News in Washington I'm sure Rahm Congressional Republicans say they have submitted a list of witnesses they'd like to see testify during the public phase of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump the son of former Vice President Joe Biden is on the list N.P.R.'s to mak reports House Republicans also want to hear from the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint touched off the investigation Republican congressman Devon Una's said that the anonymous whistleblower should also be called to testify because quote President Trump should be afforded an opportunity to confront his accusers the rules adopted by the house for the impeachment inquiry require that Democrats approve g.o.p. Witness requests this means that Republicans are unlikely to get most if any of their desired witnesses open hearings for the House impeachment inquiry start Wednesday with 3 current and former u.s. Diplomats expected to testify to mak n.p.r. News Washington Bolivia's governing party is calling on supporters to defend President Evo Morales opponents are calling him to step down claiming he used fraud to win last month's election earlier Morales accuse the opposition of trying to mount a coup he's heard here through a b.b.c. Interpreter. Wrote a book about the I mean. This is a coup d'etat against a democratically elected government with more than 60 percent in the last elections a coup d'etat against social movements workers professionals and Patriots the humble against the indigenous rule democratic revolution that we have built said he'd welcome talks with opposition leaders to quell the unrest opponents are calling for new elections Spain is holding parliamentary elections tomorrow as Lucy had been to Vegas reports polls show the Socialist Party is expected to win but again fall short of a majority. During his last campaign event on Friday in term prime minister Sanchez told a cheering crowd. That voting for his socialist. Party was the only way to end political paralysis He also asked voters to put a stop to Spain's far right party Vox whose popularity is growing right wing parties have seen a boost in support after they blamed Sanchez for social unrest following a Supreme Court ruling that sentenced 9 at the island separatist leaders to up to 13 years in prison for sedition the protesters across took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands to show their anger claiming the verdict as undemocratic for n.p.r. News I'm Lucy had been heavy this. Firefighters in Australia are battling more than 70 bushfires a New South Wales officials say they're expecting severe and extreme fire danger across a broad parts of the state including near Sydney the nation's largest city they say at least 3 people have died and at least 150 homes have been destroyed this is n.p.r. News from Washington. A psych loan has hit southwestern Bangladesh with winds nearing 75 miles per hour hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes the storm is also expected to affect parts of north eastern India rolling power outages in Zimbabwe are forcing people to look at alternative energy sources including would feel as this month and equal reports this is having a devastating effect on Fars already being destroyed by tobacco farmers officials say the country is do sing about 3900 square miles of forest cover. Why our group accounts for the bulk of the loss and the use of wood fuel making this is Jewish and worse. Is the general manager of the Forestry Commission he saw it in a tree cartoon used to be a rural phenomenon but now more people in the urban areas using firewood if this couldn't do it and then the next 15 is filled with no photos with unemployment at an all time high in a failing economy cutting in said he would use one of the few options for some Zimbabweans to make a living for n.p.r. News. The last funeral was held today for the 9 American women and children killed in an ambush Monday in northern Mexico they were members of a breakaway Mormon community not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints that had settled in rural Mexico decades ago Mexican officials say the attack may have been the result of mistaken identity but family members say they believe the group was intentionally targeted I'm nor rom n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from the group or family foundation supporting N.P.R.'s efforts to promote deeper thinking broader perspectives and trusted facts based information always with the goal of creating a more informed public and listeners like you who donate to this n.p.r. Station. Coming up on the next On Point public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry are set to begin we'll talk with top reporters about who the American people are likely to hear from and what impact the hearings might have plus the new movie about Harriet Tubman historians tell us her real life was more incredible than what's shown on the big screen that's coming up next on point from n.p.r. Between 9 and 11 every weekday after Morning Edition. From the un who I see in New York is on the media Gladstone and I'm Bob Garfield this week on Capitol Hill another batch of Trump administration witnesses corroborating the president's walk across what might possibly finally be a bridge too far the ambassador to the European Union now tells lawmakers that the trumpet ministration held up military aid as it pushed Ukraine's government to investigate Democrats including the Biden family Trump allies continue to make the congressional inquiry not about Trump's abuse of power of but about Suppose it corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter what you have now is you have the beginnings and the building of evidence of circum stanch all evidence that there was a crime there so if we want to investigate Rudy Giuliani's financial dealings by all means do it but same time you should if you want to be fair invest a 100 Biden's economic dealings and you're right as well that was Senator Rand Paul mentioning Rudolph Giuliani the architect of the teetering Ukrainian conspiracy theory the goal of which was to turn attention from Russian interference in the 26000 election to suspicions of Ukrainian interference and Bamma administration corruption cannot trump using power to smear a little rival but a sinister side in the connection now you may wonder where did