Behind the Bastards - Part Three: The Clarence Thomas Story

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Robert is joined again by Miles Gray for part three of our four part series on Clarence Thomas. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, this is behind the bastards. It's a podcast about Miles. No. Miles, how do you plan to make all of your many crimes, right? Look, I start by, my manager said, and my publicist both said, go on this podcast.

So thanks so much for having me. Of course. Always happy to have a war crime along the show. Exactly. And the first thing what I'm trying to do is sort of challenge what our conventional definition of what a war crime is. And I think that's my task today as a guest on your podcast. Thanks so much for having me. Well, that's fascinating. I read about your rebranding of war crimes in that very Weiss column. And I just thought, very brave. It's Bari, actually. It's Bari. So that's my best friend. Well, yeah, he refuses to learn her name. I told him many times.

That's a nice one. Yeah, respect for one of America's greatest journalists. Great minds, sure. Yeah, absolutely. She's the Glenn Greenwald of Glenn Greenwald's. This is the podcast about bad people. Tell you all about them. Miles, it's part three of our series. It's on sausage. It's Thomas. How you doing? How you doing? We took a little breakie. A little breakie for us.

Yeah, good. It was good to have the break. I kept telling everybody I was doing this and I was like, the first two episodes just fucking spooked me out. Because it's not I'm like, look what this guy did. It was just be like, look at the incubator where this thing just grew from. And that was the fucking most horrifying shit of all the things we've talked about. This is again, I feel like you always outdo yourself with even more uncomfortable. That was the original goal when we came up with this podcast. You know, I had been lurking outside of your house for a while and I emailed Sophie saying,

I would like to really make Miles uncomfortable about twice either over like a five year period. And that's turned into a very successful podcast. Do you know how we know he's lying? He would never put that in an email. You're right. Yeah, email. Exactly. So I guess we should probably get back to the tale of Mr. Clarence Thomas. Now, when we left off with with our old friend, he had gotten a job working as the assistant secretary for civil rights and the Department of Education. Now, number one, this is a job in the Reagan administration. So if you are the assistant secretary for civil rights for the DOE and the Reagan administration,

your job is not to help ensure that civil rights laws are abided by schools. Your job is to make sure that nothing is done to protect civil rights laws in the Department of Education, because the Reagan administration fundamentally did not believe it should exist. And in fact, Reagan had campaigned talking about how there shouldn't be an Department of Education. So that said, it was one of those like everyone, including Clarence, was aware that he got the job because since the Reagan administration was going to get up to so much fuckery, they wanted to have a black dude somewhere near the civil rights position in the Department of Education to like make it look like they were less racist than they were. Yes, exactly. And this is exactly the kind of job to his credit. I mean, you know, credit may not may or may not be right thing to say, but like Thomas had never wanted jobs like this.

Right. Like in the past, he had always been like, well, no, I want to do energy. I want to do like oil and gas environmental stuff. I want to do something that like people will not be like, oh, that's the job he's got because he's the black lawyer. Right. He wanted to like push away from work like that. I want it because I'm Darth Vader. Right. Yeah. I want it just because I'm a bad person. I don't want anyone to think that it's because of. But this is a job that he is getting because he's like a black Republican, right?

Which is what he said he didn't want. But it's also the kind of thing he can't turn down this job. This is a presidential appointment, which is like a big deal. And also like he himself are in the last couple or I think the episode previous you were saying like he saw it was clear to him the opportunity that present that was in front of him by being a black conservative. Like so in that sense, it's almost like, well, you know, you know how why you're going to flourish because you're taking advantage of all of that. But at the same time, but then be like, but I don't want to be diversity Darth Vader higher. Yeah. And it gets more uncomfortable. So it's uncomfortable for him, despite the fact that this is a thing he can't pass up.

It's uncomfortable for him for that reason. And because a lot of basically all of his coworkers in the Reagan administration are like the most racist people you can imagine. Because it's the Reagan administration. He regularly described his coworkers to friends as bigots. Myron Abramson right in the book Strange Justice quote, Terrell H. Bell, who was secretary of education at the time, recalled in his memoirs being shocked at the sick humor and racist cliches voiced by some Reagan appointees who, for instance, referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as Martin Lucifer Poon called Arabs sand inwards and described title for which prohibit sexual dis or title nine which prohibit sexual discrimination as the lesbians bill of rights. It's like, not just like, you know, guys being like, crossing like the street or something when they see a black dude guys like dropping hard slurs. The hard Rs. Yeah, they're going there. They're letting the Klan hood hang all out. And I like and so Mr. Clarence Thomas is like, man, he's like, I couldn't even couldn't even regale them with my porn recaps.

Talk to them about pornography. There's actually, I think he probably can. He was like, could you imagine or what's that conversation like where some do is like, yeah, man, you know, the fucking Malcolm X and Martin, I'm glad they got theirs. You know what I mean? Because we don't want you don't want the darkies to get any ideas. And Martin and Clarence Thomas is like, so I was watching this video of three women in cheerleading outfits and you're like, this is a conversation and from hell's waiting room. So the Reagan administration miles, I think if you were to like, have a hidden audio recorder in there, it would like any given hour of conversation and Reagan's West Wing would be too explicit for us to run on Spotify. We would get in legal trouble. The FCC would be like, we don't even have jurisdiction here, but like we're hopping in. You got to stop this and we do. Historically, we do not a lot. So my God. But if Thomas was uncomfortable at all working alongside, you know, not just open racists, but like outrageously bigoted people, he was happy working adjacent to a man who made a fortune as the mouthpiece of literal apartheid South Africa.

