30 Years (And Counting) Of Hating Anita Hill

The Media Research Center has never stopped hating Hill for her testimony against Clarence Thomas, continuing to baselessly smear her as a liar or claiming she did it for money.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 8/25/2023

Anita Hill

The MRC has spent the past three decades hating Anita Hill, smearing her as a liar over her allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas (despite offering no substantial proof to back it up). It's not going to stop the hate anytime soon, as it continues to issue attacks on her.

The MRC seemed to start marking the anniversary in 2020, when it repeatedly dropped her name in promoting unproven sexual misbehavior allegations made against Joe Biden by Tara Reade. Kristine Marsh was on Hill patrol for the MRC in an October 2020 post:

Anita Hill was warmly welcomed to The View on Friday, where she was immediately asked about her endorsement for Joe Biden. But the hosts refused to press her on the hypocritical nature of the #MeToo advocate endorsing the candidate who has been accused of sexual assault.

In fact, the hosts completely ignored Tara Reade, just like CNN and CBS did when they hyped Hill’s Biden endorsement. Instead, co-host Joy Behar asked the Clarence Thomas accuser how she could endorse Biden, given he “wasn’t really on her side” during the Supreme Court Justice's confirmation hearings in 1991[.]

Marsh further grumbled that "The hosts spent the rest of the interview talking about the activist's work combatting sexual harassment in the entertainment industry with the non-profit she chairs, The Hollywood Commission. " She then dismissed the segment as "ABC's work helping Democrat [sic] candidates get the approval of left-wing activists," though she failed to identify what, if anything, is "left-wing" about Hill.

True to form, Tim Graham -- the MRC's biggest Anita Hill trigger victim -- unloaded on Hill yet again in his column a couple weeks later, bashing NPR's Nina Totenberg, huffing that she "made Anita Hill a legend with sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas that were never proven. It was the very definition of a 'politically driven event,' a story leaked to Totenberg by Senate Democrats to sabotage the Thomas nomination. No one at NPR said that was an unvetted waste of time, a 'pure distraction.'" Graham is not going to admit that his framing of Hill's accusations of Thomas as"never proven" also means they were never disproven.

In a September 2020 post, Kyle Drennen whined that CBS had on Hill to discuss the nomination of Amy Comey Barrett:

On Tuesday’s CBS This Morning, co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King brought on Supreme Court nominee smear artist Anita Hill to demand that the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the high court be blocked. The partisan pair also discussed Hill’s endorsement of Joe Biden for president, supposedly because he would combat sexual harassment. Tara Reade might disagree with that rationale.

During the softball exchange, King requested “to talk to private citizen Anita Hill” about various political topics, starting with the Court: “...you’re absolutely not convinced that a thorough Supreme Court confirmation can happen before the election. Why do you think that?”

[...]

King then turned to the presidential campaign, noting: “You know, Joe Biden was very tough on you during those 1991 confirmation hearings. Yet you have announced that you are going to endorse him. What did it take for you to get past that?”

In her response, Hill never actually mentioned Biden’s name or made the case for why he should be president. Instead, she just talked generally about sexual harassment, implying she thought Biden would focus on addressing the issue:

[...]

Of course King refused to press Hill on Reade’s accusation, instead concluding the segment by touting: “I’m sure Joe Biden was glad to hear you’re going to endorse him.”

One didn't even actually have to be Anita Hill to be trashed like her -- you just had to be actor who played her. Right-wing film critic Christian Toto attacked actress Kerry Washington in October 2020 because she "speaks out on political matters, campaigns on behalf of Democratic candidates and stars in projects with overt progressive agendas," citing her "starring role in Confirmation as Anita Hill" as an example.

The anniversary year

An April 2021 column by Graham complained that a reporter "cited Justice Clarence Thomas noting 'the media often seeks to titillate rather than to educate and inform.' If you consider the role NPR and the “Democratic Party broadsheets” played in the titillating (and still-unproven) Anita Hill charges of sexual harassment against Thomas during his confirmation battle in 1991, you might understand his skeptical viewpoint." As ConWebWatch has noted, Graham invoked her in August of that year to defend against allegations of untoward behavior by right-wing California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder, whining that "It's easy to recall that NPR jumped first on the unproven allegations from Anita Hill that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her."

So when the 30th anniversary of Hill's testimony against Thomas came around in October 2021, the MRC was ready to flood the zone with more Hill-hating. First up was Geoffrey Dickens, who served up a flashback item complaining that "the Democrats brought forth Anita Hill to accuse Thomas of sexual harassment, in a last ditch attempt to derail his nomination" and that "the media rallied around Hill":

While Thomas and his congressional defenders were demonized, Hill was instantly canonized as a Rosa Parks for her time by the likes of Time’s Nancy Gibbs — and she’s been celebrated as a truth-telling activist since then.

