Fury & Denial from A US Justice and Ex B-baller

What a vivid week for sexual harassers who are having public snits in writing or in front of the courtroom for being called out about their poor behavior in the workplace. In 1991, America found itself divided along gender lines and loudly debating the merits of sexual harassment in the workplace. A brave young and naive Anita Hill, in a demure blue suit, gave sworn testimony to US senate and called Clarence Thomas, the Bush nominee for the Supreme Court, a liar and giving graphic examples of comments and his fascination with sex and body parts. Clarence Thomas was replacing the noted legal liberal lion from the seminal Brown case, Thurgood Marshall. In another federal court today, the victim of Isaiah Thomas' inner-fantasy playboy with a tiny dormant brain in his pocket, won $11.6 million dollars from his employer, the debauched Madison Square Garden. Both men are howling at the moon and to any news crew that will listen about their innocence. The Doubly Doubted Thomas' do not claim to be related.

A myopic manly senate with a current Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, made it possible for Thomas to pompously sit mute on the Court and write a screed fifteen years later about his "high tech lynching" from so-called DC liberals. Isaiah Thomas was out front of the court learning new tap dance skills as he proclaimed in touching tones, his innocence. The judge declared a mistrial on the question of assigning a material punitive judgment against Thomas. Madison Square Garden was shown to be a house of ill repute when one player admitted to having sex with an intern in his truck and other activities that fit the definition of creating a hostile work environment.

Thank goodness, a pinstriped suited up Isaiah Thomas no longer works as an executive there because his leadership of the NY Knicks organization sucked. Now, Thomas just has his hands on the team as coach, but for how long? It seemed as if the corporation wanted to fully occupy the dank basement evidenced by a CEO who was not coached or prepared for his videotaped deposition. Being unprepared seems to be a theme with the MSQ exec team as the Knicks have been a moribund team showing up at the playoffs only once in the last seven years. The company stock took a hit.

Thomas was not found liable for punitive damages after the trial, but the jury decided that he had harassed Browne Sanders, herself a former college basketball star.

"I'm innocent, I'm very innocent, and I did not do the things she has accused me in this courtroom of doing," Thomas said after the decision. "I'm extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case."

The case has reflected rather disastrously on James Dolan, the billionaire CEO of Cablevision, which owns the Knicks. In a videotaped deposition that was played at the trial, Dolan sat slumped in a chair wearing a black crewneck shirt with the sleeves pushed up. His demeanor and answers may have seemed flippant to the jurors.

Laughing off this case may have been Madison Square Garden's undoing. Cablevision is valued by the stock market to be worth more than $10 billion. When Browne Sanders left the Garden, she offered to drop her suit for $6 million. She was rebuffed.

It seems Justice Thomas has brooded and seethed in silence for the last fifteen years and his ode to his life is filled with a sense of entitled suffering as he describes his tenure on the court. He makes it plain he was not Justice Scalia's sycophant and his work changed the US Supreme Court behind the scenes. His early life was rife with hardships and this was just one more that he endured in the harsh glare of a public enthralled with the sexual imaginings and goings on inside his EEOC.

Anita Hill has released her eloquent statement in a New York Times op-ed.



After her court victory, Anucha Browne Sanders said the jury verdict today was a "victory for all working women".




Justice Clarence Thomas recently released his autobiography/memoir to date in a surfeit of publicity. The book is My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir. It is well written, harsh about his critics and one sided.