Now I'm going to quote again from the New York Times here. In 1977 to 78, when Mr. Parker, this is the guy we talked about last time, right, one of Clarence Thomas's mentors first served as a South African agent, he organized the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, which issued the quarterly Lincoln review. The Institute and review have consistently attacked the African National Congress sanctions against South Africa and the United States civil rights movements leadership and ideas. Mr. Parker and Clarence Thomas served on the Reagan Bush transition team for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of which Mr. Thomas became commissioner in June 1982. Since 1981, Mr. Thomas has been listed as an editorial advisory board member of Mr. Parker's Lincoln review. Mr. Keys has been a contributing editor. Registration filings under the heading political propaganda show international public affairs consultants held a reception for its South African clients ambassador in 1987, when Pretoria was vigorously fighting sanctions. Mr. Thomas, then the EEOC chairman, was listed as in attendance. So, you know, getting money and getting like, uh, uh, feed it at fancy dinners and stuff that are funded by the fucking South African apartheid government as part of their plan to build US support for a continual white minority role in South Africa.

Yeah, he's fine with that. I love a human rights violation, food washing campaign, party washing campaign. Come by, check out the junket, be pretty fun. So, while Thomas' career flourished, though, his personal life, and I know this is going to really hurt you to hear, because he was doing so well, was in shambles. So, his first wife leaves him because, again, she's a very traditional, like, person in terms of her view of, like, men and women and, like, wants to be kind of the homemaker wife, but also she's a very, very committed Democrat. And when he starts going a hard right, she looks at what he's putting up with in the Reagan administration and is like, no, this is not okay. This is not, like, a thing that I want to, so she, like, she fucking bounces. Um, because she, yeah, she, it's funny how, like, kind of, she was such, like, a lib where she's like, my whole vibe was to marry this, like, other liberal black man. But now that you're becoming a conservative black man, this is, this is not good for my brand, either, but I'm sure at the same time, you don't want to see someone you marry suddenly be so, like,

transparently opportunistic about, like, how they commodify their being. She married a guy. I'm sure he was saying the same things to her that he'd said to his grandpa, who was like, I want to be a lawyer so that I can get into civil rights so I can help the government. And, like, you know, he'd worked in a Republican administration before, but it had been a liberal Republican. Um, and now Thomas is like, no, I want to help the chief ghoul of the far right, like, destroy the civil rights gains of the civil rights movement. She's like, no, I don't want to be involved with you. Um, he has custody of the kid, which is, which is, uh, you know, on his part, breaking a cycle. So I guess there's that. Um, that said, whether or not he's a good parent is something that's going to depend on your own personal opinions on parenting. Friends say Thomas was so enraged at his ex-wife. Um, and in part by the fact that whenever she had the kid, he accused her of coddling him, um, and of encouraging a learning disability. So he's that kind of dad where he's like, oh, by being like this kid clearly has a learning disability and like you're coddling him and you're not being hard enough on him and making him work for it and all that kind of, you know, um, it works on animals. Yeah.

I want to work with this thing. Again, given his grandpa, hard to see him not being exactly right. And also like for you to be raised by such like a fucking cold, you know, like shadowy figure of a grandpa have no like emotional or support or affection. And then like you merely just see like a mother and like child relationship. You're like, you're coddling the kid. Got to slap him more. Got to make him work without gloves. I don't see, you should see what you do. Like I said, you put a two 25 pound dumbbells in the front of a shopping cart, you put him in the seat and you put it down a steep hill and just see how he ends up. Just a crash test. Just a crash test. That's what you do.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Miles, I'm raising a kid right now. The kid doesn't know it and neither do the kids parents. But every day I sneak in and I put a lot of what do you call it poison oak inside, you know, his clothes for the next day. And what's that teaching the kid is that life is like a series of blisters. And you just got to work through the blisters, you know, little lessons like that really make them stronger. And some say it's it's way it's wasted because the child is so young and not able to process the experience. But what you're saying is you said start him early. Start him early, right? The only thing they will grow up knowing is the feeling of constantly being exposed to poison ivy and that will make them strong and reject fast fashion.

That's what I tell their parents in the letters that I send anonymously. Anyway, so once he gets split up with his wife, Clarence Thomas engages in the normal divorce guy things. He gets super into physical fitness, right? Starts getting jacked, you know. Oh, revenge body. Yeah, he gets the revenge body. And of course, he throws himself into his work, which given the fact that he'd always been a career guy means he gets like way, way more into his job. And of course, you know, you can't just work out and work, right? Like that's not it. I know you and I, Miles are both just incredibly swole dudes. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, you need something else.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, they were saying the SEC is coming after me because of these games. Yeah. Yeah. Just because our pecs are literally large enough to host a tea ceremony on like doesn't mean that we don't do other things. I mean, I could and I'll do it from time to time. But yeah, every now and then. And Clarence Thomas, in addition to stacking gains and working, you know, he's got he's got his his favorite hobby, which is pornography, which he gets even more disasterously obsessed with.

In the summer of 1982, shortly after he moves into his first bachelor pad, he makes friends with a coworker named K Savage, which is a pretty cool name. It's K with an E. They were both joggers and one day he agreed to take her shopping for running shoes. So like their work buddies and like they'll go running from time to time. And like she's like, ah, my fucking my shoes are shit. Well, let's go out this week and we'll get some shoes. We're going to run. It'll be fun. So she picks him up from his apartment. He doesn't have a car at this point. He uses like a work vehicle to get to and from the office.

