The Media Research Center, it seems, just can’t stop obsessing over Anita Hill, whom it has spent the past 25 years smearing and bashing for making sexual harassment allegations against conservative icon Clarence Thomas. If anything, the attacks are ramping up.
MRC executives Tim Graham and Brent Bozell took a minor potshot at her in their Dec. 8 column: “Anita Hill had no photograph of Thomas grabbing her; she never claimed that he did. He was accused of talking dirty, and for that alone, the Democrats wanted him voted down.”
News that Hill has been named by a group of entertainment executives to lead a commission tasked to address sexual harassment and inequality in the entertainment and news industries, however, really cranked up the MRC’s wrath.
Kyle Drennen denounced Hill as “discredited” and having “credibility problems” who made “disputed accusations.” The only evidence Drennen provides for these claims is a less-than-objective blog post at MRC “news” division CNSNews.com that, as we’ve noted, has as its chief source an attack website started by a personal friend of Thomas who was a lawyer for the team assembled by George H.W. Bush to push Thomas’ nomination through the Senate.
Graham, meanwhile, continues to despise Hill so much that he needed two posts to vent his rage. In the first, he actually calls Hill’s allegations “fake news” then spins his own version of the Hill-Thomas controversy, in which he once again pushed his unproven conspiracy theory that Hill came forward because she was chasing a book deal and a cushy law-school job:
After months of trying to defeat Thomas, the Democrats were about to lose the confirmation fight. So at the last minute, NPR and Newsday introduced Anita Hill and her unproven story. Hill testified, and Clarence Thomas strongly rebutted her allegations. When the weekend of hearings were over, a New York Times poll found the American people strongly believed Thomas over Hill, even women:
[…]Politically, that’s a fiasco for Hill. But all of the mythical treatments of Saint Anita ignored what the American people concluded. The liberal elites have spent the last 25 years trying to revise history and reverse public opinion.
Few remember troubling details that made Hill’s account less credible. For example, she followed Clarence Thomas around from job to job in the federal government, from the Education Department to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which doesn’t exactly sound like someone seeking a less hostile working environment. Hill denied she was making the charges for her own personal benefit, but liberals raised an endowment to get her a job at the University of Oklahoma. After five years, she gained a prestigious professorship at Brandeis University. In 1993, she signed a two-book deal estimated to be “well over $1 million.”
In his second rant, Graham rails against Hill over her 1998 comments regarding allegations against Bill Clinton, in which she reacted the same way that some conservatives have regarding the similar accusations against Donald Trump: it was known before the election, and the voters elected him anyway. Graham didn’t mention that parallel of course; instead, he huffed, “If you are a true fighter against any and all sexual harassment, why would one refuse to acknowledge the women accusing Clinton as experiencing sexual harassment?”
(Of course, Graham himself is not a true fighter against any and all sexual harassment, given that he and the rest of the MRC have a certain Fox News-shaped blind spot on the issue.)
Graham also whined that Hill “also poured a bucket of disdain on the Paula Jones lawsuit,” but the reason why she did so is why Graham has been attacking Hill’s claims: there’s no evidence, and her backers are politically motivated. Graham’s ranting obscures that relevant point.
Graham concludes by declaring that Hollywood looks “desperate and preposterous” by appointing Hill to this effort. But is that more or less desperate and preposterous than Graham and the rest of the MRC look in their quarter-century Hill-trashing obsession?
Graham, of course, won’t answer that question.