Sally Quinn: I could have been Anita Hill

[_MeDotOrg]

At a recent Women's Conference, Sally Quinn made a rather shocking revelation about former Texas Senator John Tower, (by many accounts an Alcoholic) who was George Bush the Elder's nominee for Secretary of Defense.

Veteran reporter Sally Quinn shook a packed theater at Lincoln Center Friday morning with one sentence.

“I could have been Anita Hill,” she said.

Quinn, a reporter for The Washington Post, was featured alongside screenwriter Susannah Grant and actress Kerry Washington in a panel discussion at Tina Brown’s annual Women in the World Summit about upcoming HBO film “Confirmation.” The film centers around the Anita Hill controversy, during the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings. Hill said Thomas had sexually harassed her years earlier when she was working for him as a law professor.

During the panel discussion, Quinn spoke powerfully about her own experience with sexual harassment at the hands of a powerful political figure. When she was a sophomore in college, Quinn’s father, who was a general in the U.S. Army and close friends with Barry Goldwater, introduced her to then-Texas Senator John Tower.

Quinn said Tower “showed an interest” in her studies, and asked to get lunch with him. The day of the lunch, Tower changed the plans to dinner. Although Quinn said going to dinner with Tower made her feel “a little creepy,” she obliged and met him that night.

Quinn the recounted what happened during that harrowing evening:

We went to this French restaurant and he started trying to hold my hand and he was drinking heavily, and I was really upset and really nervous. I didn’t know how to handle it.

We got out of the restaurant and I said, “I’ve got to go home early.” I tried to hail a cab, and he grabbed my arm and dragged me across the street to this French little bar. He literally grabbed me — I might have bruises on my arm from this. By this time, he was all over me and I was just crazed. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do.

I said, “I have to leave.” I went downstairs, I hailed a cab. He lived on Capitol Hill and I lived at Fort Meyer Virginia, and I said, “No need for you to come.” [He said] “No, no I want to come, I want to escort you home.” He jumped in the cab, threw me down on the back seat and proceeded to try to undress me. And literally was trying to have sex with me. And the poor cab driver was this little old black guy and all he could hear was me screaming “Senator! Senator!” and him sort of moaning in a Southern accent.
She said the cab driver sped back to her family’s house.

“[The cab] pulled up in front of my father’s quarters — and by this time he was really trying to rip my clothes off and he was on top of me and he was trying to undress himself — and I was hysterical,” Quinn said. “The cab driver pulled to a halt, got out and opened the door and said ‘We’re here ma’am.’ I had to get back dressed again, ran up to the door and let myself in and never told anybody. Never told anybody for several years.”

In 1989, George Bush Sr. nominated Tower to be the Secretary of Defense. Right before the hearings began Quinn said two FBI agents came to her home and asked her about the incident. Quinn refused to confirm that Tower had sexually harassed her.

Two years later, Anita Hill was to publicly testify at Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing and Quinn realized she could’ve been in the exact same position as Hill.

“All I could think about when I was watching that on television was that could’ve been me,” Quinn said. “Because if I had told [those FBI agents] they would’ve subpoenaed me.”

Quinn also explained why she so vehemently believes Hill was always telling the truth.

“She didn’t ask for this. [The FBI] called her and asked her, and she didn’t know to say, ‘I’m not going to talk to you about this.’ And then she believed them when they said it would be confidential,” Quinn said. “Why would she make up a story like this when she thought it would be confidential, and when she never even thought for a second that she would end up in front of a Senate hearing?”

[_ajax18]

I guess it's ok since Clarence Thomas is a Republican. But if he were a Democrat, posting this would mean you're racist.

[_MeDotOrg]

Ajax, I actually thought about trying to work Dennis Haster into the story, but his story was so radically different it just didn't fit.

Sex, power and politics can be a heady brew. Combine that with an alcohol problem like Tower, and you get for some pretty disgusting behavior. And (as far as I can remember) I don't think Anita Hill ever said that Clarence Thomas tried to drunkenly tear her clothes off on a cab ride home.

Lest you think I'm only picking on Republicans, I present the granddaddy of all embarrassing politicians: Democratic Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills.

Mills was involved in a traffic incident in Washington, D.C. at 2 a.m. on October 9, 1974. His car was stopped by U.S. Park Police late at night because the driver had not turned on the lights. Mills was intoxicated, and his face was injured from a scuffle with Annabelle Battistella, better known as Fanne Foxe, a stripper from Argentina. When police approached the car, Foxe leapt from the car and jumped into the nearby Tidal Basin in an attempt to escape. She was taken to St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital for treatment.

Despite the scandal, Mills was re-elected to Congress in November 1974 in a heavily Democratic year with nearly 60% of the vote, defeating Republican Judy Petty. On November 30, 1974, Mills, seemingly drunk, was accompanied by Fanne Foxe's husband onstage at The Pilgrim Theatre in Boston, a burlesque house where Foxe was performing. He held a press conference from Foxe's dressing room. Soon after this second public incident, Mills stepped down from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, acknowledged his alcoholism, joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and checked himself into the Palm Beach Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Believe me, Fannie Foxe was the punchline to a lot of late-night television jokes at the time (Like all politicians of the time, Wilbur Mills was a happily married man ;-)) While many men with a severe drinking problem late in life find the ability to change, Wilbur did turn his life around.

Mills did not run for re-election in 1976 and was succeeded by Democrat Jim Guy Tucker. Thereafter, Mills practiced law at the prestigious Shea and Gould Law Firm of New York's Washington Office, until he retired in 1991 and moved back to Arkansas to work on the establishment of the Wilbur D. Mills Treatment Center for Alcoholism, the University of Arkansas Medical School's Wilbur D. Mills Endowed Chairs on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, and the Masonic Grand Lodge's fundraising campaign. Mills died in Searcy, Arkansas in 1992. He is interred at Kensett Cemetery in Kensett, Arkansas.

[_Brackite]

I guess it's ok since Clarence Thomas is a Republican. But if he were a Democrat, posting this would mean you're racist.

I never really believed Anita Hill over Clarence Thomas .
Justice Thomas did end up getting confirmed by the Senate to the the Supreme Court with 11 Democratic Senators voting for him.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/r ... vote=00220

[_ajax18]

Lest you think I'm only picking on Republicans, I present the granddaddy of all embarrassing politicians: Democratic Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills.

I don't think you were picking on Republicans. This was more directed at others on this board from another thread. I think you should be able to call out immoral behavior without having to first check what race or even party the person is before you post it, just so people can't accuse you of being racist. It's ridiculous.