this all come from well when the history of the Trump presidency is written along with the likes of James Komi and Stormy Daniels there will be one less familiar name John Solomon till recently a writer and executive at the publication they killed. In March of this year Solomon scored an exclusive interview with Ukraine's then top cop Yuri Sankoh and even though a state Department of Fish. Testified under oath that the interview was quote primarily non-truths and non sequiturs Solomon milked it for a series of articles describing how an official of the Ukrainian anti corruption agency called Nabu interfered in the 2016 election not the Russians the Ukrainians to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign but Trump's Here's Lutes Sankoh in a taped interview for the hills t.v. Show yes according to the number of Parliament or training he got or decision that not all of this show if you're going to get an illegal intrusion into America on cigarettes you American. Election campaign began to that convenient counter-narrative to the then still going on investigation into Russian election interference Sankoh also accused then u.s. Ambassador Marie Yavanna vege of providing the Ukrainian prosecutor with a do not prosecute list yes because oh shit so now my response of that is it is interrupted admissible in your Nobody in this country neither I want Frezza them nor I won't column one nor ambassador. Will stop me from prosecuting whether there is a crime and then came what Solomon called quote Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare a right wing blockbuster creepy crazy Uncle Joe That was creepy behavior is grabbing most of the headlines a possible international corruption scandal is brewing under the surface weeks before the Biden presidential campaign officially launched the anti Biden conspiracy was underway it was just one problem it wasn't true yes that is a problem because let Sankoh a few weeks later says that the things he told John Solomon didn't happen that way Paul Fahri is a media reporter at The Washington Post it turns out that in bad. Siddur Marie you have on of it never handed over any list and after telling Solomon that he would investigate the company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of said later on that there really wasn't any evidence to investigate and that he dropped this whole notion once the story broke Juliani started peddling it everywhere in till it eventually got traction documents include a package of this information and debunked conspiracy theories according to a source Giuliani gave the documents to the White House and they were passed on to Secretary of State Mike palm pale not just Giuliani but the president of the United States it sounds like big stuff it sounds like a very interesting with Ukraine his son Sean Hannity right here with the full report the Hill John Solomon also former u.s. Attorney Joe This creates a whole feedback loop which we are still seeing to this day now that sounds awfully familiar back in the run up to the Iraq War you'll recall Dick Cheney saying this there's a story in The New York Times this morning. It's now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium but the source of the information was it ministration ally Chalo b. Who's supposed that aluminum tubes smoking gun had already been deemed false within the CIA So the administration and shall it be essentially laundered the lie through the New York Times is that same laundering process what's happening here well in some sense yes and what you're pointing to is how reporters journalists become captive of their sources and. You can further the narrative of their sources now reporting is about getting a variety of opinions it's not about getting one opinion you go down a dangerous road when you rely on just partisans or just a single source to tell a rather important story and it seems that this is the case with John Solomon's reporting in The Hill that Rudy Giuliani left Parnassus and some Ukrainians who were there our eyes were the source of his stories now when people suddenly leave their jobs often it's to spend a little more time with their family or to pursue other opportunities Solomon is talking about a start up but to your knowledge was there really a start up brewing or is this just a cover story Well 1st I'll say I don't know the internal dynamics of the hill or what his entrepreneurial goals are but John has a lot of prominence in the conservative media sphere he can cash in on that and leverage that yes it does appear that he wrote a bad story but I don't think it's going to harm him among the certain segment of the population the people who already believe let's go back to Judy Miller for a 2nd you know she left in New York Times following like the world's longest correction and you know to some significant degree of shame. I don't see John Solomon much being shamed in the conservative media will there be repercussions of those who just can come out of this a you know a big bright shining star well he already was a big bright shining star among a certain segment of the population and as you're probably well aware we have divided into our camps and John has got the people behind him believing that what. He writes it is gospel including the president in the states apparently would it pass muster at a mainstream news organization I don't think it would Paul Fahri is a media reporter for The Washington Post Paul thank you very much thank you so Jon Solomon wrote a bad story a series of bunk actually but not for lack of help as Pro Publica reporter Mike speeds and 2 of his colleagues learned last month Solomon's bogus scoops had a key assist from one of the Sagas main characters the ubiquitous left Parness the Ukrainian fellow who seems to be best friends with Rudy Giuliani was intimately involved in helping John facilitate his work we discovered it through e-mails and other records and then ultimately someone himself confirmed so according to Solomon what was Parness doing in the middle of the story including the gathering of story you know he tried to paint it as if it were within the bounds of normal journalistic behavior he was not quite a source but someone that could be used to facilitate introductions pars is being used setting up key interviews including with the prosecutor acting as a translator wearing many hats so it's a