How Television Breeds Incivility

In a year when civility and courtesy have been replaced by insults and vulgarity in the nation’s political conversation, why would anyone want to reopen one of the most divisive episodes in recent American history? And yet that is exactly what HBO is doing by airing a movie on the Senate hearings to confirm Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice.

Few knew anything about Clarence Thomas in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush nominated him to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Court, but many were struck by what a talented nominee he was. It’s a great day, I thought, when a white Republican president proposes a black lawyer for the highest court in the land. Justice Thomas was not the first black justice (Justice Marshall held that honor), but his nomination was a genuine measure of progress in our society. (Full disclosure: My wife and I have gotten to know Clarence Thomas and his wife in the years since he joined the court, and are now close personal friends.)

Then the confirmation hearings began, and it was shocking the way Mr. Thomas was attacked on a personal basis. It was character assassination — or as Mr. Thomas said at the time, “a high tech lynching.”

Rather than challenge his legal philosophy or educational credentials, which would have been fair game, his opponents tried to destroy his character with half-truths, lies and innuendo. They attacked Mr. Thomas with virtually no evidence to support their accusations. In fact, the accusations appear to have been fabricated for the confirmation hearing alone. Their tactics fascinated the press and public, but it was sickening to watch such a fine man treated in such an unfair way

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