Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, appears to have celebrated the nineteenth anniversary of her husband’s fraught Senate confirmation hearings by leaving a phone message for Anita Hill.
According to a well-informed source, a woman identifying herself as “Ginni Thomas” left a voicemail message at Hill’s Waltham, Massachusetts, office this past Saturday, at around 7:30 A.M. The caller urged Hill to recant her sworn Senate testimony accusing Clarence Thomas of talking incessantly about pornography, and in other ways harassing her when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The identifying envelope information on the voice message showed that the number in Northern Virginia was registered to Virginia Thomas.
Reached in Waltham, where she teaches law at Brandeis University, Hill declined to comment, other than to confirm that she had received the phone message, which she had turned over to campus police for identification and authentication.
Thomas released a statement confirming that she left the message for Hill and saying that she was “extending an olive branch,” but when I heard a recording of the message, it came off as more adversarial than most peace offerings. The message begins with a singsong female voice saying, “Anita Hill, this is Ginni Thomas, and I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”
Thomas went on to suggest that Hill “pray about this.” Although in essence the caller was accusing Hill of lying—as Clarence Thomas did during the confirmation hearings—and demanding that she apologize, the call ended with an incongruously perky sign-off: “O.K., have a good day!”
On the same day that Hill received the phone call from the person identifying herself as the wife of the Supreme Court Justice, the New York Times ran a front-page story on Virginia Thomas’ growing role as a right-wing political activist.
“Mrs. Thomas’s supporters said she plays an important role as a bridge between grass-roots Tea Party activists and establishment Republicans in Washington,” the Times reported.
Attempts to reach Virginia and Clarence Thomas this evening were unsuccessful.
Photograph: Anita Hill. Brad Markel/Getty Images