Watching TV while at work? Why not!

Call it one of the perks of being a reporter-type person who has worked in newsroom-type environments – nobody thinks it odd to have the television or radio tuned in to a broadcast of some news-worthy event.

Allowing workplace to be informed about Kavanaugh

I recall back in 1989, when I was a reporter based at the Thompson Center state government building for the now-defunct City News Bureau, I had a radio tuned in (to WBBM-AM, I believe) for the entirety of the confirmation hearings to determine whether Clarence Thomas was fit to serve a life-time appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States.

MEANING I HEARD the live broadcast that included all the tidbits that got written up and caused many of us to snicker – although not enough of us so as to thwart Thomas from getting the post.

I thought back to this when I learned there is a Chicago company that is not only willing to let employees listen to the hearings taking place now for whether Brett Kavanaugh is worthy of being Thomas’ colleague on the Supreme Court, they’re willing to make their employees comfortable.

Avant, an online lender, opened the board room of its downtown headquarters to the company’s workers. The Chicago Tribune reported they organized a current event-type discussion, giving workers the chance to express their thoughts on the issue.

To accommodate such a desire, they arranged for a video stream of the broadcast into the board room so their workers could watch the happenings in real-time.

THAT IS, IF the workers don’t want to be holed up at their desks, watching the same video stream on their work computers.

Now I’m sure there are some people reading this who are about to engage in a rant telling me I’m an idiot – those workers ought to be doing their jobs. Nobody pays them to watch the news.

Although I have to admit to thinking there’s something incredibly honest about a company willing to concede that many of their workers are going to be focusing their attention on their computers to learn the latest about Kavanaugh’s chances of actually getting the Supreme Court appointment that is part of President Donald Trump’s desire to remake the high court in his own image.

Work got done despite Thomas hearings

Either that, or they figure they’d rather have their employees using the computers to watch the livestream of the Kavanaugh hearings, instead of playing video poker or whatever other type of time-wasting event they’d be engaged in.

NOW IT’S ALWAYS possible that some people are going to be tuning in out of some desire to hear titillating details. The Kavanaugh case has devolved into one of a man who back when he was a teenager and a college kid couldn’t exactly keep his hormones under control.

Which will turn into an ongoing argument amongst us over exactly what constitutes attempted rape. What is appropriate behavior between the genders?

It might be a very worthwhile use of time for many of us to engage in such a discussion. Perhaps we’d be better off if more entities were to permit such activity so as to encourage such frank talk.

Although I’m sure there will be those who will merely be amused by the more absurd things that got said. Just as the reason I will never forget the Thomas “pubic hair” line was because it was so overly ridiculous to think anyone could seriously believe that – or would be absurd enough to think such a line would be humorous.

BESIDES, IT IS possible for people to train themselves to focus on more than one thing at a time. I know in my case, I can write copy and listen to conversations simultaneously. Which is means that I can listen to a TV broadcast and write.

I may not see the images, but I can get the substance.

Managed to write college paper while watching Super Bowl

Which actually is how, back when I was in college, I managed to write a paper of great significance (it was the totality of my grade for a course I took) while listening to the Super Bowl broadcast from the lone year the Chicago Bears ever won that sporting event.

And as for spending days listening to Anita Hill try to take down Clarence Thomas, I managed to get my work done as well.

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What were the lessons learned from Anita Hill with regards to Kavanaugh?

I still remember the moment of the “pubic hair on my coke.”

KAVANAUGH: Purely partisan politics?

As in listening to a radio broadcast of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, when his former colleague Anita Hill recalled a moment of the two of them together when Thomas made his little quip to her.

MY COLLEAGUES AND I couldn’t quite believe anybody could be that lame in thinking such a line would be humorous. Or that Thomas could actually think that such talk would make him appealing to women.

But it really happened, the Senate eventually confirmed Thomas to his appointment that he still holds nearly 30 years later, and I’m sure there are political people out there who think the lesson learned from the whole “Thomas affair” is that such allegations are outlandish and best ignored.

Because, hey, we’ve had a misogynistic sort on the Supreme Court for all these years now, and it hasn’t brought an end to the Republic. Similar to how I’m sure they’re also thinking that it doesn’t matter what President Donald Trump (the man who supposedly thinks the way to appeal to women is to “grab ‘em by the pussy”) may have done in his life.

It only matters when Bill Clinton does it, because he has partisan leanings they are directly opposed to. Taking him down politically is the whole purpose, along with destroying anybody who might be remotely like him in any way.

GORSUCH: Does he need Trump allies on ct?

