ostensible beneficiaries
Speaker 1: were either neglected or made worse off. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me because, like so Well is kind of calling
Speaker 1: out Clarence Thomas because clear he's he's a he's a
Speaker 1: middle class kid who, because he's middle class, is able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of some of these like affirmative action
Speaker 1: programs because he's in a position to do so. That
Speaker 1: is what that soul is. I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: good reason not to support those programs, but that's what
Speaker 1: Soul's arguing. And he's kind of talking directly about Clarence Thomas. Um.
Speaker 1: Which is interesting. Now, Um, this does not seem to
Speaker 1: have had any influence on Clarence Thomas, who loves Soul
Speaker 1: and later said that encountering his ideas was like quote,
Speaker 1: pouring half a glass of water on the desert. I
Speaker 1: just soaked it up. Now. One thing Soul love to
Speaker 1: talk about was the fact that women made less than
Speaker 1: men because that's what they wanted. They took easier jobs
Speaker 1: so that they could have babies later. So it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's all good, Miles, it's all good. They make that
Speaker 1: choice for their babies that they're gonna have in the
Speaker 1: future because they don't have other opic women, all right,
Speaker 1: they want the easier jobs because they can't work so
Speaker 1: hard when they make the babies. That's right. What a
Speaker 1: hate patronizing. It is a really patronizing. I mean. And
Speaker 1: the fact is, like that ship is that thinking still
Speaker 1: is that is exists now in substantial way. We haven't
Speaker 1: moved that far from fucking cis head. Dudes. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you something about a woman's body that I have
Speaker 1: no corporal experience with. Certain we're going to have that
Speaker 1: thinking used by Clarence Thomas in a terrible Supreme Court decision,
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know, three months for he's like
Speaker 1: I was watching Doctor Oz instead of vaginas like a
Speaker 1: self cleaning oven. That's why they do not need a O. B. G.
Speaker 1: Y in. That's a law and medical practice. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: making it a crime to do medicine miles. You know
Speaker 1: what else is a crime? How low the prices are
Speaker 1: on our sponsors products? Literally illegal. If you buy any
Speaker 1: of these products, the FBI will break down your door
Speaker 1: and shoot your dog. And the SEC is coming after
Speaker 1: you no matter what. You're fucked. You're fucked. They're on you.
Speaker 1: So is that? How is that? Is that the script
Speaker 1: that the company sent us? Are we good the version
Speaker 1: of it? I think I think Sophie stepped away napping
Speaker 1: on the job. I'm just angrily shaking my head at
Speaker 1: you because I have no fucking words. So products, thanks ah, products.
Speaker 1: So the other black Republican who influenced Thomas in this
Speaker 1: period was Jay Parker, a writer and a fire brand
Speaker 1: who believed the government should end all state and local
Speaker 1: aid for food, clothing, shelter, and everything else. Um now,
Speaker 1: so Jay Parker not a great guy, right by that
Speaker 1: little description. Here's what's cool. Jay Parker is, obviously, because
Speaker 1: of everything we just said, very useful to Reagan Eric
Speaker 1: conservatives who come to power shortly after Thomas gets to
Speaker 1: d C. But Parker is also very useful to another
Speaker 1: group of white conservatives, the apartheid government of South Africa.
Speaker 1: Why did why do these why did this group of
Speaker 1: people enter the game? Yeah? If this is a cool story, Miles,
Speaker 1: who may not be the right word. This is the
Speaker 1: thing that happened. Starting in the Nixon administration, South Africa
Speaker 1: launched a massive propaganda blitz aimed at shoring up their reputation.
Speaker 1: They spent more than a hundred million dollars a year
Speaker 1: targeting fast segments of the US population, and this included
Speaker 1: in one of its odd chapters, reaching out to Black America.
