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.”
King gushed over the podcast marking both occasions for bitter leftists: “A new podcast called – I like this name – Because of Anita reexamines her story and what it means for history and the Me Too movement. The podcast features the very first public conversation between Anita Hill...and Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault back in 2018.”
During a taped segment looking back at the failed, sleazy attempts by Democrats to take down conservative Supreme Court nominees, King narrated:
Anita Hill had only a few days to write her speech, but the impact of her words have been felt for decades....She said Thomas sexually harassed her multiple times. Thomas denied all allegations....Twenty-six years later, Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault while in high school....He too denied the allegations....Both Thomas and Kavanaugh were confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Other than briefly citing the denials from Thomas and Kavanaugh, King never challenged the credibility of either Hill or Ford’s accounts.
Instead, the anchor touted how both women spoke to each other in the podcast:
KING: Hill shared her advice with Blasey Ford.
HILL: I just want to say, you know, to Christine that it – it does get better.
FORD: Thank you.
HILL: It will continue to get better.
King sympathetically concluded: “I’ll bet she really needed to hear that too, ‘It will get better.’”
Talking to the podcast’s co-hosts, Salamishah Tillet and Cindi Leive, King swooned: “Christine said, ‘I just wanted to be a good human being.’ Anita said, ‘I just want to be as clear as possible, it’s not my job to persuade.’ They both wanted to, they say, just do the right thing.” Leive chimed in: “Yeah, that’s one of the things that both – really both Salamishah and I – noticed when we were talking to them is this sense of civic duty and patriotism.”
King was aghast that Hill had to endure any questioning of her allegations against Thomas during the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: “...we’ve all been listening to Anita Hill’s testimony....I cringe.... And the questions she was asked: Are you a martyr? Are you a scorned woman?...I look at that and I go, how is that even allowed to happen the way it did?”
Tillet shared King’s outrage that Hill was asked to back up her incendiary claims designed to destroy Thomas:
I think the legacy of Anita Hill for all of us is to have this language of sexual harassment and also to understand that these aren’t villains in someone else’s story. These are three dimensional women. And one of the things I think was so compelling about hearing them in conversation with each other is that their humanity, their believability, and their trustworthiness was as clear as day.
CBS’s idea of “journalism” is to hype highly controversial allegations that run counter to the evidence and herald the women who made them for their supposed “patriotism” and “trustworthiness.”
Thirty years ago, the leftist media were eager to trash Thomas while bestowing sainthood upon Hill. Obviously nothing has changed in the decades since.
CBS’s celebration of the left-wing podcast was brought to viewers by Amazon and Panera Bread. You can fight back by letting these advertisers know what you think of them sponsoring such content.
Here is a full transcript of the October 11 segment:
8:02 AM ET
GAYLE KING: 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. 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. A new podcast called – I like this name – Because of Anita reexamines her story and what it means for history and the Me Too movement. The podcast features the very first public conversation between Anita Hill – Anita Hill is her name – and Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault back in 2018. Here’s a look at Hill’s landmark testimony in a recent conversation with Christine Blasey Ford.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Antia Hill’s Influence; Podcast Looks at Importance of Hill’s Testimony on Sexual Harassment]
ANTIA HILL [OCTOBER 11, 1991]: I thought he respected my work and that he trusted my judgment.
KING: Anita Hill had only a few days to write her speech, but the impact of her words have been felt for decades.
SEN. JOE BIDEN [D-DE, SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN, OCTOBER 11, 1991]: Do you swear to tell the whole truth –
KING: Hill was a 35-year-old law professor from Oklahoma. She worked for Thomas at the Department of Education and the EEOC.
HILL [1991]: Judge Thomas began to use work situations to discuss sex.
KING: She said Thomas sexually harassed her multiple times. Thomas denied all allegations.
CLARENCE THOMAS [1991]: It is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.
CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD [SEPTEMBER 27, 2018]: I am here today not because I want to be.
KING: Twenty-six years later, Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault while in high school.
FORD: I was pushed on to the bed and Brett got on top of me.
KING: He too denied the allegations.
BRETT KAVANAUGH: I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone.
KING: Both Thomas and Kavanaugh were confirmed to the Supreme Court.
PROTESTERS [SEPTEMBER 20, 2018]: We believe Anita Hill! We believe Christine Ford!
KING: Hill and Blasey Ford talked about their experiences for the very first time publicly in a new podcast called Because of Anita.
HILL: These consequences of standing up are real. Would I do it again? Yes.
FORD: Certainly people in my community have seen how upended my life is and what we had to go through as a family. And all the smear media and the destroying of reputation and attempt at destroying career. And I’m absolutely sure that I would do it again. And that’s not to say that it hasn’t been really, really, really hard and that I’m still not as okay as I would like to be, three years out of the situation. I certainly wish I was doing better than I am.
KING: Hill shared her advice with Blasey Ford.
HILL: I just want to say, you know, to Christine that it – it does get better.
FORD: Thank you.
HILL: It will continue to get better.