ALL THESE THOUGHTS have been popping into my head a lot with the hearings taking place concerning the political fate of Brett Kavanaugh. He’s the man whom Trump wants to put on the Supreme Court of the United States – in large part because of a belief he’ll shift the partisan leanings of the court sufficiently enough that the ideologues can start making good on their more-than-four-decade-old desire to do away with the 1973 ruling that made abortion a legitimate medical procedure.

So to try to take him down, we’ve learned about the woman who says that back when she was 17 (and Kavanaugh also was a teenager), he tried to molest her. She had to fight him off.

As if that isn’t sufficient, we’re now learning of another woman who remembers back to her freshman year of college in the mid-1980s when she says fellow student Kavanaugh used a college party to expose himself and try to get her to touch his genitals.

GARLAND: Some still bitter he's not on ct?

We actually have some people making the claim of, “How many women have to come forth before we see Trump’s appointee as unfit for such a position?”

ALTHOUGH I ALSO don’t doubt that Trump-types will never make such an concession – and not only because they just don’t care what these women say Kavanaugh did to them.

It’s all about the fact that Trump himself wants to be able to reform the Supreme Court in his own image, and needs as many people of his partisan persuasion to be appointed to the high court.

He has the one appointment he got because the Senate successfully managed to keep former President Barack Obama from filling the vacancy caused by the death of Antonin Scalia – an act that some find disgraceful. Although I’m sure the ideologues think the real disgrace is that Obama got to make two other appointments – and we now have Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in life-time legal posts.

Now, the conservative strategy is to ensure that Sotomayor and Kagan ultimately become isolated – and we get a whole slew of Supreme Court rulings of the future that come down to 7-2 votes. Which could happen if Trump is the one who gets to pick a replacement someday for 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

WHILE THE OPPOSITION will do what it can to thwart Kavanaugh – and theoretically any other opening there might be on the Supreme Court. Perhaps some think they can literally take back the high court seat they want to believe should be held by Merrick Garland (the man Obama tried to pick for the court, but couldn’t).

THOMAS: Does he need companion?

The shame of all this is that the women themselves become a sideshow. The reality of what happened to them all those years ago becomes irrelevant – to the point where back in 2010, Virginia Thomas (Clarence’s spouse) had the nerve to publicly demand that Hill apologize for letting the world know about his awkward-bordering-on-tacky sense of humor

Are we going to get similar demands in the future of the women who now are coming forth to tell their stories of back when they knew Brett Kavanaugh?

While it may be true that his behavior as a young man wasn’t much different from other males, it really doesn’t excuse him. And the fact that we already have Thomas on the high court doesn’t mean we need to have another boor to keep him company!

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Time passes, but ideologues use same nonsense to try to justify themselves

It is a line of logic I have heard so often from so many different conservative ideologue pundits that I don’t know who deserves credit (or blame, if you prefer).

A colossal mistake?

It is the theory that the whole Civil Rights movement and the passage in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act was a mistake because it antagonized the “right” into being so opposed to the idea of equality for all regardless of race.

I HAVE HEARD it said that the Second World War was a major change on our society that forced people of different races together. It would have caused a gradual change that eventually would have brought about some form of integration.

Letting black people agitate and political people use the rule of law to thwart those people who insist the “American Way” of life is a segregated one caused distrust and hate. Black people harmed their own interest, and brought upon themselves all the ill will some continue to feel upon them.

Which is a load of nonsense!!! This was a case where someone was going to have to force upon the ideologues the sense of equality that our nation theoretically is based upon.

So excuse me for thinking that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and other ideologues are full of it when they suggest that gay activists screwed themselves over by pushing for gay marriage and having the high court implement it with their 5-4 ruling last week.

IT’S LITERALLY THE same line that society was gradually headed in their direction, and how people would have become accepting enough that we eventually would have had Legislatures in all 50 states enact something to wipe out their old laws that prevented marriage from being valid for gay couples.

Now relegated to the 'junk' drawer?

“Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept,” Roberts wrote in his legal dissent to the high court’s ruling.

While Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of how the desire by gay couples to marry shows just how much they respect the institution that they want to be included, Roberts insisted for the record that equality is not a Constitutional issue.

There also was Justice Clarence Thomas, who argued that people cannot be demeaned by the actions in opposition to their desire for gay marriage. Then again, he also argued that the Negro slaves of old “did not lose their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved.”

Put sign next to Klan robe at Smithsonian

OF COURSE, IT means the government loses any dignity and respect it might want to claim for itself by permitting such things.

As for the people who want to complain that five justices imposed their will on the masses, that is nonsense. Because the whole point of the balance of powers between the branches of government is that it is the courts that resolve disputes and intervene when the legislative and executive branches act improperly.