He gets like chauffeur and stuff. So she has to come pick him up from his apartment to go shopping. And that's where this subsequent scene, which is related in strange justice comes in. And I'm going to read you a quote. Miles, strap in for this one, buddy. So interior shoe store. No, no, no. This is when she comes to his house. So this is her first time seeing.

On the way to go. Yeah. This is her first time seeing Clarence and his bachelor pad. Interior Clarence's bachelor pad. Oh, God. Yes. He had only recently set up housekeeping and the place, as she recalled, was still under furnished. There was little more than a mattress on the floor and a stereo. But one other feature made a lasting impression on Savage. Thomas had compiled and placed on the floor.

And this is her speaking now. A huge compulsively organized stack of Playboy magazines, five years worth of them, organized by month and year. The walls of the apartment were also memorably covered. There was only one main room, but all of its walls, as well as the walls of the little galley kitchen and even the bathroom door, were papered with center folds of large breasted nude women. Savage recalled staring awkwardly about her.

The display seemed so out of character with everything else she knew about Thomas. He was a fanatic about discipline and a daily churchgoer. He was serious about his career and honest to the point of indiscretion about his ambitious plans for the future. Thomas had told her, as he had told others, that he planned to replace Thurgood Marshall on his retirement from the Supreme Court. But his evident enthusiasm for pornography suggested to Savage that Thomas had a private side that was very different from his public persona. To her, the contrast seemed, as she later put it,

a little crazy. Dude has wall-papered his empty-ass apartment in porn center folds. Which, if that's your thing, fine. But number one, you don't ever let anyone else see that apartment. Like, you sure don't invite your female co-worker over. But you know he thought that would maybe in his mind, he's like, and that's when maybe Kay's cool. Maybe Kay's chill with it, yeah.

Because that's my way of just being completely inappropriate to invite. And also, like, you know, like, when in films, when there's like a character that has a bunch of shit on their walls, you know, it's usually like some conspiracy theory shit. Okay, so just because I have some pictures of the child that I'm raising distantly on the wall miles doesn't make me crazy. Yeah, and also, like, it's weird that you seem to have like a design of the house in CAD. Like, if you're making a, whatever, that's another show. I think when you see that in TV and film, usually it's like,

this is what the inside of this character's head is like, right? Yeah. It's what you see just plastered on the walls. And then to be like, Clarence Thomas is existing at a steady hum of just a porno blasting inside of his skull. Yeah, that's exactly it. It's a perfect reflection of what his thoughts are, and it's nothing but pornography bouncing around in there.

Right, because like, none of the legal decisions make sense. They sure don't. Whoa, what? It's fucking wild, man. And it's also like, I'm sure there is, because we're going to talk about Anita Hill later, he obviously, I think there is like a voyeurist. I think he gets off on like putting women that he works with in uncomfortable situations vis-a-vis pornography,

and maybe part of how he protects himself is by also talking to porn to all of his co-workers, or maybe he's kind of into doing it to everybody, right? But like, this goes beyond, look, again, nothing wrong with porn. I know a lot of people who like porn. I don't know anyone who does this. Right. Like, nobody does this. No, and this is clearly like, to your point, like, this is how he just violates people,

and that's the way of doing it, is to be like, surprise porn. I don't care what you think is appropriate or not. Like, this is it. Welcome. This is the thing. I'm either talking about it or you're surrounded by it. Yeah, if you're going to be around Clarence Thomas, you can't get away from the porn. Now, Kay questions him about this.

Where are we going to get to Ginny? Like, all I can think of now is like, what the fuck? Yeah, we'll talk about Ginny a little bit. There's not going to be as many answers as you're hoping for. No, no, I can only imagine, but yes, sorry. But so Kay sees this nightmare apartment, which, by the way, folks, the correct thing to do when you step into your colleague's apartment and see that is to leave. If you have a gun, pull it and keep it on them until you're safely clear of the apartment.

Because that person is probably going to murder you. But no, Clarence Thomas tells her, she like, so she's obviously your Kay in this situation. You have to be gentle about how you question Clarence about this, because this is clearly an unhinged person. And she does question him gently. And he's like, well, porn is my only vice. And since I don't drink or run around, like, this is fine, right? Like, I'm not I'm not going out sleeping with people.

I'm not going out and partying. All I do is enjoy my porn. What's the problem? And he also told her that his magazines were all he had that was worth taking from his ruined marriage, which he has joint custody of the kid. Like, so that's a little messed up. Wow. Now, yeah.

Now, maybe he was telling the truth about like not drinking and partying. That might be true. There are people who were with him at the time who claims no, he was also lying about that. One of them is his former girlfriend, Lillian McEwen. She says that he was not honest about the whole not drinking thing. In 1991, she went on The Larry King Show and said that when the two had dated in the early 1980s, he was, quote, a raving alcoholic. And that when he quit drinking, he turned into a, quote, angry, obsessive man who bullied his son.

And I'm going to quote from CNN here. When he gave up alcohol, she said, he became angry, short tempered, asexual, and obsessive with ambition and what she called weird things such as long runs in the dark before dawn. McEwen did back up the allegations of his weird porn thing, calling it, quote, something that was very important to him and something that he talked about. So that's weird. That's some stuff about Clarence Thomas that I bet you didn't want to know. Definitely, you know, everything in moderation, but not for Clarence.

And it's hard to take someone seriously who's like, I don't, that's my only vice. No, actually, you have a lot of other vices. You have a horrible drinking problem and you abuse your kid. But like, yeah, sure, right. That's, that's, that's very interesting, very interesting. Yeah. And again, obviously, in terms of like what you should take with a grain of salt, she is like going on the Larry King live show and talking on live TV about this. So, you know, maybe, maybe she's not entirely coming at this from an honest point of view.