collaboration if he'd been working at the hill he might have been called a researcher in radio we would call him the producer sure if you're a foreign correspondent he's a fixer right except he's also an interested party. There is the obvious way in which she was interested party but we did not know until John told us was that he met Parness formally through his attorneys Joe di Genova and Victoria Tensing who are closely connected to Rudy Giuliani closely connected to spreading Ukraine conspiracy stuff closely connected to this other character Dimitri 1st test an oligarchy who seems to be funding a lot of the stuff to protect him from going to prison perhaps it was pretty shocking to see how all these things fit together John also says that he was relying on his 2 attorneys specifically very direct monetary interest because they're representing or eventually were representing this character Dimitri for Tash to navigate the Wild West of Ukraine to make introductions to people like lead part as we then facilitate interviews with people like the former Ukrainian prosecutor who then lay the groundwork for what becomes the counter-narrative to the Russian vest occasion Giuliani took Solomon stories and sent them around some accompanied by documents right to the White House the State Department promoting what would turn out to be the latest birth or story the latest pizza gate right Fox and its ilk began spinning the same conspiracy narrative and then it all led to this perfect phone call in which the president put the arm on the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens in exchange for apparently getting their 400 $1000000.00 of defense aid released and this of course now has led to an impeachment investigation so Solomon has found a place in history now he seems to have no regrets whatsoever he thinks that his stories of held up that ultimately what he's reported at least at the time he was reporting it was the best information that was available to him you quoted Sol. Woman to the effect that he just had no idea about the checkered past and the hidden relationships quote No one knew there was anything wrong with Lev Parness at the time but oh my goodness some of the red flags were right it just seems amazing that he could have been so credulous so many axes and he provided the grunter I agree it defies credulity that he was so credulous instead of being a more active participant because you know one of the things you have in the story is an account of him sending files and documents to Rudy and Parness been printed out in the lobby of Trump International Hotel naturally usually as a journalist the documents are coming to you not the other way all right so one possibility is that John Solomon was simply duped along Judy Miller lines to create the news story that his very sources can point to to say Aha here it's independently reported on by the media Another possibility is that it was just a story that comported with his own worldview backed up as far as he knew by supposedly official primary source the prosecutor and the documents and kind of too good to double check right. Another possibility is he knew it was phony all along and did it anyway for partisan reasons one can never comment another's intentions but what is certainly clear throughout his time at the hill and before that when he was circa are the Washington Times that his work began to have a very partisan bent when he got to the Hill and sometime in the summer 2017 he was publishing stories relating to subjects like uranium one the 9 scandal in which Hillary Clinton was secretary of state was self dealing with the Clinton Foundation brand a Canadian company that wanted to buy American uranium assets it's also worth pointing out that. The hills leadership had enough concerns about the way Solomon was operating he could no longer publish Tories under the banner of news they would have to appear in the opinion section you know if you're sophisticated media person you make these distinctions but those stories if you're reading them and you're coming at them just as a person who's generally interested in politics or the subject or whatever they just basically read his new stories and that's the way they were taken while there is yet one 3rd possibility which your piece broadly hints at and that is self dealing you know including financial stuff dealing and like to dispose of that one Solomon had 2 roles at the hill one on the business side and one on the editorial side which would never have happened in the analog old days but is increasingly common in the age of digital media but nonetheless journalists are journalists and this dual role created a lot of anger internally especially when it appeared that he'd given an advertiser a prominent quote in a news story had this foul with a quid pro quo. What you're talking about refer to a branded content campaign that Solomon set up which was one of a number of those kinds of things he set up in most publications do it clearly problematic practice but especially problematic if the person who's running those campaigns has a foot in both sides of the publication So yes in this particular case the publisher is very concerned because this outside group called job creators network but a branded ad campaign then at the same time there was a news story that covered the issue that the campaign was interested in as John took a quote from the branded ad campaign and sent it to the reporters who were working on a story the publisher used very damning language in her memo saying that he was basically engaged in I think quite a reputation killing behavior something that would she thought quote destroy the Hill is there any evidence that Solomon's participation playing both sides against the middle at the hill was a factor in the Ukraine fiasco. There's no evidence that has materialized yet that suggests that what was going on with the job creators network campaign that there is something similar happening with the Ukraine stuff now that memo was just one of a number of internal concerns that have been wildly raised about how Solomon was working at the hill the buck probably stops with the hills leadership making decisions that may despite the fact that all these concerns have been raised about John well before those Ukraine stories appeared they kept him in his role change the label of his stories