During the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018 PBS anchor Judy Woodruff, on the January 4 edition of NewsHour, pressed then-former Vice President Joe Biden to speak on his role in the Hill-Thomas hearings: “We have watched this incredible MeToo movement. In connection with that, you have said that you owe Anita Hill an apology about what happened back in 1991, the Clarence Thomas episode. Have you contacted her, number one? And, number two, do you think, this time, it’s different, that we are seeing with the MeToo movement something that is truly going to lead for change, to change for women?”

This was followed by a post from Scott Whitlock fawning over Thomas' response at the time to Hill's accusations:

It was 30 years ago today that Clarence Thomas demolished the left — and the liberal media’s — attempt to destroy him, condemning smears as a “high tech lynching.” On October 11, 1991, the then-Supreme Court nominee finally got to speak for himself and respond to the charges that he sexually harassed Anita Hill. It was a moment of high drama when the conservative icon called out his attackers.

After unceasing vitriol by journalists and politicians like Joe Biden, Thomas blasted back at the process, calling out the left’s “high tech lynching” against “uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.” One of the targets hit by the devastating reply was Biden himself, then a Senator and Committee Chairman.

[...]

Biden's call for Thomas to stop complaining is a contrast to when he was accused of sexual assault by Tara Reade in 2020. Then, the Democratic presidential nominee had a compliant press to defend him.

The MRC didn't explain why it has refused hold Reade to the same factual standards it's holding Hill.

Next up was Kyle Drennen, who wasn't completely rehashing the past:

On Monday, CBS Mornings devoted nearly 10 minutes of air time to promoting a new podcast that marks the 30th anniversary of Anita Hill smearing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his 1991 confirmation hearing and also celebrates Christine Blasey Ford doing the same to Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Appearing on the network broadcast, one of the podcast hosts noted how impressed she was with the “patriotism” of both women.

“We’re going to begin this hour with a look back at a stunning moment in history involving a very high-profile allegation of sexual misconduct,” co-host Gayle King announced at the top of the 8:00 a.m. ET hour. She explained: “Now, today marks 30 years since law professor Anita Hill went before a Senate committee to accuse Judge Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, of sexual harassment.”

Drennen claimed the accusations of Hill and Ford were promoted by "bitter leftists" and were "failed, sleazy attempts by Democrats to take down conservative Supreme Court nominees."He didn't say whether anyone at the MRC was "bitter" and "sleazy" for their failed attempt to take down Biden in its enthusiastic, hypocritical promotion of Reade's accusations.

Graham concluded by huffing: This was one of those defining events that underlined why the media isn't trusted, that it's viewed as an entrenched public relations arm of the Democrat [sic] Party."

Into 2022

The MRC's attacks on Hill continued into 2022. In March, as ConWebWatch has documented, Graham indulged in his bitterness at Hill during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson:

Monday's edition of The NPR Politics Podcast sounded a little bizarre to conservatives. NPR congressional reporter Susan Davis marveled at "just how much bitterness lingers among Republican senators over the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh." It was mildly comical that their discussion of Kavanaugh didn't describe the actual subject of the bitterness -- unproven allegations of teenage sexual assault. Would NPR reporters be bitter if they were accused of rape?

[...]

Nina Totenberg -- who slimed Clarence Thomas in 1991 with Anita Hill's unproven charges of crude sexual banter -- somehow sounded mournful about the bitter partisan tone, as if she and NPR had nothing to do with it.

Graham rehashed that bitterness again in his column a couple days later complaining about how Thomas was treated:

The liberal media have treated the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson as a glorious and historic occasion. Nobody needs to care about where she stands on things, since she and the media share all the “correct opinions.”

Associated Press issued a story under this tweet: “For Black girls, the possibility of Ketanji Brown Jackson being the first Black woman on the Supreme Court is a moment of promise, hope and the breaking of yet another barrier.”

But on July 1, 1991, when President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, the networks were horrified. He was a conservative, so he wasn’t black. On ABC’s World News Tonight, reporter Tim O'Brien said that a “prominent black legal scholar called Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court insulting.” It was Harvard's Derrick Bell, the architect of Critical Race Theory, who angrily claimed “To place a person who looks black, and in conservative terms thinks white, is an insult.”

[...]

