Tuesday, October 09, 2007

EVIDENTLY, DOWD DIDN'T READ THE CLARENCE THOMAS BOOK BEFORE REVIEWING IT

I'm not sure whether in this past Sunday's New Duranty Times, play-reviewer-turned-pundit Frank Rich's bathetic attempt to fact-check Justice Clarence Thomas or Maureen Dowd's vehement screed was more despicable.

Dowd tried to go over the top, writing in Justice Thomas's voice, "I Did Do It," but evidently, she seems not to have read Justice Thomas's excellent and moving memoir (or gave it a only cursory reading, without absorbing it).

Here's a sample of her version:
From the time I was a kid, when my white classmates made fun of me as “ABC” — “America’s Blackest Child” — the beast of rage against The Man has gnawed at my soul.


If she had bothered to read the book, she would have known that Justice Thomas didn't have a single white classmate until he transferred in the 10th grade from Savannah's black Catholic high school, St. Pius X, to Saint John Vianney Seminary. The children who taunted him as "ABC" were black, or as we say today, African-Americans.

Evidently she was also mistaken when she wrote, in her own memoir, that she couldn't "get" a man because she is too smart. A smart person wouldn't have made this error.

Her scurrilous attack on one of the greatest Americans now living is shameful.

1 comment:

  1. I wrote a letter to the editor of the KC Star complaining after one of their columnists attacked Clarence Thomas too. They called to verify my letter so it looks like they are actually going to print it.

    ReplyDelete