Biden selection mingles today's sexism with ghosts of sexism past

Remember the Maine! Remember the Alamo! Stonewall. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King Jr. César Chávez. Doesn't anyone remember Anita Hill?

The public rape of the mild-mannered, erudite, accomplished young African American woman at the hands of the Joe Biden led all male, all white all middle aged Senate Judiciary committee should be seared into America's consciousness. That spectacle changed America.

A contemporaneous Time article describes the scene. Some clips of the Thomas interview are on YouTube. David Brock admits to being part of the paid brigade hired to smear Hill. Hill was a reluctant witness who heroically stepped forward. Her testimony might have been missed except for a leak to the press with details too lurid to pass up. Another woman's story of Thomas' sexual harassment was successfully suppressed. The right wing had it's act together. Democrats 'tried to be fair'.

The upshot? Clarence Thomas was confirmed by the senate. Women were incensed. Sexual harassment became a new concept to America. Emily's list membership roll exploded.

To understand the effect of the Hill-Thomas hearings on EMILY's List, one needs only to look at the organization's membership rolls, which grew 600 percent from 3,500 members before the hearings in 1991, to 24,000 members in 1992, after the hearings.

There was 2 female senators in 1991, Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-KS) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). Today there are 16. Joe Biden, I guess trying to atone, sponsored the Violence Against Women Act.

With such momentous effects, why has Anita Hill been forgotten? More importantly, why did Barack Obama forget it? Selecting Joe Biden, after the rampant sexism in the public square left Clinton supporters rubbed raw, is extraordinary!

Why are people still angry? It's the sexism, stupid. It's the total lack of respect.

Femisting has this to say about the Biden choice:

Here's Charles Ogletree, who represented Hill, on why Biden's excuse is bullshit:

OGLETREE: (Senator Biden) doesn't understand that by sitting back and taking no position that he has encouraged the victimization of Anita Hill. She has civil rights and civil liberties, too. She wasn't applying for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. She was not coming forward with an agenda to change the landscape of America.

And so for him to say that he didn't help her because he didn't want to be like the other side, to me, is to acknowledge that he has neglected to do his duties. He was the chairman. He was supposed to ask tough questions. He was supposed to get to the bottom of issues....And the bottom line is that Anita Hill was pilloried from beginning to end without any protection from anybody in that process....

What the senator did regrettably was to bend over in the wrong direction, and I think he did a great disservice in the sense of civil rights by being so tolerant of the lack of responsiveness on the part of one party and being so intolerant of efforts on the other side to bring out issues that may have shed light on (Thomas' character).

See other reactions - here, here, here and here.