I don't know, whatever. Or she's like, well, who else can I tell about this maniac who might become a Supreme Court justice? I don't know what you do if you're in her situation and you have that experience. What she's saying doesn't sound separate from the person that many, many co-workers have talked about. Yeah. At the very least, there are many inconsistent descriptions of this. Yes. In May of 1981, Clarence Thomas was nominated by the Senate to take the position as chairman of the EEOC, his old stomping grounds. He was confirmed a few months later and he held that position from 1982 to 1990.

So this is the primary thing he does in his entire career prior to becoming a Supreme Court justice. This is the longest stretch of employment in a single job that he has in his career prior to like getting on the court. So while this is happening, while he is being the chairman of the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, think of a jigger, well, that's going on. A doddering old man named Ronald Reagan decided it was time to nominate a new justice to the Supreme Court. Due to Reagan's eight years of executive domination and the fact that it looked like George H.W. Bush was about to basically be Reagan term number three, progressives and liberals alike were worried that the Supreme Court was about to take a hard right turn. Can you imagine how scary that would be, Miles?

Oh, no. So people were concerned. In July of 1987, Reagan announced that his nominee was going to be circuit court judge Robert Bork. Now, does that name mean anything to you, Miles? Yeah. Okay, so you have heard of Robert Bork. Yes, I have. You're aware of some of the history.

Okay, good, good, good. I don't know how many other folks that that's like a thing that's familiar to. If you grew up right wing, his name was kind of a rallying cry for like generations of right wing media hobgoblins. Bork was, in short description, a dog shit judge. He had argued that political speech was the only kind of speech protected by the First Amendment. He ruled in favor of a company who had forced their employees to undergo sterilization to keep their jobs. He had opposed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 for so long and with such vehemence that it's fair to assume he just hated certain colors of people. At one point, he argued in favor of a poll tax because it was, quote, very small.

So Robert Bork, pretty bad judge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he even became shorthand for a word. Oh, yes. We are talking about the shorthand. But you know what we're talking about first, Miles?

Products, services, all that good stuff. Yes. Miles, you love products, don't you? And do you happen to like services? Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. That's the shit. That's what gets my nipples hard is a good old fashioned service.

A couple of products with it. Anyway. Service me, Lord. Get your nipples hard with these ads. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic.

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How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. Hi everybody. How's it going? So we've got Robert Bork, dog shit judge. Ronald Reagan nominates this man to be a Supreme Court justice. And Senator Ted Kennedy, the number two Ted K in this podcast, takes to the Senate floor to warn that putting Bork on the Supreme Court would mean an end to Roe vs. Wade and a return to segregated lunch counters. He said that if Bork were appointed, quote, the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is and is often the only protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy.

Now, in addition to being a howling fascist, Bork was a pretty well respected law guy in law guy circles because law guy circles are mostly made up of assholes. He had taught at Yale. His students had included Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Anita Hill and Jerry Brown. Many on the right were very much fans of his circuit court rulings, which included Dronenberg v. Zeck, where he and Justice Scalia, this is before Scalia was on the Supreme Court either, had ruled that there was no right to privacy that protected the right to have homosexual sex. During a case over prayer in school in reference to a Jewish person who was forced to engage in Christian prayer, Robert Bork said, so what? I'm sure he got over it. He's like a fucking cartoon. Bad judge, I would say, not my kind of judge. You know who my kind of judges? Who? That judge from the Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That's a good judge. I support. Now, look, Miles, for years and years, I've been saying that the primary crisis we as a society have is the expansion of Toontown.

And I agree. We have to get rid of those toons, Miles. Oh, absolutely. We got a turpentine in their asses. The thing is, the people, I guess if you want to call them people that live in Toontown, they're sitting on such a bed of resources that they are unable to use properly and harvest properly because they're so, I don't want to say it in advance, they're so primitive. That's right. And I think they're better off being, yeah, I think they're better off being relocated. I agree. I agree.

So the land is actually used properly. Yeah, exactly. Tons of desert. Anyway, this is a extermination of cartoons podcast who supports what's his name? I forget the name of the judge in that movie. It's played by Doc Brown. Oh, you all know. So the 1980s of the first decade, also the decade in which we get Who Framed Roger Rabbit, if I'm not mistaken, are the first decade in which Supreme Court hearings like are a thing. Baron von Rotten, judge doom.

There you go. Thank you. So we don't really have like public hearings for Supreme Court justices prior to the 80s. And in fact, prior to the 80s, it had been pretty uncommon for Supreme Court nominees to like go before the Senate and answer questions at all. Bork is the first nominee ever to get a televised Senate hearing, which doesn't make things better because maybe it's bad to do stuff like this. Maybe it inherently turns it into like a media circus that that like puts it to the worst impulses of everybody, but whatever. So the first America's first experience like watching a Supreme Court like nomination hearing is seeing Ted Kennedy like go after Robert Bork while he's up in front of the Senate. And by October, you know, the thing, the good thing about this is by October, a majority of Americans oppose Bork's nomination. So he actually he comes in probably having the job locked down.

And the fact that this is all televised means that most people are like, oh, this guy's a fucking maniac. So I guess you could say then that part that the televised Supreme Court hearings were a good thing. He gets rejected on October 23 by a vote of 58 to 42. But here's where the problem comes in. The right cries foul, which they do whenever anything happens, even when they get their way, because it consistently works for them. Now, in their minds, Bork had been unfairly pilloried subject to the political equivalent of a mob beating. There are comparisons to a lynch mob, which by the way, Robert Bork probably thinks is fine because he's that guy. And but whatever the fact case, the sense of grievance over Bork's nomination gets burned deep into the conservative soul.