Which is what one can say was the situation where some states, including our own Illinois, willingly implemented gay marriage, while others such as Indiana had to have it forced on them by lower courts and a few states where the Confederate battle flag prevails despite its repulsion by the masses were determined to be the holdouts – fighting the issue to the very death.

There are those people who were never going to be swayed on this issue – and were eager to use their powers of intimidation to ensure that political people of a cowardly nature would never take a firm stance on the issue, one way or another.

SO IT ONLY became natural that the Supreme Court would have to intervene. It can be argued that had the court taken the approach its minority suggests, it would have been neglecting its duty.

Will we get 'gay marriage' coin in 2065?

On Sunday, we got to see a wilder-than-usual celebration at the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago. The annual event’s timing just two days after the high court’s ruling made it an occasion for the act’s backers to let their joy out in public. I don’t doubt the parade images will offend certain people who will never get over what the court did.

Then again, isn’t the fact that this issue is now resolved legally so we can start the process of moving forward the ultimate benefit.

Or do you really think we’d be better off on racial issues if the civil rights movement of a half-century ago hadn’t happened and we still had pockets of the country using “state’s rights” rhetoric to justify segregation?

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Cain headed on path toward political immortality, if not electoral victory

CAIN: Clarence, Jr.?

With the women coming out of the woodwork to say that business executive-turned-presidential dreamer Herman Cain sexually harassed them, political pundits are also cropping up to compare him to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

I’ll be the first to admit that my initial reaction to learning that a woman said Cain treated her inappropriately because of her gender made me recall the days of two decades ago when Thomas faced the accusations of Anita Hill, who claimed he behaved crudely (the Coca-Cola can?) in her presence.

IT WAS JUST a few weeks ago that The Nation gave us a commentary, with an unnamed silhouette on the cover and the headline, “We STILL Believe Her.”

They didn’t have to name Hill. We knew who they were referring to. This still lingers in our national memory, and likely will not go away.

Which means that Cain may wind up with the same fate. He has risen above the pack in ways that will ensure he will be remembered – regardless of whether he actually wins the GOP presidential nomination for the 2012 electoral cycle.

What always struck me about the whole Clarence Thomas affair was the degree to which the conservative ideologues took the whole issue seriously, and in fact continue to hold a grudge whenever the issue comes up.

I KEEP WANTING to shout to these people, “You won, quit whining.”

Because it is true. Clarence Thomas got confirmed by the Senate as a Supreme Court justice, despite the allegations that indicated he personally was a boor and not exactly of the temperament that we’d like to think is maintained by our nation’s high court.

Yet it is the conservative ideologues who continue to bear a grudge. They don’t want to forget the attack, which ultimately was unsuccessful. In short, they’re bad winners.

They’re even worse losers – as we have seen by the way they conducted themselves during the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The people who are screaming the loudest now about Cain being mistreated will be the ones who a year from now will be leading the “Impeachment!” attack against Obama – should he manage to prevail in next year’s election cycle (which is a very real possibility so long as the ideologues prop up extremists such as Cain as their presidential hopeful).

WHICH MEANS I fully expect the ideologues to go out of their way to prop up Cain’s image – no matter how many attacks he sustains in coming months. Even long after this campaign cycle is over, we’re going to hear trash talk from the ideologues about the people who would dare to criticize Cain.

Heck, a part of me views pundit Ann Coulter’s recent comments about the difference between “good blacks” (like Cain) and the kind of African-American people who would deign to side with less-conservative movements than hers as being just the beginning of such rancid rhetoric.

Now I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what to think of the women who have come forth against Cain. I’m not sure if he did or didn’t act like a crude twit towards these ladies, and I haven’t really gone out of my way to check into their claims to see if they’re credible.

Perhaps it is because I realize it doesn’t matter much if they’re credible.

FOR THE CONSERVATIVE ideologues have already made up their minds. They are willing to overlook the great moral flaws of any individual who is willing to put the “right” letter (“R,” not “D”) after their names and vote the “proper” (claiming morals, even though they usually stand for intrusion into peoples’ personal business) way on various issues confronting our society. They are going to take up the “Cain Crusade” and will try to elevate him into some tragic example of a great figure who was “taken down” by those liberal freaks who can’t see the world in their own narrow view.

Of course, the fact that such views (anybody who thinks it is a “joke” to electrify the U.S./Mexico border is a nitwit worthy of our derision) put him outside the real mainstream of our society means he’s not about to win the GOP presidential nomination. The fact that he still gains significant support in certain polls shows how out-of-touch many of those GOP-leaning voters are.

But Cain has gained a certain sense of immortality. I don’t know if The Nation will be doing some sort of graphic on their website (or whatever technology is in use) to say two decades from now we believe the women who criticize Cain.