Speaker 1: The apartheid government of South Africa bought several prominent black
Speaker 1: organizers to push their cause, generally without wide success. Jay
Speaker 1: Parker was one of these guys. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: now from Rebecca Davis of Rhodes University. J Parker promoted
Speaker 1: the entrance of the Transkay and ven To before taking
Speaker 1: on the representation of the South African government, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine wrote an unrepentant biography telling lye titled
Speaker 1: Courage to Put My Country Above Color. William A. Keys,
Speaker 1: a former policy advisor to Ronald Reagan was hired by
Speaker 1: the South African Embassy to act as pratorious point man
Speaker 1: to the U S Black community and was paid almost
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars for his services. So this is
Speaker 1: number one a thing that a bunch of guys, a
Speaker 1: bunch of particularly like black speakers and writers who are
Speaker 1: associated with the Reagan administration, take apartheid money, and they
Speaker 1: justified by saying, like, well, they're fighting against communism. That's
Speaker 1: why j Parker calls his biography putting My Country above color, right, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: they are a nightmare racist regime, but it's more important
Speaker 1: to fight communism. I was protecting America. Wait, so with
Speaker 1: the interest, yes, the interests of the country that enslaved
Speaker 1: people like me. I'm that's my priority actually to do
Speaker 1: what's in the best interest of that entity more so
Speaker 1: than the people that were oppressed. That's how do you
Speaker 1: do you get where I'm going? That is literally the
Speaker 1: title of Jay Parker's biography should be Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: they have slaved us. But but but what sir? But communism? Oh? Yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we will. I think at some point we might talk
Speaker 1: about like the apartheid government of South Africa's American PR Company.
Speaker 1: And because it is a story. J Parker, this guy
Speaker 1: who was a bought and paid for instrument of the
Speaker 1: apartheid governor, I can't say that enough, is one of
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas's intellectual like icons UM and also a good
Speaker 1: personal friend of his. UM. Thomas and Parker like work
Speaker 1: together at the Reagan White House UM, and you know
Speaker 1: the fact that he befriends Parker winds up being very
Speaker 1: good for his career. Thomas gets put on a job,
Speaker 1: gets a job on the incoming administration transition team with
Speaker 1: the e e o C or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Speaker 1: And since the Reaganites didn't like the idea of equal anything,
Speaker 1: this job was about gutting the organization, not running it right.
Speaker 1: Like that's why they're they're putting them on there. Obviously
Speaker 1: this is not really in line with Thomas's promise to
Speaker 1: his grandfather that he was gonna fight the good fight
Speaker 1: in his own way, but it does bring him closer
Speaker 1: to power. So, working as the transition lead for the
Speaker 1: e o C, he begins what is unfortunately a continuing
Speaker 1: negative trend. Taking his personal opinions on what struggling people
Speaker 1: ought to do and forcing them into government policy. So
Speaker 1: Thomas has a weird bug up his ass about class
Speaker 1: action lawsuits, which had emerged in this period to become
Speaker 1: the primary method by which people who are not rich
Speaker 1: and powerful held corporations and the government accountable. One of
Speaker 1: the first things he does at the e O C
Speaker 1: is he sends out a memo suggesting that worker discrimination
Speaker 1: suits should have to be proven on a case by
Speaker 1: case basis, one by one, rather than being done via
Speaker 1: class class action. He also co authors the report in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty that attacks the existing definition of sexual harassment.
Speaker 1: The old definition had included unwelcome sexual attention, either verbal
Speaker 1: or physical. Thomas argued this was too broad and that
Speaker 1: including verbal comments would lead to a quote barrage of
Speaker 1: trivial complaints. The report he helped author concluded that the
Speaker 1: elimination of personal slights and sexual advances which contribute to
Speaker 1: an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment is a goal
Speaker 1: impossible to reach. And take it from me, the guy
Speaker 1: who has to talk about porn NonStop, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be basically, it's gonna be a mess. Guys. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: might as well wear a ball gap and a leather
Speaker 1: mask and some restraints. I don't know. That might be
Speaker 1: pretty hot, but I don't know. I was just watching
Speaker 1: this video gotta thinking like what, First, let me tell
Speaker 1: you about the com shots. So imagine there's likely a
Speaker 1: tarantula made out of cock heading right towards your face.