And it is it is still smoldering a few years later in 1991, when a woman named Florence Kennedy tells a national organization of women conference that when it comes to Clarence Thomas, who is the next Supreme Court nominee, quote, we're going to Bork him. We're going to kill him politically. This little creep, where did he come from? So that is how Borking becomes a thing that people talk about. I also love the troll job that we got out of that because he was like, no one has privacy rights. And then they're like, here's your video rental history. And they're like, because no one has privacy rights, right?

And then they're then we get like the video privacy act out of that, too. He's just the gift that keeps on giving. He is. He is. We've gotten everything. Thank you, Clarence. So since then, according to Vox, quote, in January 2001, the New York Times even featured a chart of, quote, likely Borkies and their probable score on the Borkometer, referring to political nominees for high level positions within the Bush administration. John Ashcroft, for instance, received nine Borks. Now, you might note that John Ashcroft did not get Borked.

No, most of these guys don't. It's just like a term that gets used probably because Bork is fun. It is fun to say. It's fun to say Bork, fun to type Bork. I get it. Like if you're a New York Times columnist, most of your job is going to be pretty, pretty dull. And you get to use the word Bork, you know, why not? You know what I just realized?

I'm pretty sure in 40-year-old virgin, that's what Steve Carell says when he's playing the poker game and he's like lying about being a virgin. They're like, yo, are you a virgin? He's like, no, I've Borked plenty of women. And Seth Rogen's like, you've Borked? There's just like this one line in it. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen that movie in a minute. I'm like, I always just thought of it.

I'm like, wow, are you getting, is Steve Carell showing his like 40-year-old, like, 80s brain cred in there? Yeah. Okay. What about? I don't know. Has that movie aged? Is that one, is that one still good? Or is that one of those ones that I'm not going to feel great about?

Oh, yeah. Oh, flawless, flawless, flawless, flawless. Okay. That's good. Just like other classic films, we don't need to talk about Jim Carrey's Uvra. So Borking is now viewed as a widely used practice among both Republicans and Democrats, although it generally means attempting to bring down a high-level candidate with, quote, personal attacks on something seemingly irrelevant to their jobs, even though that's not what anyone did to Bork because the attacks were extremely relevant to the fact that he was basically a fascist. Like, couldn't have been more relevant to the guy Bork was, these attacks.

But for example, Bill Clinton's first choice for attorney general, Zoe Baird, was Borked in 1993 when news came out that she had hired an undocumented immigrant as nanny for her children. And her nomination gets withdrawn, which is, I guess, a Borking, if you're talking about it being irrelevant. Because, I don't know, I don't think that has a lot to do with it. Unless she's like super anti-undocumented immigration, in which case, then it is relevant. But I don't think she was. Right, right. But again, it's also like, oh, hold on. Like, how many of your businesses are doing the same thing?

Yes. Well, nobody wants to answer that question, Miles. Yes, exactly. Don't worry about it. It's don't do as I do, just as I say. Yeah. So the largest political consequence of the Borking of Robert Bork was that the Reagan administration massively let down the right wing of the Republican Party, right? Because Bork, they fucking love Bork.

Like, the fucking wing nuts are all about this guy. And he doesn't get in. And they feel like Reagan didn't fight enough for him, right? They feel like the rhinos let them down and didn't push this guy. So Reagan does get another justice in. I forget exactly which fucking one it is, but they're not a lunatic. And so the right wing gets very angry about that. Wasn't it Kennedy?

Yeah, I think it was Kennedy. And so conservatives start to feel like, well, we're owed a right wing justice. We didn't get what we are owed. We need to make good. And that, my man, is where Clarence Thomas comes again into the picture. So freaky, too, where the make good for Bork is Clarence Thomas. Yeah. We feel like we deserve a guy who hates civil rights and wants to turn the clock back a hundred years.

And we wanted this like howling white nationalist, but instead we'll take Clarence Thomas. Yeah. And now you got Neil Borksich and Bork Kavanaugh and Amy Bork. Kevin Bork and Bork Garrett. I don't know. I don't know. I think if I made a joke about borking them, it would probably wind up getting us on some lists. Sophie. Yeah. Hi. Hi. How are you doing?

Good. Getting on some lists in a sick nightclubs. Excellent. So we should probably talk a little bit now about the man Clarence Thomas replaced on the Supreme Court. Oh, you're done with the borking. That's it. It's the only Bork. You got it out of your system. I did, Sophie. Thank you. I got it out of my system.

I'm just making sure we're all good here. I made a lot of actionable threats in my basement before coming up here, so we're fine. Oh, okay. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah. And now we're moving on to somebody that's really awesome or... Yeah. Thurgood Marshall was pretty, pretty based actually, Sophie. Pretty dope. Also... I love what you said earlier, Robert, when you're talking, you threatened Scotus and you said,

I'm coming for all of you. Call me Ernest Bork 9. That's right. That's right. That's right. I did say that, Miles. I got to go, man. Hilarious. Just leave me alone. Thurgood Marshall, number one, probably the best name a judge has ever had. That's a judge name. Like, if you're like a third grade teacher and a kid comes into your class named Thurgood Marshall, you're like, well, that motherfucker's going to become a judge, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's basically... You don't get to be Thurgood Marshall and be like, I don't know. Like a chemistry teacher or like a... Even you couldn't be like a nurse as Thurgood Marshall. Like, if I went into the hospital and I came across a nurse named Thurgood Marshall, I'd be like, get the fuck out of here. You're supposed to be a judge. Go and get into a courtroom.

