Law school journals mix intellectual rigor, scholarly clout and public anonymity. You don`t find them at supermarket checkouts.
If ever one begged for notice, it`s the January issue of the 2,000-circulation University of Pennsylvania Law Review. It includes ”An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague” and exemplifies the odd ways in which the press decides what`s ”news.”
In it, A. Leon Higginbotham, one of the best, most senior and more irascible black federal judges, attacks Thomas as an ungrateful careerist ignorant of the nation`s civil rights past.
Higginbotham, 63, was appointed to the federal bench in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson and is now chief judge emeritus on the appeals court in Philadelphia, meaning he hears a reduced load of cases.
Higginbotham`s extrajudicial efforts include this often-compelling account of civil rights achievements, which reveals his obvious, lingering bitterness in the wake of the Thomas confirmation.
Several federal judges, to whom I described a piece they had not read, called it unprecedented. Judges don`t rebuke colleagues by name publicly-certainly not superiors, as Thomas technically is to all judges except his eight colleagues on the Supreme Court.
Higginbotham opens by noting Thomas` resolute self-identification as a black conservative. Such a cadre of Americans is said to be growing and, coincidentally, was the subject of a one-hour PBS report last week hosted by Tribune columnist Clarence Page.
”During the last 10 years, you (Thomas) have often described yourself as a black conservative. I must confess that, other than their own self-advancement, I am at a loss to understand what is it that the so-called black conservatives are so anxious to conserve,” writes Higginbotham, who once ditched a University of Chicago appearance on learning the law school didn`t have a black faculty member.
In a 24-page effort with 85 footnotes, he delineates how conservatives,
”either by tacit approbation or by active complicity, tried to derail the struggle for equal rights in this country.” He examines voting rights, education, employment, housing and privacy, recalling how some conservatives argued that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional, including George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond.
Were it not for civil rights leaders whom Thomas has bad-mouthed, ”you might still be in Pin Point, Georgia, working as a laborer as some of your relatives did for decades.”
Higginbotham concludes close to home. He offers Thomas a primer on how civil rights advocates undid racist housing and privacy laws in Virginia that would have barred Thomas from living where he does now or marrying his white wife.
He asserts that if the Supreme Court had not struck down Virginia`s Racial Integrity Act in 1966, ”and if, after your marriage, you and your
(second) wife had . . . defied the Virginia statute by continuing to live in your present residence, you could have been in the penitentiary today rather than serving as an Associate Justice of the United State Supreme Court.”
By Friday, the law review had received nearly 600 requests, mostly from lawyers, for an article whose rise from the subterranean environ of law reviews to mainstream attention is interesting.
The ”letter” was sent to Thomas on Nov. 29, 1991. Its virtual duplication in the law review came Jan. 23. That day, by previous arrangement, excerpts ran on the op-ed page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. On Jan. 24, it got five paragraphs in USA Today and four in The Washington Post, and one paragraph in a Newsweek that hit newsstands Jan. 27.
Supreme Court reporters for several major papers, apparently disinclined to rankle any justice, knew about it but took a pass on writing anything. On Friday, three weeks after the law review came out, the Los Angeles Times ran a Page 1 story (written by a Los Angeles-based staffer) and The New York Times highlighted the letter in a law column. I heard about it via a Los Angeles friend tipped by a judge there.
Both Thomas and Higginbotham declined to discuss the piece when called Thursday. It can be had for $4, with checks payable to the law review, 2400 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104-6204.
The ravenous media pack, after a ferociously inelegant performance in devouring Bill Clinton, is preparing for its next likely target: Paul Tsongas. Health reporters for several major media outlets, who assume Tsongas will be the week`s designated ”frontrunner” after a New Hampshire victory, have begun to poke into Tsongas` assertion that his cancer is in remission, according to a friend of mine who has been interrogated on the subject.
Wonderful. Prepare for future candidates being mandated to attach X-rays to position papers.
Then look for the League of Women Voters and C-Span to sponsor a Presidential Biopsy, with C. Everett Koop as a scalpel-wielding moderator.
Though obscured by the Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson hoopla, it was a good week for network news:
– ABC blew to bits any final shreds of belief that a photo, believed to be of Donald Carr, a Vietnam-era Army captain from East Chicago supposedly held captive in Laos, was legitimate. Going to Bangkok, it proved that POW-hunter Jack Bailey is a fraud, and the photo is of a German bird smuggler.
– NBC hit the ski slopes of Switzerland, found and finagled the first interview with Marc Rich, a billionaire commodities trader who is America`s most-sought-after white-collar fugitive.
Rich, whose dealings include selling $200 million in oil to Iran during the hostage crisis, was indicted in 1983 on charges of tax fraud and racketeering. After telling reporter Brian Ross, ”You win the jackpot,” he wasn`t especially contrite.
Chicago can be a bit provincial.
Wednesday`s Tribune Style section offered a story and seven photos of the wedding of Elaine Tack-a capable but relatively unknown WBBM-Ch. 2 reporter who was at the station just over a year before quitting-to an out-of-town hotel-casino executive.
Now, what do we do when Linda MacLennan, a WBBM anchor, soon weds a lawyer who actually works and lives here?
I say clear out the Sunday magazine.
A press release from Liaison Communications, ”New York and Palm Beach,” announces:
”Kevin MCcarthy (sic), star reporter at the prestigious news department of KCRA in Sacramento, Calif., has been named reporter at WMAQ, the Chicago station owned and operated by NBC. It is expected that he will begin work
(sic) early March.”
The public-relations firm represents not McCarthy, but his New York agent, Conrad Shadlen, whom, the release informs, ”also represents BRIAN ALBRECHT, the meteorologist at KCRA.”
Another release informs that Playboy Enterprises Inc. has hired prominent New York publicist Howard Rubenstein to ”enhance Playboy`s promotional machine by securing prestigious social and business venues to amplify the visibility” of Playboy boss Christie Hefner.
Rubenstein`s current or past clients include arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Donald Trump, Mick Jagger, Leona Helmsley, the National Basketball Association (advice on Magic Johnson and AIDS), Robert Maxwell and Mike Tyson, the famous beauty pageant judge.
Secure ”prestigious social and business venues” for someone who does not appear to suffer the indignity of a low profile?
If Hefner had only asked me, I`d charge half Rubenstein`s rate and use journalistic clout to get her box seats to the Chicago Symphony (social venue) or, maybe, a kindly profile on CNN`s ”Pinnacle,” a weekly homage to free enterprise (business venue).
Then, again, she could hire Conrad Shadlen, New York-based agent for BRIAN ALBRECHT.
Remember the uproar, mostly via hand-wringing and cries of foul from the media Establishment, when NBC News followed the lead of the supermarket tabloid Globe and used the name of Patricia Bowman, alleged victim in the William Kennedy Smith case, long prior to the trial?
NBC did it again during coverage of the Mike Tyson case, using the accuser`s name. There wasn`t a peep.