Speaker 1: And then when it goes off, you know those oreo
Speaker 1: ads where you're mixing two of them together and there's
Speaker 1: just that splash of the white foam, white foam. Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's mad. It's frothy. It's one of those. It's one
Speaker 1: of those frothy it's like the top of a what
Speaker 1: what I imagine people drink in Seattle, one of those
Speaker 1: foamy lattees exactly exactly. I don't drink those much, but
Speaker 1: you know that kind of needs a mustache. He's it's again,
Speaker 1: every single thing. It's like you're starting to make sense
Speaker 1: of how he moves, Like, of course he sexual harassment
Speaker 1: can't be real, because then anything he says is like
Speaker 1: gross and over the line and offensive. It's even one
Speaker 1: of these is interesting, is they're like in that last line,
Speaker 1: you see they're talking about personal slights and sexual advances
Speaker 1: contribute to an intimidating, hostile or offencing work environment, offensive
Speaker 1: work environment. But they're saying stopping that as impossible, so
Speaker 1: why would we try all that hard? Right, Like that's
Speaker 1: that's the conclusion, which is amazing, which is wild because
Speaker 1: it but then the again, because there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as hippo, but they're just they just do whatever they
Speaker 1: want because on the other side, it's like, well, we
Speaker 1: want to stop every single person from doing this thing though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's actually like there's no way, there's no way,
Speaker 1: there's no way, you can't even anything, you can't even
Speaker 1: do anything about it. Yeah, it's again, this is this
Speaker 1: is a broader question. But like when we're talking about
Speaker 1: dealing with conservatives and their attempts to funk people over,
Speaker 1: there's no point in treating them like they are good
Speaker 1: faith actors because their their goal is to restrict you
Speaker 1: and do whatever the funk. They want to stop pretending
Speaker 1: that that's the case to continue to be like, but
Speaker 1: they just said this other thing about a parallel subject
Speaker 1: like mother, that's not where they're at. They use the
Speaker 1: like the skin of humans to be like it's all
Speaker 1: about doing whatever we want to ever, Yeah, it's yeah again,
Speaker 1: it's like Clarence Amas being like, I don't believe interracial
Speaker 1: marriage is right. Oh, now I want to have one,
Speaker 1: so now it's fine. Like though, yeah, like that, he's
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, like bringing it up to like again,
Speaker 1: we're kind of acknowledging these things and a number of
Speaker 1: hypocrisies because it's important to note it for history, but like,
Speaker 1: none of this matters, and an argumentative standpoint, They're not
Speaker 1: there to have a good faith conversation. They're there to
Speaker 1: exercise power in ways that hurt people. It's not any
Speaker 1: kind of consistency of fun. Yeah, it's just yeah, it's cool,
Speaker 1: it's cool and good. It's like taking the apartheid South
Speaker 1: African government's money, uh, in order to claim that you're
Speaker 1: just such an anti communist, this has to be done.
Speaker 1: Um So. While Thomas ingratiated himself to the Reagan administration,
Speaker 1: he also began increasingly publicizing his existence as a black Conservative.
Speaker 1: He joined an organization created by Thomas Sowell and started
Speaker 1: giving interviews where he would talk about his hard scrabble
Speaker 1: upbringing and how traditional right wing values had gotten him
Speaker 1: through a tumultuous childhood of poverty. Now this is not
Speaker 1: really true, right, Yeah, there's certainly a number of like
Speaker 1: his hard scrabble aspects of his youth and especially his
Speaker 1: grandpa's story. But like he comes into his grandpa's middle
Speaker 1: class life and is is you know, taken care of
Speaker 1: as a result of that hard core conservative values exactly,
Speaker 1: And a lot of his recollections of his family later
Speaker 1: to conservatives are deliberate lies or at least exaggerations that
Speaker 1: he made to sell his image better. He told one
Speaker 1: audience quote, where I grew up or when I grew up,
Speaker 1: there was more a feeling of responsibility for kids that
Speaker 1: you brought into the world. These were values you learned.
Speaker 1: The government didn't have a damn thing to do about it.
Speaker 1: And like that's the opposite of your childhood, Clarence. You
Speaker 1: were like your whole family was like a bunch of dudes,
Speaker 1: like being like, no, I'm not I ain't taken care
Speaker 1: of that kid. Like that was not the values that
Speaker 1: you learned from your family. Clarence. Tis I mean he's
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean this, he's a fucking terminator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't give a funk. He's got a figure it out.
Speaker 1: It's like all the calculations are made like, lie about
Speaker 1: this ship. Lie about this ship. They were looking for it.