They're like, hold on. You're selling me NFTs? Yeah, no. Thurgood Marshall. They're like, lay off track. Get your ass in some robes. That shit's a judge's name. So, pretty cool guy, Thurgood Marshall. The year after Clarence Thomas starts public school, Marshall is the lawyer who wins Brown versus the Board of Education, which is one of the most consequential cases in legal history anywhere in the world.

Marshall, the great-grandson of an enslaved person himself, goes through the public education system. Unlike Thomas, he spends his entire education in segregated schools, so he actually like goes, lives in entirely under segregation. He's like a person who's being educated as a kid. He gets his law degree in 1933 from Howard University, and he becomes a litigator for the NAACP. In Brown, his most famous case, he argued RE segregation that, quote,

this court should make it clear that it is not what our Constitution stands for. He was a believer in the Constitution as a living document, one that could be used to push for greater equality and liberty for all. As a lawyer for the NAACP, Marshall won several landmark Supreme Court cases. In Smith v. All Right, he helped overturn long-standing rules that made it illegal for black people to vote in party primary elections in certain states. They used to be legal for parties, like the party in whatever state to be like, no, no, no, we don't, you guys don't get to vote in the primaries.

Only white people can vote in the primaries. In Shelley v. Kramer, he forced the court to rule against laws that restricted non-white people from purchasing homes in specific neighborhoods. And in Sweat v. Painter, he got the court to rule that universities could not reject applicants based on race, all of which is, like, pretty cool shit. Right. And also, like, it's just wild too that these aren't complex legal arguments. He's like, yeah, how about, like, we don't do this shit. And they're like, this seems racist as fuck.

And everybody says, wow, you are the first person to say that in the United States. Council, what is your argument that this is racist trash? Okay, I rest my game. We're very pro-racist trash. And see, that's the fucking problem. Yeah. Okay, we can't be doing that anymore. Oh, interesting. Fascinating argument. No one has made this before Thurgood Marshall. Perhaps we are all human.

You might look at Thurgood Marshall as the guy that Clarence Thomas told his grandfather he wanted to be. Right. In addition to just being, like, one of the coolest guys to ever be associated with U.S. government in any capacity, like, just a pretty dope dude, all things considered. Yeah, like, if, like, yeah, people in American politics were, like, wrestlers, like, the belt that Thurgood Marshall would run into the arena with. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Thurgood Marshall's the guy who, like, racism is, like, doing his little patter on stage for the audience. And then Thurgood Marshall comes in and hits him with a fucking chair.

Oh, my God. Thurgood Marshall going out. Exactly. That's exactly what happens. Yeah. So it's probably worth noting that two of the three cases that we just talked about arose from lawsuits in the state of Texas. I do feel like that's worth acknowledging. Okay, it brings Texas right back in. Yeah. Oh, never far when we're talking about racism. If this had been the total of Marshall's career, he would go down in history as one of the most influential legal minds ever. But all of that was just a prelude.

On August 30th, 1967, the Senate confirmed him as the first black Supreme Court justice in a 69 to 11 floor vote. I want to quote now from a write up by the NAACP on Marshall's quarter century on the court, quote, Marshall fought for affirmative action for minorities held strong against the death penalty and supported a woman's right to choose if an abortion was appropriate for her. The civil rights lawyer turned Supreme Court justice made made a significant impact on American society and culture. His mission was equal justice for all. Marshall used the power of the courts to fight racism and discrimination, tear down Jim Crow segregation, change the status quo and make life better for the most vulnerable in our nation. So, you know, real fucking cool guy, pretty cool guy.

Just ask getting all that shit done, okay. You know who else is a cool guy, Miles? Oh, I know. The products and services that support this podcast. They also want to change the status quo in your wallet. And I heard Thurgood Marshall would have used all of them. That's right, that's right. Every product we have on this show is backed by the ghost of Thurgood Marshall.

Just positing that casually. And honestly, I feel like Thurgood Marshall probably would use that website. So, I don't know. Oh, yeah. And you know what he wouldn't use? Is any products sponsored by the Pod Save America people? None of those. Just behind the bastard's products.

Absolutely. He said that to me at a seance. Yeah. That's what you need to start doing is making merch for it. It's Thurgood Marshall and it's in a closet. I fuck with cool zone. Not crooked. That's right.

That's right. Fuck them. That's what Thurgood Marshall would probably say. So, Pierre, we allowed to do that? No. Okay. So, here's the answer. Allegedly.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told Thurgood Marshall? of humans. This is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me, about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down.

It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Oh, we're back and we're talking about what products Thurgood Marshall would love. Yes. You know what, I think, Miles, I think Thurgood Marshall would enjoy the convenience of Amazon Prime. Here say, but not here say. Yep. You know what, I hear Thurgood Marshall's perfect morning is to take his bird scooter down to Starbucks. Oh, yeah. Big bird scooter guy. High five all of the very happy workers there.

And who don't need to unionize. No, not at all. And to remind them how good they have it because of his work. That's right. Okay. And to stay in line. Classic Thurgood. Then throw the hot coffee in the face of the Amazon Prime delivery person who's too late

and slow with the elastic reusable bandages that he needs for his dog's injured foot. That's right. That's right. And you know what else I think Thurgood Marshall would have liked is Netflix. And I want to quote now from a Supreme Court ruling in 1972, a majority opinion authored by Marshall, quote, I fucking love it. When I turn on an app and it immediately starts screaming at me,

just loudly playing a trailer that I didn't ask to play. That is my favorite thing as Thurgood Marshall Supreme Court Justice. Wow. Wow. Wow. Powerful. Powerful. I love to hear that.

