Column: Clarence Ketanji did not get the media puff

Liberal media has hailed Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination as a glorious and historic occasion. No one needs to worry about what he is up to, since he and the media share all the “correct opinions.”

The Associated Press released a story under this tweet: “For black girls, the prospect of Ketanji Brown Jackson being the first black woman in the Supreme Court is a promise, a hope and a moment to break even more barriers.”

But on July 1, 1991, when President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, the networks panicked. He was a conservative, so he was not black. On ABC World News Tonight, Reporter Tim O’Brien says “a prominent black lawyer called Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court insulting.” It was Derrick Bell of Harvard, the architect of Critical Race Theory, who angrily claimed that “it is an insult to place someone who looks black and thinks white in conservative terms.”

On NBC Nightly News, Jim Miklaszewski led liberals who said “Thomas tried to break the positive move” and then Republican John Lewis was told “but just because he’s black doesn’t make him right or make him better for the US Supreme Court.”

The NBC reporter concluded: “With opposition from within the minority community, it is difficult to see how this could help George W. Bush politically.” Now NBC is suggesting that Biden’s nomination of Jackson would encourage him politically.

Black opinion writers were even more terrified with the Thomas pick. Of Barbara Reynolds USA Today Declared: “If Hugo Black, once a member of the KKK, could be a prominent liberal justice, there is a hope that a Negro could be black.” Columnist Carl Rowan nodded: “If you give Clarence Thomas some flour in his mouth, you’ll think you’re talking about David Duke.”

Then in September 1991, two days before Thomas’ hearing, NBC Today is Sunday Thomas promised advantages and disadvantages. But their “pro-Thomas” argument has a question on the profile of black Conservative Republican Gary Franks (R-Con), where anchor Garrick O’Toole finds hypocrisy. Like Thomas, Otley said Franks went to Yale “under a positive action program. Yet today, he is fighting the Democratic Civil Rights Bill in Congress.”

NBC Black reporter Bob Herbert has aired a bad anti-Thomas comment. “Who is this guy, Clarence Thomas, and why do we want him in the Supreme Court? I can’t think of a better reason. The guy can’t be separated and he doesn’t seem to have a heart,” Herbert said.

He then called Thomas a “tool of the rich and powerful” backed by Dan Coyle, Jesse Helms and Storm Thermond. “Even David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, is crazy about Clarence Thomas. Make no mistake – old man, poor man, black man, woman, forget it. Clarence Thomas is not your friend.”

Barbara Reynolds attacks Thomas again in September. “Here is a man who is going to determine the important things for the country and he has not already told the blacks; He has already said that if he could not paint himself white, he would think white and marry a white woman. No. A white man.

This all came before Anita Hill’s smear in October. Journalists claim black is a “living experience” for the high court, but they are brutally attacking conservative minorities. Forget their experience. The media’s outburst was similar to that described by Thomas as “a high-tech lynching of black people who can think for themselves in any way”.