to opinion as if that would fix everything it clearly did not and didn't take any other action it is worth noting that the owner of the hill Jimmy Finkelstein does have a longtime relationship with Rudy Giuliani Jimmy Finkelstein was a bundler for Rudy's 2008 presidential campaign I'm not suggesting that that's the reason why this is going on but it's worth pointing out that these relationships exist which I could imagine make it complicated to address once these allegations broke it took about 5 minutes for other news organizations and other 3rd parties to debunk its central allegations that. Barry did more of those stories there was like a statement where the State Department called this allegation an outright fabrication calling something an outright fabrication cannot be translated any other way than saying like this is a lie we know it's a lie and we can comfortably stand by the fact that it's a lie big thing caught in a lie do you remember when that used to have consequences Yeah I been mystifying to watch the publication deal with what happened which is to say to I guess ultimately not deal with it at all Mike thank you thanks so much reverie Mike species is a reporter for Pro Publica we once again tried to reach John Solomon and the hill but not a peep. Coming out. Of the Supreme Court justice this is on the media. Is supported by Progressive Insurance with a price to providing information on a range of insurance coverage and price options more at progressive dot com or 1800 progressive Now that's progressive. It's again this American life there and always been small for his age so his parents got him human growth hormone his dad knows how this is all this whole Let me game the system I want my child to get a 600 s. a T. I want my child to go to Harvard but the same time I don't think it's all that sinister some people want to cure smallness others see it's raw untapped power this week This American Life Sunday evening at 8. Many veterans have come to rely on service dogs after sustaining physical injuries in the military or for forming the v.a. Is still studying whether dogs help vets with cognitive disabilities and p.t.s.d. What's the hold up we have tons of and of those stories of service members say look but for that dog I would be dead today on the next Morning Edition from n.p.r. News listen Monday morning on k.c.a.l. You. This is on the media I'm Bob Garfield and I'm Brooke lads down we just heard a story about what could be seen as one variety of situational ethics the ethics of a particular kind of media steam didn't stirred into a mire this next discussion is of an altogether different strain of situational ethics borne not of greed and willful ignorance but a profound bitterness 2nd cynicism in this case the person who bears and applies them is the current Supreme Court's longest serving justice also known to be the quietest on the bench the most enigmatic and to many liberals the most awful Justice Clarence Thomas cleared by Senator Howell Heflin during his $9091.00 confirmation hearings what did you major. Over croaks I majored in English Literature What did you my. I think protests. No longer am I baffled having just read the enigma of Clarence Thomas a new book by Corey Robin author in teacher at Brooklyn College and Graduate Center it's altogether clear that Thomas is not merely a black conservative who always seems to argue against leveling America's playing field he's a black nationalist and it's clear in everything he writes every public pronouncement here is a fact the book opens with an epigraph the famous line from the opening of Invisible Man I'm an invisible man and everybody sees everything and anything but me Clarence Thomas has a very long written record more than 700 opinions where he sets out this conservative black nationalism and it's something that a lot of people have not noticed at the very few who have tend to be scholars of color but for the most part the only thing most people know about him is about Anita Hill and the fact that he doesn't ask questions from the bench or something you observed very early on is that Thomas and the man he replaced Thurgood Marshall were both considered in their day to be intellectual light weights whose decisions were written for them by other people and as we later learn in your book the kind of racism that rankled Thomas most was this constant charge that black people weren't as smart exactly there was a student at Holy Cross and then at Yale Law School beginning in 1971 and he discovered what he felt was more insidious kind of racism than what he had known in the south he grew up mostly in Savannah Georgia he was used to and familiar the kind of overt hatred of black people by white people and when he came to the north he found a more genteel kind of racism that was more liberal. That was more patrician that was overly solicitous of black interests that hid its deeper assumptions about particular the intellectual inferiority as you said of black people and that's something that Thomas has faced from a very early moment in his career and has taken with him onto the court he told the journalist Juan Williams that he preferred dealing with an out now racist to one who is racist behind your back as one of his favorite songs went. To. The Undisputed Truth is the band that came out in 1971 I believe and he used to listen to it all the time at Yale Law School and when he was asked about the Reagan administration which he joined in 1901 and about the racism of the reg ministration he said they don't lie to you and also they don't smile at you this is a very resonant notion for him and I should say it also echoes a lot of sentiments and beliefs in the black nationalist tradition now connects spoke about the Wolves versus the fox and we don't think that it is any worse to be bitten with a smile than it is to be bitten with a crow and his 1st prolonged confrontation with smiling faces would probably have been at Holy Cross in Massachusetts I was out here riding in 1970. Because I was mad at the world that was cynicism and negativism eating me up hatred animosity that I felt justified because of all the race issues I was really upset Thomas comes there in 1968 he's a part of a cohort of 18 black men one of the poorest of that cohort recruited by a very liberal judge who had who's seeking to integrate Holy Cross the differential