Yeah. And also, and then he also said, and also this is, I'm surprised you glossed over the second part of that quote, which is I for one would never share my password unless it's for guests within my home. One password, one use per account. If Netflix ever becomes a thing in the future is what I think as Thurgood Marshall Supreme Court Justice. His greatest regret, greatest regret as a Supreme Court Justice was not actually reeling

in the rampant criminals. Yeah. That's that's right. That's right. You saw it coming. Destroy the industry. So yeah, as American men in positions of power go, Marshall is pretty much your best case scenario, right?

Just just about the best legacy any any man with power has in modern U.S. history. But by the later half of the Reagan administration, he is an old man. He is not in very good health. He has a bunch of fucking health problems as most old people do. The court had taken a distinct rightward tilt in the last years that he served, and Marshall found himself constantly writing minority dissents while the Reagan administration started to claw back some of the gains of the civil rights era.

At a press conference, he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. And Marshall replied as someone who that he wanted to be remembered as someone who, quote, did what he could with what he had, which is a very sad that. Yeah, that's bleak shit. That breaks my heart. You don't want that to be what the Brown versus the Board of Education guy ceases his legacy in the Reagan as the Reagan years come to a close. Well, because that's the excuse Joe Biden is using right now.

Yeah, it is. Look, come on, man. I'm doing what I can. What I got fucking at Thurgood Marshall legitimately did everything he he reasonably doing away. He's like, fuck, man. They really they're packing this motherfucker in with these weird. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, Clarence Thomas, for his part, seems to have hated Thurgood Marshall. In the enigma of Clarence Thomas, Corey Robin writes, quote, Thomas had dismissed Marshall's liberal views as exasperating and incomprehensible. His rendition of the Constitution as a race baiting vision that alienates all Americans and pits blacks against the founders. Which how do you not? Yeah, pit black people against the founders.

Yeah, they were most most of them were pretty racist. So yes, I guess I guess they should be. Yeah, that's fine. I guess they should be. I guess the founders pitted themselves against black people by owning them. No, no, no. They are much more passive in enslaving people. That's a passive activity.

Yeah, it's it's fine. So holy shit. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Right. That's that's not good. That's not good. I would say. So in Marshall's last years, Ronald Reagan appointed four Supreme Court justices,

Sandra Day O'Connor, William Rainquist, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. And look, I don't like a lot of those folks, but I have to say all of those really good judge names. Honestly. Oh, yeah. Rainquist is one of those. Oh, my God. What an incredible judge name and Anthony Kennedy.

Awesome judge name. Just really. Yeah. None of them are Thurgood Marshall level judge names, but those are all solid judge Tony K. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Not just a fucking drug dealer at a rave. Yeah, dude. Sandra Day O'Connor to three. You got to have three. You know, that's what really that really drives it home. Day O'Connor. I mean, John Connor. Yeah, exactly.

Feeling like Terminator, which is interesting. That's right. Take it to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I believe his fake name in true lives was Harry Rainquist. Oh, wow. See, that's, wow, Miles, we're through the looking glass here. Yeah. Sorry, folks.

I did mushrooms this weekend. A lot of memories are coming to the top. So despite how right-wing Scalia would turn out to be, this selection of judges, and these are like over the course of the Reagan administration, really pisses off American religious conservatives because all of those people are not right-wing ghouls, right? They're kind of mostly more centrist and stuff in their actual rulings and often get...

Centrist and stuff. Yeah, with the exception of Scalia, most of them kind of move more towards the center in time, which really pisses off the far right. So again, with this and with Robert Bork, they see themselves as having been betrayed repeatedly by an admittance. Reagan came to power on the back of the religious right.

He was supposed to be their guy, and they're like, he didn't give us everything we wanted. So when Reagan leaves office and George H. W. Bush becomes president, he gets a Supreme Court nomination. And instead of picking a guy the right-wing fucking loves, he picks a dude named Thomas Souter who is center right. And this is, again, not enough. And in fact, the right-wing sees this as like the worst sin imaginable.

And this is a real problem because, again, you have to get this guy confirmed. And at this point, they're like pretty pissed off. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, manages to get the religious right in line behind Souter by promising that, hey, fucking Thurgood Marshall is not going to be around that much longer. When he quits, we will replace him with the worst piece of shit you can imagine. Like, I fucking promise, this time we have your back. Let's give me one more shot, man.

Let's give us one more shot. We will get a fucking ghoul in there. Trust me. I swear to you. I got a real, real shitty hefty bill. D-bag full of crap just baking in the sun, filling up with gas that I got for. You're going to love this one.

You're going to love this guy. You're going to love this one. Speaking of nominative determinism, John Sununu, that is the name of a piece of shit whose entire job is to like whip fascists in behind, like backing corporate tax breaks. Like, my God, that's the name you give that. John Sununu, are you kidding me? Yeah, it's not strong.

It's not strong, you know. Through the Reagan years and into the early Bush administration, Clarence Thomas, while he's doing his shit at the EEOC, worked relentlessly to burnish his street cred with the far right. This meant he had to do a lot of explaining away his past civil rights activism, which he accomplished deftly by pivoting to complaining about how bad the civil rights era had been for black people. And I'm going to quote now from the New Yorker.

