Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Created Equal: an unduly sympathetic portrait of Clarence Thomas
My sworn duty is to review the film, not the man
Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words as seen from from this angle.
Spectacles, or no spectacles? That is the question that opens Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. (Thomas settled upon two eyes instead of four.) The next voice you hear is that of writer and director Michael Pack, pummelling his subject with another hard-hitting brain-picker, “How did you decide you wanted to become a lawyer?” One of the most controversial political subjects of his generation is thus afforded an unduly sympathetic portrait — but how else would Pack have been able to get Thomas to sit still long enough for the interview portion of our program?
Given the events of the past three years, it’s even money that our country isn’t any less racist or sexist today than when Thomas was elected to the Supreme Court in 1991. (Listen to the way Sen. Howell Heflin of Alabama puts a scooch too much effort into punching the second syllable in “enigma.”) Even when speaking extemporaneously, much of Thomas’ narration sounds like he’s reading from his autobiography. But he learned about vocal clarity the hard way. He entered seminary as a high school sophomore, where it was suggested by the Dean of studies that if he wanted to succeed in a white man’s world, he’d have to do something about the way he spoke. Thomas put time and effort into adopting perfect enunciation. That said, when discussing whether the libertarian philosophy of the author of The Fountainhead had an influence on Thomas’ life, both director and subject refer to her as “Ann Rand.”
Thomas was bothered by the Catholic Church’s unwillingness to speak up against racism in America. Hearing a seminarian express relief over the assassination of Martin Luther King was the tipping point. Turning his back on so-called Men of God, Thomas traded in Catholicism for combating racism. The photo caption in his yearbook read, “Blew that test, only a 98.” Fully expecting to be treated as an inferior, Thomas reasoned that if he was going to “force someone to have to discriminate against me,” he needed those extra two points. That way, his detractors would be left with nothing but race to call him out on.
The only job offer dangled upon graduating Yale was from the Attorney General of Missouri, John Claggett Danforth. Cook him sweet or cook him sour, in the eyes of the then-lefty Thomas, a Republican was a Republican, and the very thought of working for a member of the GOP was hateful. Moving that minor detail to the side, he had little choice but to assume the position as an Associate AG. But by the time he was 32, a newspaper described Thomas of being opposed to everything from minimum wage law to affirmative action, and mused, “How a black man can say no to these policies is a mystery to most black people.” For many, he was Reagan’s token negro, while others accused Thomas of winning the Supreme Court nomination based solely on the color of his skin. In Thomas’ own eyes, the biggest roadblock on his path to success was “the modern-day liberal.”
America’s prurient nature was given a zetz when Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings transmogrified into a circus sideshow, thanks to sexual harassment allegations leveled against him by a subordinate, attorney Anita Hill. Her compelling public testimony was a ratings grabber that introduced viewers to the once-deemed graphic and eternally rambling query, “Who put pubic hair on my Coke?” In the end, Thomas remained firm in his belief that a black woman had lied before the Supreme Court for no other reason than to deny a black conservative from obtaining a seat. His appointment was later confirmed by a margin of 52–48.
Situated at opposite ends of the political spectrum as we may be — I believe Anita then and now — my sworn duty is to review the film, not the man. The supervening two hours revealed not so much a documentary as a call-and-response oral history; talking head closeups of Thomas seated in a studio, directly addressing the camera are divvied up between diagrammatic file footage and the occasional appearance by Virginia Thomas, wife of the Associate Justice and the film’s only other interview subject. There’s much to learn about the subject here, and little about the medium. This is one PBS production that never should have left the small screen.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Created Equal: an unduly sympathetic portrait of Clarence Thomas
My sworn duty is to review the film, not the man
Created Equal: an unduly sympathetic portrait of Clarence Thomas
My sworn duty is to review the film, not the man
Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words as seen from from this angle.
Spectacles, or no spectacles? That is the question that opens Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. (Thomas settled upon two eyes instead of four.) The next voice you hear is that of writer and director Michael Pack, pummelling his subject with another hard-hitting brain-picker, “How did you decide you wanted to become a lawyer?” One of the most controversial political subjects of his generation is thus afforded an unduly sympathetic portrait — but how else would Pack have been able to get Thomas to sit still long enough for the interview portion of our program?
Given the events of the past three years, it’s even money that our country isn’t any less racist or sexist today than when Thomas was elected to the Supreme Court in 1991. (Listen to the way Sen. Howell Heflin of Alabama puts a scooch too much effort into punching the second syllable in “enigma.”) Even when speaking extemporaneously, much of Thomas’ narration sounds like he’s reading from his autobiography. But he learned about vocal clarity the hard way. He entered seminary as a high school sophomore, where it was suggested by the Dean of studies that if he wanted to succeed in a white man’s world, he’d have to do something about the way he spoke. Thomas put time and effort into adopting perfect enunciation. That said, when discussing whether the libertarian philosophy of the author of The Fountainhead had an influence on Thomas’ life, both director and subject refer to her as “Ann Rand.”
Thomas was bothered by the Catholic Church’s unwillingness to speak up against racism in America. Hearing a seminarian express relief over the assassination of Martin Luther King was the tipping point. Turning his back on so-called Men of God, Thomas traded in Catholicism for combating racism. The photo caption in his yearbook read, “Blew that test, only a 98.” Fully expecting to be treated as an inferior, Thomas reasoned that if he was going to “force someone to have to discriminate against me,” he needed those extra two points. That way, his detractors would be left with nothing but race to call him out on.
The only job offer dangled upon graduating Yale was from the Attorney General of Missouri, John Claggett Danforth. Cook him sweet or cook him sour, in the eyes of the then-lefty Thomas, a Republican was a Republican, and the very thought of working for a member of the GOP was hateful. Moving that minor detail to the side, he had little choice but to assume the position as an Associate AG. But by the time he was 32, a newspaper described Thomas of being opposed to everything from minimum wage law to affirmative action, and mused, “How a black man can say no to these policies is a mystery to most black people.” For many, he was Reagan’s token negro, while others accused Thomas of winning the Supreme Court nomination based solely on the color of his skin. In Thomas’ own eyes, the biggest roadblock on his path to success was “the modern-day liberal.”
America’s prurient nature was given a zetz when Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings transmogrified into a circus sideshow, thanks to sexual harassment allegations leveled against him by a subordinate, attorney Anita Hill. Her compelling public testimony was a ratings grabber that introduced viewers to the once-deemed graphic and eternally rambling query, “Who put pubic hair on my Coke?” In the end, Thomas remained firm in his belief that a black woman had lied before the Supreme Court for no other reason than to deny a black conservative from obtaining a seat. His appointment was later confirmed by a margin of 52–48.
Situated at opposite ends of the political spectrum as we may be — I believe Anita then and now — my sworn duty is to review the film, not the man. The supervening two hours revealed not so much a documentary as a call-and-response oral history; talking head closeups of Thomas seated in a studio, directly addressing the camera are divvied up between diagrammatic file footage and the occasional appearance by Virginia Thomas, wife of the Associate Justice and the film’s only other interview subject. There’s much to learn about the subject here, and little about the medium. This is one PBS production that never should have left the small screen.
Commentsshabi11
This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.
Feb. 5, 2020