The Clarence Thomas corruption scandal grows.
Lavish vacations on multimillion-dollar yachts
Private jet travel
A home for his mother
Private school for his son
Entrance into the most rarefied venues in America
Membership in a prestigious club named after rags-to-riches author Horatio Alger
He also brought members of the Horatio Alger club into the Supreme Court chambers after hours for their rituals and ceremonies.
None of it is listed on his legally required financial disclosures until this week, and only after the great ProPublica began its work uncovering this corruption.
Thomas’s former law clerks have also sent tens of thousands of dollars each to his assistant via Venmo, marked as being for Christmas parties, gifts, or other fuzzier things.
It’s all unethical and disgusting. He was already unethical and disgusting in his treatment of Anita Hill and others thirty years ago, but now he’s moved beyond sexual harassment to something entirely different.
But here’s the thing that astounds me the most:
It’s also so pathetic. I can’t imagine allowing others to fund my lifestyle – vacations, travel, club memberships, a home for my mother – simply because they have more money than me.
I have friends decidedly wealthier than me. I’d never expect them to or want them to pay for my vacations with them. Or fund a country club membership. Or fly me on their private jets. Or pay for my children’s schooling.
When you want something, you work for it. You don’t ask for or accept handouts like a little boy.
It’s pathetic.
Clarence Thomas is clearly corrupt. He also concealed and lied about the gifts he’s received and only disclosed some of those gifts after the press exposed his corruption, but he’s also a sad little man who allows his friends, benefactors, and influence peddlers to treat him and his insurrectionist wife like pampered little children.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be treated like this. I can’t imagine maintaining my dignity and self-respect if I were treated like this.
Being endlessly curious about how a person could stoop so low and not despise himself, I wrote to Thomas today asking him what it’s like to be ferried around the world like a little boy, living above his means, dependent upon the table scraps and handouts of billionaires.
I’ll let you know if he chooses to respond.