treatment of white and black students becomes very apparent white students are sent letters in the summer before asking them would you mind having a black roommate the black students don't get any such letter at all the experience of being in almost all white classrooms or reading all white authors of having mostly white music played at a campus events not having black professors spurs them to form the Black Student Union and this is a very deliberate decision and nomenclature they choose the word black at this time is a kind of more militant affirmation that you hear more on the west coast on the East Coast they have a statement of demands and then they issue a manifesto of their own internal rules nenny of which involve you know that black men should respect black women black men should not be involved with white women and so it's a whole statement incoherent platform that's very familiar among radicalized black students across America is this when he 1st encounters or 1st makes use of the ideas of Malcolm x. Yes he reads The Autobiography of Malcolm x. In 1968 starts listening to the records of Malcolm x. Speeches it is better for us to go to our own schools and after we have a thorough knowledge of ourselves of our own kind and racial dignity has been instilled within us then we can go to any one school and we'll still retain our race pride and we will be able to avoid this Servian inferiority complex that is instill within most Negroes who receive this sort of integrated. You caging nearly 20 years later when he's giving these interviews to people like Juan Williams Thomas can recite from memory various passages from the autobiography and from those records is this when he comes to the conclusion the crucial conclusion that racism is not really adjustable through the courts or through legislation yes we have to remember at this time there's all kinds of political efforts to deal with racism some of it is electoral some of it is legislative some of it is judicial and some of it is much more militant radical action in the streets and what he comes to by the sort of early to mid 1970 s. Is a belief that white racism is permanent pervasive and in erotica bull in the United States it has roots that cannot truly be fattened and because they cannot be fathom we can't pull them up and that once you come to terms with that several conclusions follow the 1st and the big important one is that the political process whether it be voting or protest or organizing that all of this is a misbegotten enterprise that black people should get themselves out of this explains in part why he almost always comes down against voting rights he believes that this is a fool's errand. The 2nd conclusion is that capitalism the marketplace while it tends to be geared towards white interests nevertheless offers knishes where black people can achieve some kind of measure of autonomy specifically black men Thomas derives this in part from his reading of Malcolm x. I should say a selective reading because Malcolm x. Had a complicated view on this Thomas also derives this from reading a black economist by the name of Thomas Sol very prominent conservative and in soul Thomas finds a vision for black people not of emancipation but of a kind of autonomous space where black people can create their own world apart from white people so that's the 2nd conclusion that follows from this bedrock principle of the in erratic ability of white racism he may have been more receptive to this idea because of the examples set by the most powerful Mal figure in his life his stern humorless but successful grandfather Myers Anderson My wife had a bust of my grandfather made right after I was confirmed and I put it up on a bookshelf where it looks down on me. Is that brooding omnipresence. And he's looking down on me with one of his favorite sayings inscribed on oh man can't is dead I help bury him and here's what I wondered on the days when self-pity is consuming me I look up at him how could I complain to him no education no father raised in part by freed slaves in Jim Crow South he never complained My grandmother never complained. How can I tell him that as a member of the United States Supreme Court I couldn't complain part of Miers Anderson it's just Galt was a refusal to look to any kind of the Netherlands help or aid from white society through that kind of self-reliance that very stern iron discipline he created a world for his family that was relatively safe and spread that protection and large us to other parts of the black community and so this spirit of what in the tradition is called do for self a kind of collective self-reliance looking inward to the community and particularly to very strong powerful black male figures is something that Thomas learns very early on and of course in his college years when you can create something quite a bit in the community really it will eliminate the necessity of you and me having to ignorantly industry really pointing and picking some practice someplace else trying to thank you. Any time you have to rely upon your enemy early to know you're inventing. In the mid 1970 s. Thomas makes his right turn toward more conservative principles and the key element is some of those principles that we just heard in Malcolm x. This belief in creating black institutions that are primarily economic and that this creates a kind of autonomy even semi sovereignty separate from the helping hand of white people. I guess you can learn something about a Supreme Court justice from their relationship with their clerics he had a couple of traditions at the end of his term they'd all take a trip to Gettysburg and at the beginning of the term he'd host a required screening of The Fountainhead by an rant this is hard work 1st of a great talent but unwilling to compromise his ideals at any price what's Thomas teaching on a vision that sees the government as an enemy of progress that the market is the path to salvation these are standard conservative ideas but Thomas influx them with this heavy racial pessimism what Thomas is really trying to do on the court is develop a conservative African American black nationalist public philosophy his real audience he's said is a potential black community that would embrace his ideas to stop looking to politics to the Democrats to liberalism as the path forward. Coming up how Justice Thomas