Speaker 1: The worst of it is when he lies about his sister,
Speaker 1: because Clarence Thomas is super fine with throwing members of
Speaker 1: his family under the bus for political clout. The book
Speaker 1: Strange Justice covers a fateful interview that he had with
Speaker 1: the reporter from the Washington Post. Quote. It was in
Speaker 1: this interview that Thomas first publicly denounced his sister's reliance
Speaker 1: on public assistance. She is so dependent, Thomas told the Post.
Speaker 1: She gets mad when the mailman is late with her
Speaker 1: welfare check. What's worse, he continued, is that now her
Speaker 1: kids feel entitled to the check too. They have no
Speaker 1: motivation for doing better or getting out of that situation. Now, Miles,
Speaker 1: there's a number of ways this could be fucked up,
Speaker 1: but I want to be perfectly clear here. All of
Speaker 1: that was a vicious and calculated lie. His sister had
Speaker 1: received government assistance at some point. She was not on
Speaker 1: welfare when he made this statement, nor had she been
Speaker 1: for a particularly expended extended period of time. The only
Speaker 1: reason of her period of her life in which she
Speaker 1: was on government assistance was so she had taken up
Speaker 1: working double shifts for minimum ways in a nursing home
Speaker 1: in order to not be on public assistance. Right in
Speaker 1: the period when he makes these claims, the reason that
Speaker 1: she had spent a brief period of time on welfare
Speaker 1: was not that she was dependent. It was because she
Speaker 1: had had to quit her job when their aunt got
Speaker 1: sick and was dying, and she took her aunt in
Speaker 1: and took care of her while Clarence Thomas did nothing. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's why she was briefly on government assists, Like that
Speaker 1: is a fucked up thing to say about goddamn, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need help, you need Yeah, there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: you want to then make up a lie to also
Speaker 1: smear the smear your sister and also obscure the fact
Speaker 1: that you're in eight ship nephew too, because what he's
Speaker 1: saying is that, like, well, she's just been ruined by
Speaker 1: welfare and now her kids are being ruined by it.
Speaker 1: She's so dependent and the reality is like she is
Speaker 1: making the health and well being of a loved one
Speaker 1: her responsibility when you wouldn't. And that's why she briefly
Speaker 1: had to go on welfare before taking double shifts for
Speaker 1: minimum wage in order to get off of it. Like wow,
Speaker 1: like Jesus Christ. It's just disgusting too, man, because again,
Speaker 1: with his terminator like precision, he is willing at every
Speaker 1: turn to co modify his blackness like and weaponize it
Speaker 1: in service of further white supremacy. And but then we're
Speaker 1: also hearing his fucked up story, this business person who
Speaker 1: had never felt he belonged anywhere, and it's like he's
Speaker 1: the it's like this like horrible fucking echo of like
Speaker 1: American society that manifested back into the form of this
Speaker 1: person who has been like, yeah, man, I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of fun because like, you know, fucking America. But
Speaker 1: also now I'm here too, let's keep it going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's freaky, man, It's yeah, he's bad. So the fact
Speaker 1: that he was willing to throw his sister under the
Speaker 1: bus in such a gross way for such mild cloud
Speaker 1: was noted at the time by his colleagues is kind
Speaker 1: of sucked up, and he felt defensive enough about it
Speaker 1: that he lied to one of his aids and assured
Speaker 1: him that the comments had been taken out of context,
Speaker 1: and he'd been so upset when that journalist had meanly
Speaker 1: quoted him that he had to drive through the night
Speaker 1: to apologize to his sister. Now, when they heard this claim,
Speaker 1: Jane Mayor and Jill Abramson went to his sister to
Speaker 1: ask if he had driven through the night to apologize.
Speaker 1: No recollection of that apology, not from m m a um.
Speaker 1: So that's cool, um, And obviously this is bad. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't do this as a person, to your sister, to
Speaker 1: anybody really, but goes over great in Ronald Reagan's Republican Party.
Speaker 1: This is a really good way to make your career
Speaker 1: as a Republican. UM. He gets offered two different jobs
Speaker 1: with the administration. Now, one would have been working as
Speaker 1: a low level policy aide, and his work would have
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with race. He would be handling
Speaker 1: environmental and energy issues. But that work was not glamorous
Speaker 1: and it paid for shit. So he turns down the job.