Journalists tout black “lived experience” for the high court, but they savagely attack minorities who are conservative. Forget their experiences. The outpouring of media hostility felt like what Thomas described as a “high-tech lynching of uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”

A June 2022 post by Graham played Hill whataboutism in complaining that NPR had sufficiently covered the "failed ... murderer" of Justice Brett Kavanaugh (in fact, the would-be assailant's gun was unloaded and he turned himself into police before even attempting anything):

Where was their Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, the one who launched the unsubstantiated charges of Anita Hill in an attempt to scuttle the Clarence Thomas nomination and was attached at the hip to Ruth Bader Ginsburg?? Totenberg offered one tweet on Wednesday morning, and then couldn't be bothered. 

To this very day, the MRC is triggered every time Hill appears on TV. Kevin Tober kicked off another round of being triggered in a Sept. 28 post over a TV appearance by Hill:

On Tuesday night’s Alex Wagner Tonight, the eponymous MSNBC host brought her viewers back into the early 1990s by dragging sexual assault hoaxer Anita Hill on the show to help her sell a book she wrote. During this interview, Wagner predictably asked Hill if she sees chauvinism and misogyny in the Dobbs decision and the subsequent pro-life legislation that it gave rise to.

Wagner, after talking about the Proud Boys, asked Hill: “Do you see the Republican zeal to control a woman's body as an extension of that chauvinism, obviously pro-life groups will tell you this is about protecting the sanctity of unborn life but do you see the same sort of chauvinism and misogyny that gives rise to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers?”

Wagner didn’t specify how pro-lifers are “chauvinist” or “misogynist” but she didn’t need to because Hill jumped right into the fray and lied through her teeth in a rambling and incoherent answer.

[...]

Proving once again that she’s just as big of a liar as she was over thirty years ago, Hill repeated the thoroughly debunked lie that the Supreme Court is inclined to rehear the so-called right to same-sex marriage. Hill claimed Thomas is “giving every indication that he's willing to hear LGBTQ rights put on trial again.”

Tober offered no proof that Hill lied in her testimony against Thomas. He also put words in her mouth, creating a strawman by falsely claiming that she said "the Supreme Court is inclined to rehear the so-called right to same-sex marriage," when she was clearly referring to Thomas, who did say exactly that in a concurring opinion in the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Further, despite Tober's protestations, misogyny and chauvinism on the anti-abortion movement is not hard to find.

Graham ranted against her yet again, but on a different subject, in his Sept. 30 column in which he made the hoary and never-proven suggestion that Hill made her accusations against Thomas solely to make money on them:

Thirty-one years ago, a media-anointed secular saint named Anita Hill uncorked some sexual-harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas that she could not substantiate. Thomas called it part of a “high-tech lynching.” But Hill, who became a millionaire author and a professor of “social policy, law, and women's studies” at Brandeis University, has been celebrated ever since.

On September 27, Hill appeared on CBS and MSNBC to promote the paperback edition of her latest book “Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence.” The publisher singles out a sappy book review from National Public Radio, which first tried to take down Thomas with Hill’s tawdry tales. Danielle Kurtzleben raved that Hill’s book was “An elegant, impassioned demand that America see gender-based violence as a cultural and structural problem that hurts everyone, not just victims and survivors... It's at times downright virtuosic in the threads it weaves together.”

Graham then played the hypocrisy card:

It would help liberals if you pay no attention to the disagreeable fact that those feminist icons Steinem and Hill came rushing to Bill Clinton’s defense in 1998 when his sexual-harassment and sexual-assault charges boomeranged into the Monica Lewinsky probe. Republicans were talking about Clinton’s abusive behavior toward Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick, but the feminists had “other political ambitions.” Slick Willie had to be saved.

Feminists wonder why many women don’t identify with them. One problem is feminists will put their policy goals (like untrammeled abortion) ahead of whatever sexual abuse that pro-abortion politicians have dished out. Anita Hill is not a saint. She’s just another woke professor making a pretty penny.

Within a week, of course, Graham and the rest of his anti-abortion activists at the MRC would be even more hypocritical by vociferously defending Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker after credible accusations that he paid for a girlfriend's abortion.

Into 2023

The MRC was still complaining about Hill coming into 2023. In a Jan. 2 post attacking the late Barbara Walters for purportedly having "liberal heroes," Rich Noyes complained that "she flattered law professor Anita Hill, who attempted to torpedo Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination in 1991: 'To so many of us, you were our heroine.'" In a March 16 post grousing about coverage of the death of former Democratic Rep. Pat Schroeder, Clay Waters huffed that "NPR’s All Things Considered offered a soundbite of Clarence Thomas accuser Anita Hill to stir up fond memories of ‘90s-era feminism for its elite listeners."