n.x. Those bleak principles through his decisions and the vision of justice they represent This is. On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance offering its home quote explore designed to provide information about available home insurance options in one place more information at progressive dot com. On the next fresh air we talk about the late comedian Garry Shandling with his friend Judd Apatow who's edited a new book about the comic The book includes photos scripts stand up material and journal pages that reveal the insecurities and emotional suffering the channeling turned into comedy join us. Fresh air between one and 2 week a afternoons also 8 weekday evenings on Casey. Voters in North Carolina are balancing faith and politics when thinking about the 2020 presidential election not really worried about faith I don't believe in this stuff but you've got someone who's going to truly country while he's to have me next I'm Mary Louise Kelly evangelical Christians talk about the president his policies and his personality Monday afternoon on All Things Considered from n.p.r. News plus libel local news updates during your Monday afternoon commute on k.c.a.l. You. This is on the media Garfield and I'm Brooke led stone. So when Clarence Thomas arrives on the court he carries with him a vision of the nation and its history and of human nature so with more sleep painful the only way out is through more pain Auster and educator Corey Robin whose latest book is the enigma of Clarence Thomas explains Thomas believes that black people all black people in the United States are surrounded by a stigma of intellectual inferiority that they are simply not capable is the belief among white people of any kind of achievement or advancement on their own Thomas does not believe affirmative action created that stigma but that affirmative action reinforces that stigma it stigmatizes all black people with that notion that but for the help of white people they could have never gotten where they are and in this regard he thinks that affirmative action stigmatizes in the same way that slavery did it didn't matter under conditions of slavery whether your free black person or an insulated black person all black people were stigmatized with that sense of inferiority and Thomas believes that affirmative action continues that and that makes his decisions on affirmative action very different from other white conservatives on the court who emphasize this vision of colorblindness that all people are equal and ought to be treated equally for Thomas it's an almost literal continuation of the kind of stigmas that black people have been subjected to throughout the ages of American history and one last point when white liberals say the difference with affirmative action is that unlike Jim Crow or unlike slavery affirmative action is designed to improve the conditions of African-Americans to get us beyond race Thomas will point and cite chapter and verse from white slave holders and defenders of segregation who made very similar claims about their systems the. They were overwhelmingly for the benefit of black people so Thomas is not impressed by that argument and then the last piece of his attack on affirmative action is that affirmative action is very much a white program for white people that was fascinating in your book basically affirmative action and Mabel's an institution say an Ivy League school to keep its same elitist selective perhaps white supremacist admissions policies in place while tinkering around the edges that it basically offers a fig leaf Yes Thomas makes this very careful argument that the 1st commitment of these elite institutions is to their exclusivity it is to their selective Eddie because he says if you really want to diversify yourself the simplest most effective most efficient way is to change your admissions standards not to rely on things like the l. Set for example which Thomas says everybody knows are racially skewed and racially biased so change admissions standards and you could instantaneously become a more diverse institution but those institutions don't want to do that because what they care about most is remaining elite institutions and exclusive institutions and so they come to rely on affirmative action which as you say allows them to tinker around the edges The other thing that affirmative action allows these white elites to do is to choose that black person that they think could be one of us it enhances the discretionary power of white people and to Thomas This has a kind of terrible resonance with America's racial power of the kind of the white paternalist choosing among those black people upon which they choose to cast their favors and that's what affirmative action is for and then the very last piece of this that this is all part of white elites self conception this is a kind of Cosmopolitan tolerant multicultural aesthetic and that's actually the word the Thomas often uses in his affirmative action. And so it has nothing to do with equality or social justice it's really a way of white elites preserving their discretionary authority over black life and Hanson a kind of Cosmopolitan multiculturalist that of themselves that makes them look better that's exactly what Thomas says let's pivot to God and rights most conservatives and I think people on the left when they think of gun rights think of either white colonial militias defending against the British Empire or white suburbanites gun owners protecting themselves and their homes from black criminals when Thomas thinks of gun rights one of the great freedoms that he thinks was won for black people in the wake of so the Civil War and Reconstruction was the right to arm themselves and this was also one of the freedoms that white supremacists where the very 1st to take away from black people Thomas sees black arms as a statement of black pride of black self-reliance and particularly black power for black men Elaine Brown in fact has a song about how one could find freedom in the arming of black men. To. Make the man. But what you already know. This is the one. Turned the. Gun. And what's amazing about Thomas is that he channels this sub tyranny and part of the black radical tradition which is again well known among African-Americans and he turns this into a foundational argument for the extension and the insistence that the right to bear . Arms is something that should be Previous of throughout the United States let's go to decisions that speak to the 2nd part of your book capitalism he said that money and Mabel rich people to purchase politicians as mouthpieces for their points of view and that this is perfectly legitimate and since black people will never be able to dominate power under the system of majority rule money was the only way and that led him to the decision he took on Citizens United in 1987 speech he gives he says what we need to do is to remove the stigma of shabbiness that surrounds wealth particularly amongst liberals to make the amassing of wealth almost as sacrosanct as speech itself liberate commercial pursuits and make them seem moral and if you read that speech in 1907 the read description of money is speech is his grandfather who amassed resources and power for himself and his family and the black community and Thomas says you know liberals would essentially dismiss my grandfather as a nothing but this is the kind of black man upon whom the salvation of the black race depends so the 3rd part of your disquisition one Thomas is titled The Constitution you know as others have that really we function under 2 constitutions the one before the Civil War and the one after yes and I call this the white Constitution and the black Constitution and Thomas says that the 2nd Constitution the one that was created by the Civil War and Reconstruction fundamentally transformed the state in Thomas believes at the heart of that black constitution is this figure of the black man who's most precious freedom. Is the right to bear arms there is also that 1st constitution that you mentioned a slave document Yes this is the Constitution that Clarence Thomas states forthrightly was created by slave holders and racists Now one would think the Thomas would want to have very little to do with that constitution but that's not the case and I think here we come to the heart of the most unsettling parts of his vision he said the salvation of the black race depends upon black men and that one of the by products of liberalism was what he calls the rights revolution these rights made life easier and more tractable and black men began to disintegrate they lost their authority they lost their will they lost their discipline and the results for the black community are catastrophic because the burdens they faced were so much greater Exactly so what Thomas believes is that we need to recreate. Those conditions of existence easy and constraint and adversity because under the harshest most exit gente conditions. Black men will rise to their potential greatness they will overcome precisely in the way that his grandfather overcame How does it play out in his decisions in order to recreate those conditions Thomas also tries to enhance the white Constitution the n.t. Belum Constitution and one of the features of the Constitution were harsh conditions of punishment and Thomas believes that one of the most terrible things the Warren court did the liberal Warren Court of the mid century was to mitigate the conditions of punishment to introduce the federal courts to oversee the practice of punishment in imprisonment that should be the province of local governments and states and Thomas would like to actually empower the state to punish even if and sometimes it seems particularly if that state is racist. That's prefers it's the most unsettling part I think of Thomas' vision but it comes from this idea that it was under Jim Crow when black men rose to the level that someone like his grandfather did and were able to create on claves of Black Autonomy and black separation and black community. He talked about black men what about black women there is very little room in this vision for black women black women at best are the recipients of the beneficence of black men but at worst black women he views as very dangerous figures either the dependence upon the welfare state which is how he dismissed his sister that she's so dependent upon welfare she gets mad at the mailman when he's late with her check as black feminists like Kimberly Crenshaw and no painter pointed out at the time of his hearings Thomas' view of his sister was not only extraordinarily ugly and cruel it actually did not account for the fact that she was one of the pillars of the black community in the black family that she maintained the black community in the black family through her efforts with minimum wage jobs but black women as I say they've played very little in this romantic fantasy that Thomas has sometimes when they appear they're also perceived to be traitors and that's where I think we come to the question of Anita Hill telling the world is the most difficult experience of my life. But it is very close to having to live through the experience that occasion this meeting Anita Hill a lawyer who worked under Clance Thomas when he was working for Reagan who charged him with a number of incidents of sexual harassment and it's how we mostly remember Clarence Thomas in this country he responded to the charges not simply by denying them but by really going on the offensive and the attack it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched destroyed caricature award. By a committee of the u.s. Senate rather than hung from a tree while Thomas was definitely lying about what he did and didn't do with Anita Hill I don't think he was lying when he made that charge in the following sense at the heart of Thomas' vision is black male authority and Thomas believes that white liberalism has been an essentially a conspiracy to take down black male authority and so when he saw the Democrats and liberal groups in alliance with this black woman he saw everything that he had been narrating in both public and private about the way that the deck is stacked against black men who are trying to advance the race and in that sense Thomas was telling his truth revealing in very plain terms what is at the heart of his entire constitutional vision which is the attempt to preserve the role of black men and being utterly blind to the even higher barriers faced by black women absolutely. Did you come away from this project with any more sympathy for Clarence Thomas. I think whenever you write about anybody you have to have some degree of imaginative sympathy but actually I think I came away more horrified in a way