That's pretty good, right? That's pretty good. Oh my God, it's so disingenuous. What the fuck? In his memoir, Thomas notes that part of the appeal of black nationalism was tied to his sense in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, that no one was going to take care of me or any other black person in America. Eventually, this notion extended to the left.

I marched. I protested. I asked the government to help black people. Thomas told the Washington Post in 1980, I did all those things, but it hasn't worked. The whole repertoire of black politics from mainstream activism to black power radicalism and beyond now seemed pointless. By the 80s, Thomas, a member of the Reagan administration, believed that state action

could do nothing for African Americans. Problems of racial inequality cannot be solved by law, even civil rights laws, he told an audience at Clark College, a historically black school in Atlanta in the 1980s. In a 1987 speech to the Heritage Foundation, Thomas stated his belief that principled conservatism should, quote, make it clear to blacks that conservatives are not hostile to them, but instead that conservative views are the only real way to support black success. He repeatedly stated his belief that if you could get the whole racial issue out of the left-right paradigm, most black people would see that they were really conservative.

I mean, there's some truth to elements of that. There are. There's some truth. That's part of why it's worked. Yes. Yeah. The amount of work this guy, my God. Yeah.

I mean, maybe it's no work when you're a ghoul like this power. Shit he's saying that's rooted in truth. Yeah, man. A lot of I wouldn't call it the left, but the most liberals don't really want to do any more than use like race and civil rights as like a fucking whipping boy issue to hurt the right. Like, absolutely. There are a lot of false friends among the left in terms of civil rights advocacy. Yeah.

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. For liberals, it's more like being like a whiny guy being like. Well, I mean, you really should be with us if you really think about it. Yeah. Without being like, but I'm not going to do any of the work. Yeah.

I'm not going to fucking do anything. Move towards liberation for you. But if you think about it, like you can't be with them. It's like, there's again, there's these elements of truth. And then he's like, and so that's why I'm just like lining up behind the racists. Right. And I think that's what makes it. It's like, OK, well.

Yeah, it makes it also so insidious too. Yes. Like you just find that little shred where you can say that's the truth. And then like, and that's how I justify the absolute ushering in of the hell world. Yeah. Absolutely. Speaking of the hell world, most of the claims that Thomas made about the origins of his own conservatism were rooted in absolute boldface lies about his background.

And I'm going to quote again from Strange Justice. According to Sam Williams, Thomas's lack of gratitude for what his grandfather and the civil rights movement had done for him formed the beginning of an estrangement that became so irreparable, the two were barely on speaking terms at the time of Anderson's death in the spring of 1983. What made his grandfather's bitterness particularly sharp was the sense that Thomas had betrayed him, according to Williams, who said that early on, Thomas used to tell his grandfather he was going to be a civil rights lawyer and come back here and help his people.

Instead, Thomas just helped Thomas. He saw that the money and career opportunities were on the other side. His grandfather was so disappointed he hardly spoke of Thomas in the later years. Yet, in his public speeches, including his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Thomas spoke often about how much he loved and admired his grandfather. It is likely that his sense of gratitude grew in the years after his grandfather's death. He did, after all, keep a photo of his grandfather on his desk at the EEOC. But both Sam Williams and W.W. Law also charged Thomas with

distorting the truth about his upbringing for political effect. In an interview, Law said, I don't like talking about this because Thomas is local and that makes it very hard. He then shut his eyes and in an agitated voice added, Thomas just said those things to make him seem black. But all along, he's been making choices to benefit Thomas and no one else. Yeah, that sounds about right. Mr. Lizard Brain. Yeah. And just like, okay, I don't like it.

The time to actually express like love and admiration for my grandfather is publicly in books, even though we're not really talking. Because I think the fact that my grandfather was a hard ass and mean will sell with conservatives. 100%. Even though he was a committed civil rights activist for all of his flaws, like I am going to paint him as like the platonic ideal of a right wing dad because he was a dick. God, he's so opportunistic. And you just see like, whenever there's an opportunity to, you know, create or add more weight to the myth about him, like he's going to do that for anything.

Yeah. But you know what, Miles? I don't know. I don't know what, Miles. You know what I do know is that it's time for you to give your plugables. Well, I don't know. You know, just steal some catalytic converters to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Jack, a fucking catalytic converter. Yeah. I think we can all agree on that. Oh, that's what I want to plug. I got a new, I have a new, it's a new shirt that I made. It's designed for people who steal catalytic converters because it has a rigid back plate with wheels. Oh, very nice. Just immediately you see some get on your back, slide under,

clip it, you're out, hop in their homey civic and you're off, baby. They're called cat shirts. Check them out at cat shirts dot meow. That's how I throw the authorities off, but it's for stealing catalytic converters. Yeah. I mean, that website exists. Absolutely. Cat shirts dot meow. You know, Miles, I think it's only fair here to quote Thurgood Marshall once more, who said in a 1977 ruling, quote, I dream of the day in which a man is able to steal a catalytic converter in less than 90 seconds, even if the car has skid plates protecting it. Wow. There it is. Again, ahead of his time, ahead of his time.

Absolutely. And your product is ahead of the rest of the market. Yeah. So follow us at cat shirts meow on all over. And if you're interested in me, the creator of the product, check me out at miles of ground Twitter and Instagram. And remember, listen to me on my other show, Daily Zeitgeist, where we talk about all kinds of tips for stealing those cat converters. And remember, folks, every car that is capable of driving is a policy failure. Steal more cats. There it is. We did it. We did it, everybody. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests.

It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut that he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my

crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.