But he definitely has made himself more significant than, say, Michele Bachmann. Does anyone remember that there was a brief moment a couple of months ago when her campaign was taken seriously?

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Self-promotion taints the Senate debate

It is a sentiment I am all too familiar with from my time as a reporter-type person – filing some piece of copy because its subject matter ties into some “exclusive” story that my particular news shop is claiming. Who cares if the actual copy is not newsworthy, or perhaps even downright trivial?

That sentiment was clearly at work when the two major party candidates for U.S. Senate from Illinois engaged in a debate this week, and had to be subjected to one-time White House aide-turned-ABC reporter-type George Stephanopoulos asking both Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk whether they thought Anita Hill owed an apology to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

TO THEIR CREDIT, neither man fell into the trap of trying to dignify that trivial question with a legitimate answer. Heck, I would have been prepared to write a commentary urging people to vote against someone for dignifying it with a response.

Because this was purely about the fact that ABC News trying to hype up the fact that they’re claiming to have “broken” the story that Thomas’ wife, Virginia, during the weekend called up Hill’s office (she’s a professor at Brandeis University) and left a message asking for/demanding the apology.

If Stephanopoulos had been able to get either Kirk or Giannoulias to nibble at an answer (both men essentially said that the Thomas confirmation hearings were so distant in the past they weren’t going to think about them), ABC News would then have claimed that the U.S. Senate debate held in Chicago rose to national news.

Stephanopoulos, who was one of the moderators for that particular debate, would have gained praise from his bosses for getting them an audio/video snippet that would tie directly into their alleged exclusive, which would allow them to boast about themselves.

ALL OF WHICH ignores reality, which is that most people have long-ago moved on from this issue (and the ones who still have the hang-ups, including Virginia Thomas, need to be told to get over it).

As best as I can tell, most people who watched the debate and felt the need to post their reactions while the event was taking place were little more than bewildered about why Stephanopoulos would even bring that question up.

Even by the standards of a debate moderator trying to slip in an off-beat inquiry to try to catch the candidates in a moment of honesty, this one was just strange. It may very well be the most bizarre moment I have ever heard in the roughly two-plus decades that I have covered such debates related to Illinois political candidates.

Then again, perhaps that is all too appropriate, because the Thomas confirmation hearings were so memorably bizarre in their own right. If anything, they were a sign of what our electoral politics was destined to become during the past 18 years.

SOME PEOPLE REMEMBER where they were the day John F. Kennedy was shot, while others felt something emotional and unforgettable about where they were when they learned the World Trade Center collapsed nine years-and-one month ago.

I remember the exact moment when I heard the line about pubic hairs and Coca-Cola cans that Hill testified under oath came from Thomas’ mouth when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – I was sitting at a desk in the pressroom of what is now called the Thompson Center state government building.

It was early afternoon in Chicago and a radio was tuned to a station that was broadcasting the hearings live. Which means I got to hear the completely out-of-the-ordinary line at the moment she uttered it

It also means that I later heard live Thomas’ testimony on his own behalf, including the line about this being a “high-tech lynching.”

WHEN LOOKED AT from the perspective of today, where Republican partisans impeached one president of the Democratic persuasion and are insistent that the current chief executive is somehow “un-American” (while also trying to downplay the disaster that was the presidency of the GOPer who held the office in between the two), all of this is too predictable.

But back in the political days of “B.C.” (Before Clinton, who will be campaigning in Chicago next week on behalf of local Democratic Party candidates), this kind of reaction would have been the stuff of our worst nightmares. Surely we as civilized people knew better than to behave in such a manner?

Republican partisans are willing to look the other way at the personal peccadilloes of their people, so long as they spout the right ideological talk. When they are attacked, they go all-out to try to destroy their critics. And they are capable of holding a grudge.

The one thing I have to admire about this whole situation is Hill’s reaction to getting that call on her office voice-mail. She contacted campus police, who in turn notified the FBI. She’s not dignifying it with a pompous response.

NOW I’M NOT delusional enough to think that the “G-men” are about to haul Virginia Thomas off to jail while they build a criminal case of harassment against her. She did use a telephone, which could bring the whole concept of ‘wire fraud” into the mix. In the hands of an overly-anal prosecutor, this whole thing could become the crime of the century.

There’s just a part of me that would like to believe that Virginia now regrets making that phone call, in large part because the audio is now public – as though Hill is the one who has let this political wound fester for the past two decades.

I’d like to think she’s somewhat embarrassed by the ABC reports (which are getting picked up in way too many places).

If she’s not embarrassed, then she should be, more so than anybody else – except for George Stephanopoulos, who managed to taint the League of Women Voters’ debate between Kirk and Giannoulias with his ridiculous inquiry.

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