Speaker 1: The next gig they offer him is Assistant Secretary for
Speaker 1: Civil Rights in the Department of Education. So Part three, Miles,
Speaker 1: you and me are going to talk about his entrance
Speaker 1: into a presidentially appointed job in the Reagan administration and
Speaker 1: his road to the Supreme Court. But Miles, when don't
Speaker 1: we talk about your own role road to the Supreme Court? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Um. This episode will be played at
Speaker 1: my confirmation hearing more tribunals, so when the full takeover happens,
Speaker 1: I don't know one of them. At Miles of Gray
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram and just podcast Daily That guys,
Speaker 1: if you like news and politics every day for twenty
Speaker 1: day fiance. Have you like weed in reality television? Or
Speaker 1: Miles and Jack got mad boosties? If you like basketball?
Speaker 1: Three places to see me. I do like the idea
Speaker 1: of you standing before the Senate being confirmed as a
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice, and like Ted Cruz is like, now,
Speaker 1: Mr Gray, is it true that you uh you you
Speaker 1: you've you've ingested an illegal narcotic known as marijuana and
Speaker 1: you just push play on an exerpt of this episode
Speaker 1: where you're saying sun chips by come chips by sun
Speaker 1: chips Yeah, Billy by Billy g Yeah exactly? Is it
Speaker 1: true that you said I am a gross fuck turd
Speaker 1: on an episode of The Daily Ze guist number four
Speaker 1: four three three, Yeah it is. I would have I
Speaker 1: would have been like which time? Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I said that exactly? May I said? I may
Speaker 1: have said sniffling fucked turd or something like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but anyway, any other questions are we be good? Okay? Cool?
Speaker 1: It would be fun to do, And I'm like, now,
Speaker 1: can we get to the gladiator phase of the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court confirmation hearing. I can't wait to fight the other
Speaker 1: fucking nominees. It would be really it would be really
Speaker 1: fun to get confirmed by the Senate because you would
Speaker 1: get to repeatedly say to Ted Cruz, didn't didn't a
Speaker 1: guy like call your wife ugly? And then you had
Speaker 1: to pretend he was awesome for years? How do you
Speaker 1: feel about that? How does your wife feel about that?
Speaker 1: Are still together? Oh my god? Wow, dude, dude, I
Speaker 1: read that thing where like your daughter was like, YO,
Speaker 1: leave him mom. Yeah, that's really fucked up. I commend you,
Speaker 1: bro for not letting that affect you in any way
Speaker 1: visit being totally fine, being so chill with that. Alright, man,
Speaker 1: cancoon on three. So Miles, that's our episode. Thank you everyone.
Speaker 1: Check out Miles Fiance, the Daily Zeitgeist, and that basketball
Speaker 1: podcast with Boosts in the name. I don't know Basketball's langs.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? What does that mean? Man? You
Speaker 1: can jump? You got vertical vertical takeoff ability. You got
Speaker 1: mad boost ees. All right, well, I do have a
Speaker 1: package from UPS, but I haven't picked it up from
Speaker 1: the place yet. Oh my god, that was such a
Speaker 1: boomer joke. Get the funk out you. Sorry, I can't
Speaker 1: hear you, Sophie. My ear horn is in the other room.
Speaker 1: My Eagles vinyl is about to arrive. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you about the Eagles of all the bands. Don Henley,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the name of a guy from the Eagles.
Speaker 1: No Miles for me. It's Creedence all the way baby.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. But okay, Robert has a book called
Speaker 1: After the Revolution. Can buy it ak bras cools on Media.
Speaker 1: Okay that episodes sucking over that joke. Thank you, Hey everybody.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here, hosts of Behind the Basstreots in a
Speaker 1: bunch of their podcasts. Here to let you know that
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media is going on break next week. This
Speaker 1: isn't something we normally do, but as our producer Sophie
Speaker 1: is currently on the run from the a t F,
Speaker 1: it was the only option. So next week there will
Speaker 1: be no new episodes of Behind the Bastards, No new
Speaker 1: episodes of it could happen here? Uh no new episodes
Speaker 1: of Nothing. We will be back the next week after
Speaker 1: the week of the first UM, to continue providing you
Speaker 1: with far too many podcasts, So just chill out. Next week,
Speaker 1: that's what we will be doing, chilling out and hiding
Speaker 1: Sophie from the A t F. Love you all, see
Speaker 1: you soon.