by Clarence Thomas All Countries like they're monsters but the true horror of a monster is when they reveal a kind of truth about a larger world and I think when Thomas begins with these very deep beliefs and racial pessimism the fact that black people cannot be accommodated by a white society and are better off if unboundedly Reprise and that's the monstrosity of it all is that he begins with beliefs that I think are widely shared and he follows them to conclusions that are not simply horrifying but which actually do reflect the world that we live in today where people are armed to the teeth where white racism seems almost worse than ever where wealth is accumulated in even more obscene ways and where black men are locked up in jails this in a way is current's Thomas's preparatory vision to some kind of path out of it and it's a very dark vision. Here's Senator Howell Heflin during Clarence Thomas' confirmation for the Supreme Court this only leave you a closet liberal in so many other hand the review. Part of the right wing extreme group. Can you give us any answer is what the real Clarence Thomas is like today. I don't know that I would call myself an and a naked man I'm just Clarence Thomas and I try to do my grandfather said stand up for what I believe and. There's been that measure of independence but. By and large the point is I'm just simply different from what people painted me to be and the person you have before you today is the person who was in those army fatigues combat boots who's grown older wiser but no less concerned about the same problems that young man in army fatigues in Combat Boots who was a black power Devore 10 afficionado has undergone some fundamental changes in terms of his beliefs about capitalism and so forth but at the heart that vision of racial possumus. Which Thomas has never been shy about has always been there we began talking about the invisible man one of Clarence Thomas' favorite books in this at least he was certainly right he never really was an enigma at all it's just that so many of us liberals. Were outraged by a black man not pursuing civil rights in a way that made sense for many white liberals Clarence Thomas doesn't make any sense at all once you look at African-American intellectual history in political history Thomas his views are actually quite legible as part of a tradition so the real enigma that I came to in all of this is not Thomas's beliefs but the fact that white people continuously seem incapable of seeing those beliefs and as I say in the book there is this character in American literature whose experience looks remarkably like that and that of course is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and it's not just the fact that the invisible man is not seen it's that white people think they do know who he is and they haven't got a clue. Corey thank you very much thank you Corey Robin is the author of the enigma of Clarence Thomas. That's it for this week's show on the movie is produced by a lot of Casanova Burgess Michael low injure les a fetter John Henry head and to check out of Betty we had more help from Charlotte Gartenberg and our show was edited by broke on the media is a production of w n y c studios I'm Brooke Ladd stone and I'm Bob Garfield and the media is supported by the Ford Foundation the John s. And James l. Knight Foundation and the listeners of w. N.y.c. Radio. From the pollution studios at California Lutheran University this is listener supported k.c.l. You. The curtain goes up on the impeachment inquiry will preview open hearings also on the ground at a trump rally and how to train kids to respond to a school shooter don't light a fire in the hallway to practice fire drills when we're teaching stranger danger we don't have someone grab the gun and scare them. To Weekend Edition Sunday from n.p.r. News until 10 am Sunday on k c l u a listener supported community service of California Lutheran University the Supreme Court will take up the docket case next week testing the trumpet ministrations policy on immigration and next time on the New York radio hour we'll talk to 2 of the lawyers arguing before the court this is a rule of law case involving hundreds of thousands of individuals who will be hurt by an abrupt and on Justified change in policy that's next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour Sunday between 10 and 11 am on k.c.a.l. You know. It's 9 o'clock. This is n.p.r. For the California coast 88.3 f.m. In h.d. 1000 Oaks 102.3 f.m. 1340 am k.c.a.l. You Santa Barbara and 89.7 k c l m n k c l m h d Santa Maria urban bunny 2 point one in San Luis Obispo where I live online Ikey c.l.u. Dot org. Welcome to City Arts and next year's a season of talks and on stage conversations with some of the most some of the branded writers artists and thinkers of our day recorded before an audience at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco. This week poet artist and musician Patti Smith Smith who 1st gained recognition in the 1970 s. For her merging of rock and poetry would become a punk icon and later the author of numerous books including just kids and I'm training her new memoir year of the monkey is a beautifully written account of loss and friendship over the course of a single year. On October 7th 2019 Patti Smith came to the Sydney called Sting theater to talk to dance down and to perform a few songs join us now for a conversation with Patti Smith thank. It was 3 Octobers ago we were here and I'm so happy to be sitting here with your gun 3 Octobers Yeah it's a nice way to say stuff well I haven't seen your for 5 Septembers it is a night. Because it was almost 3 Octobers to the day it was I think it was October 4th last time which I pay so much more attention to that now because when I talk to you or read your work you always know the date and you always know the important things that have the importance for you that happened on that date you know Tobar 4th is the feast day of Francis of Assissi. And we are and it's San Francisco Yeah yeah so congrats on your on your beautiful new book think you want to it's very before we talk about I want to ask you something about this town because so much of the book happens here in San Francisco in the Bay Area . At the start of the book you're playing a few dates at the Fillmore as I want to.
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