KING: I’ll bet she really needed to hear that too, “It will get better.” Joining us now, the podcast co-hosts, that’s Salamishah Tillet and Cindi Leive. Welcome to you both. It was so interesting, guys, to hear their two voices together. And I can imagine what it meant to both of them to be able to talk. How did this come about, Cindi?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: “Because of Anita”; Podcast Hosts on Lessons From Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford]
CINDI LEIVE [CO-HOST, “BECAUSE OF ANITA” PODCAST]: I’ve known Professor Hill for years and recently, over the last couple of years, got to meet Dr. Ford. And I knew that there was a mutual admiration between the two of them. And you know, they are sort of this club of two. You know, not a club that either one of them ever necessarily would have wanted to belong to, but they’re the two people who really understand what one another has gone through in a way that the rest of us kind of can’t imagine.
KING: Yeah, you point out that both of them are very private people who didn’t want this attention and now it’s turned out to be one of the most – both of them – two of the biggest testimonies, public testimonies, that have been life-changing. I’m curious about what stood out to you. Because Christine said, “I just wanted to be a good human being.” Anita said, “I just want to be as clear as possible, it’s not my job to persuade.” They both wanted to, they say, just do the right thing.
LEIVE: Yeah, that’s one of the things that both – really both Salamishah and I – noticed when we were talking to them is this sense of civic duty and patriotism. You know, they came forward simply because they had information. And you know, in both of their cases, quite reluctantly. I think people forget, 30 years to the day after Anita Hill’s testimony, that you know, she very much didn’t want to testify but was asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to do so. And the way they both approached it was simply to look at it as their job was to deliver information and they both, I think, for their own sanity had to let go of what the outcome was going to be.
KING: Was gonna be – because it’s been 30 years, we’ve all been listening to Anita Hill’s testimony. Salamishah, I cringe. I remember watching it very vividly. And the questions she was asked: Are you a martyr? Are you a scorned woman? Speak again about the pubic hair on the coke can, that she had already said two times. I mean, I look at that and I go, how is that even allowed to happen the way it did?
SALAMISHAH TILLET [CO-HOST, “BECAUSE OF ANITA” PODCAST]: Yeah.
KING: What are you thinking today? What does it mean to us today?
TILLET: Well, I was 16 years old when I was watching the testimony, so I didn’t even understand quite what was happening, either in terms of sexual harassment nor the language that she was alleging Clarence Thomas used in the workplace. But today I think one of the things that’s striking is the differences in the experiences that Professor Hill had versus Dr. Ford, in the kind of etiquette in the hearings. Social media of course, the attacks on Dr. Ford were differently shown compared to Professor Hill.
But also, I think the legacy of Anita Hill for all of us is to have this language of sexual harassment and also to understand that these aren’t villains in someone else’s story. These are three dimensional women. And one of the things I think was so compelling about hearing them in conversation with each other is that their humanity, their believability, and their trustworthiness was as clear as day. And so when you think about the attacks that have continuously still mounted against them, I think their voices together provide an alternative.
TONY DOKOUPIL: The legacy really is illusion-shattering, as you put it. The language of sexual harassment was not commonplace in 1991. The first survey of sexual harassment was 1976.
LEIVE: Yeah.
DOKOUPIL: Talk about the journey we’ve been on.
LEIVE: Well, and by the way, that was done in Redbook magazine, it wasn’t done by the government. No one in the government was really trying to figure this out. And in fact, the statistics are still very poor. There isn’t a lot of great data about it but we know that it’s very, very pervasive and that probably about one in three women, and close to that of men, have experienced it in the workplace.
DOKOUPIL: Do you think it has continued at a consistent level or can we say that because of conversations that began with Anita Hill it’s declined? Either one of you take that.
TILLET: Yeah, I mean, I think that because of Anita Hill, we saw that there were shifts in legislation and workplace protections, but the problem is that 30 years – that was kind of an immediate aftermath of her testimony. Thirty years later, we haven’t seen significant protections or new – you know, in terms of harassment, in terms of how much people can sue for. Those things haven’t changed. So there was an immediate bump, so to speak, and 30 years later, we’re still dealing with a lack of enthusiasm and a lack of critical will to deal with these issues.
NATE BURLESON: I remember during the Anita Hill case, men were relatively silent. Do you believe now, in 2021, that we are using our voice more when women come out?
TILLET: Yeah, I would say one thing that is important to note is that the racial dynamics of the case too and the ways in which there was a real divide amongst African-American men and women in response to Anita Hill’s testimony. But at the time, and we talk about this in our second episode, a group of black women took out an ad in The New York Times, “African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves and Also in Defense of Anita Hill.”
Speed up to Christine Blasey Ford, a group of men, an interracial group of men, intergenerational group of men took out a similar ad in The New York Times, in support of Dr. Ford. So I would say that’s lots of progress. And Anita Hill talks about that in our – in that episode as something that, what a way to think about a black woman’s legacy, that these men have been so moved by her voice, or a black woman’s voice, and now they’re coalescing around these issues.
DOKOUPIL: And on race and gender, Anita also talks about how it’s not the work of one generation to solve all these problems, it’s going to be multi-generational.
LEIVE: Yeah.
KING: The conversation continues.
DOKOUPIL: It does, yeah. The podcast is Because of Anita. Salamishah Tillet, Cindi Leive, thank you very much.
TILLET: Thank you.
LEIVE: Thank you.