When the MRC had to defend Thomas over newly exposed financial scandals, it made sure to lash out yet again at Hill. Alex Christy name-checked her in a May 2 post; in a May 5 post, Nicholas Fondacaro responded to a co-host of "The View" pointing out that "Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment" by accusing Hill of having "leveled false allegations against him, without evidence and contradictory testimony from her colleagues." Fondacaro offered no evidence to prove anything Hill said was false, which you'd think he'd be able to do after 30 years.

Christy returned on May 10 to complain about a PBS "Frontline" documentary about Thomas that was insufficiently laudatory of the Supreme Court justice -- and that the documentary brought up Hill:

They rounded up backers of Anita Hill's claims in 1991. Gordon Davis, who was described as a Holy Cross classmate of Thomas, claimed “I heard him say that before. He said it before. We were in the Hogan Campus Center, and a group of us black students were walking by. And he says, "Oh, look. Is that pubic hair on a Coke can?" Those were the exact words he used then, and I heard it later on, when Anita Hill spoke it. So, I believe what she said. She was telling the truth.”

Michael Fletcher, a co-author of the anti-Thomas book Supreme Discomfort, also took Hill’s side, “He liked adult films. He made jokes. Thomas was inappropriate and things like that. That all stacked up on Anita Hill's side of the, of the ledger. So, you know, I think if I had to say who lied, it was Thomas.”

Various people were shown recalling how they encouraged Thomas to persevere, but no explicit defense of Thomas from his EEOC colleagues was shown.

Christy linked to a 1991 newspaper article about people noting that Thomas' actions at the EEOC was harsh on those engaged in sexual harassment -- even though that has little relevance to to his actual personal behavior. He also whined that the documentary showed how Thomas benefited from affirmative action though he has been eager to dismantle it for others.

Clay Waters whined in a May 14 post that NPR's Nina Totenberg covered Thomas scandals then and now: "Just as she tried to destroy Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings in 1991 with Anita Hill's unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment, Totenberg is still implying Thomas is too unethical for the high court." Waters didn't cite any evidence that supported Thomas' denials.

Waters served up yet another complaint that Hill exists in a June 23 post:

On Monday’s edition of the tax-supported Amanpour & Co., airing on PBS and CNN International, host Christiane Amanpour interviewed Anita Hill, a professor and of course the woman who accused now-Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

Hill has been hailed in the liberal media since her nationally televised 1991 confrontation with the U.S Senate and Thomas, and Amanpour shoehorned her into her show, ostensibly to talk about the African-American emancipation holiday Juneteenth, but really to bash the Supreme Court and claim affirmative action was a civil right.

First, Amanpour furthered the lie that black history wasn’t being taught in some schools because of conservative backlash to Critical Race Theory.

Actually, in the quote Waters provided to back up his claim, Amanpour said only that "an honest appraisal of black history is impossible in many school districts in the country today" and did not mention critical race theory. But back to complaining about Hill:

After Hill said she had tried to put herself in her enslaved ancestor’s mindset, thinking about voting rights and education and sexual harassment, a list of issues that gave Amanpour a convenient lead-in to bring up the alleged “assault on voting rights, the reversal of women’s rights” happening today as if there was any comparison to the slavery era and 2023.

Waters sneered that "Hill conflated preferential racial treatment under affirmative action to a 'protected right,'" then complained that "Amanpour asked Hill about Justice Clarence Thomas’s current 'ethics questions,' as if Hill could possibly provide an objective viewpoint on Thomas." Yet Waters seems to want us to believe that he's offering an objective viewpoint on Hill despite his employment with a right-wing activist organization.

A July 1 "flashback" post by Geoffrey Dickens again rehashed right-wing grievances about Hill:

Conservatives certainly remember the awful treatment Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced at his 1991 confirmation hearings, including the endless media coverage granted to utterly unproved charges of sexual harassment by a former employee, Anita Hill. At the time, Thomas referred to the televised hearings as a “ high tech lynching” perpetrated by those who would torpedo the conservative jurist’s nomination.

[...]

Given the media mindset of the moment, it was no surprise news organizations leaped to elevate Anita Hill’s harassment allegations, which appeared only after the confirmation hearings had officially ended and Thomas’s nomination had been sent to the Senate floor for what seemed like certain approval. Joe Biden’s Judiciary Committee quickly scheduled new hearings — a last gasp for liberals to try and torpedo the nomination.

And so it goes. The MRC needs to hate Hill in order because right-wingers must have enemies -- and because she criticized an ideologue it loves, Hill is a designated enemy. Look for the MRC's collective case of Anita Hill Derangement Syndrome to fester for at least another 30 years.