Talk:Clarence Thomas

Thurgood Marshall image and legend
It took me a while to get ahold of second-hand copies in good condition of the two sources you cited in the legend to Thurgood Marshall’s picture you added here with the legend, "Marshall would later give advice to Thomas after the confirmation". 20 minutes later you changed the legend to say, "Marshall would later be an advisor to Thomas after his confirmation." I don’t see anything in the sources that would justify "giving advice", much less "be an advisor", so I’m wondering why you added the image and the legend. Here are the text passages mentioning Marshall on the pages you cited.
 * Foskett, 257-258: In [Marshall’s] own departing news conference, he told the world he saw no difference between a white or a black snake, an apparent reference to Thomas as his likely successor. What galled Marshall more than anything was the notion that he could be replaced by anyone, much less a conservative black man like Thomas. "They think he’s as good as I am, " Marshall grumbled about Thomas, according to a former clerk quoted in his biography.
 * Marshall believed America and its great Constitution never were and never could be color-blind. He devoted his life to writing color into the law, using America’s historic discrimination of black Americans to make race a factor in public-school education, college admissions, and the workplace. By contrast, Thomas believed America could only become color-blind by expunging color from the law. Marshall spent a lifetime reminding America of its racially stained past: Thomas planned to spend a lifetime eliminatibng race from American law. Marshall’s era was over, and Thomas’s was about to begin.
 * One pearl of wisdom from Marshall stuck with Thomas. As a black man, Marshall said, Thomas would be held to a different standard. The advice resonated instantly with Thomas because his grandfather also had preached that a black man in America had to work twice as hard to get half as far. All the questions about his qualifications had reinforced that lesson.
 * Thomas learned later that he would be held to a different standard by black Americans as well as white. And that standard was the great Marshall himself.

Marshall said in a conversation after the swearing-in ceremony that as a black man Thomas would be held to a different standard and that he would "have to do what you have to do in your time". It's a stretch calling that "giving advice", much less calling Marshall Thomas's advisor. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:52, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Greenburg, pg 112: But other liberals were welcoming, including Marshall, the justice Thomas had replaced. Thomas is a gregarious man, and his conversation with Marshall, a renowned storyteller, stretched nearly three hours and ended with a piece of advice from the liberal legend. "I had to do what I had to do in my time," Marshall told Thomas. "You have to do what you have to do in your time."


 * @Space4Time3Continuum2x Marshall gave advice to Thomas per both the Foskett and Greenburg source; it's not a stretch to call advice advice. Greenburg calls it as such in the third paragraph you have above, not to mention the rest of Marshall's "pearl[s] of wisdom". Greenburg says so also explicitly that at their conversation's end, Marshall gave Thomas a "piece of advice".
 * I changed the caption actually because I thought using "the confirmation" separated Thomas from being the subject, I later used the word "advisor" as a way to stretch out the caption so the text wouldn't wrap underneath, along with making the whole caption more wordier in general. Either caption is acceptable to me, and I would re-add the first one especially now that there is the new vector. I added the image of Marshall in the first place as a way to illustrate the section, which is a standard writing thing that's been done extensively before; I actually had a whole conversation about it on the photo regarding Dinand Library that is still transposed here. It is not unusual or out of place at all. GuardianH (talk) 19:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

What is this standard writing thing that's been done extensively before you keep referring to? It looks as though you cherry-picked a couple of sources because of an agenda (adding an undue image to establish a connection between civil rights veteran Marshall and Thomas?). I haven't come across any other sources mentioning the encounter after Thomas's swearing-in ceremony or any reports of them ever having met before that time. The way the meeting is described it appears to have been a common courtesy conversation with small talk, trivial and not noteworthy for a bio in an encyclopedia. The caption is an undue generalization of one of the two sources saying that "the conversation ... ended with a piece of advice". Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:07, 4 October 2023 (UTC)


 * You are taking me to be a far wittier villain than what were my actually anti-climatic intentions — adding an innocuous image of one's predecessor to illustrate a wordy section, which is a common practice. Take a look at the Quay FA; notice how there is an image of Quay's predecessors (i.e. Senator Don Cameron, whom Quay eclipsed in the Pennsylvania Republican Party), I just did the same thing, with a fun fact tapered at the end. Take also a look at the Oppenheimer article, which has an image of the Trinity Test in the respective section; I also did the same thing, but with an illustration of Thomas' college.
 * The relationship between a predecessor and a successor, in addition with the two having a three hour conversation, is a connection, by the way. If it wasn't already obvious with Foskett dedicating his second paragraph with a comparison of the two. GuardianH (talk) 20:27, 4 October 2023 (UTC)


 * A witty villain? You misunderstood me, and you misunderstood/misread Quay’s page. Quay collaborated with Simon and Don Cameron for many years, and their images are in the respective long sections detailing Quay’s collaboration with each of them. Don succeeded Simon in the U.S. Senate and was in office from 1877–1897; Quay held Pennsylvania’s other Senate seat from 1887–1904. He eventually became more powerful in the Pennsylvania Republican Party than Don but I don’t think "political machine boss" is an official title one succeeds to. I still believe that the image is undue but, not wanting to get into an edit war since there are no other opinions on whether to include or not, I replaced the caption with Marshall's opinion of Thomas. Here's the full excerpt from Juan Williams's biography:


 * Bill Coleman watched some of the hearings with Marshall. "If you want to suffer through the most miserable time, sit in Justice Marshall's chambers with the television on during the time of the Thomas hearings," he said. "I think that if he'd ever felt that the guy to replace him was going to be Thomas, he would have stayed on.... [ellipsis points per the quotation in the book] He just thought it was terrible that a person with such small ability and with that lack of commitment, would be on the court at all, much less to take the seat that he had vacated."


 * Despite the hearings, Thomas was confirmed in a close vote, 52-48. When Thomas joined the court he did the usual round of courtesy calls for brief conversations with the other justices. But his introduction to Marshall was most memorable. The meeting with Marshall lasted more than two hours, with Marshall doing all the talking, telling stories about his days as a civil rights lawyer as well as his time on the court. Marshall also offered a tip to the newcomer: treat the other justices like a family, where ideological differences do not amount to personal differences.


 * "Introduction to Marshall ... with Marshall doing all the talking" — their first and, AFAIK, only meeting, and not a conversation. Space4Time3Continuum2x  (talk) 11:44, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppenheimer/Trinity test. Similar story — the image of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon ever in a long section about the detonation of the device designed by Oppenheimer is relevant. Image of the library at a school Thomas attended? Not so much. Space4Time3Continuum2x  (talk) 12:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Not at all. An image illustrating the place where Thomas gained his formative education as a student for multiple years is, by that same standard, notable. GuardianH (talk) 15:08, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @Space4Time3Continuum2x Also, if the FA examples weren't convincing enough for you, check out David Kelly (weapons expert), which irrefutably has an image in the education section that is pretty much the same as the image I added. GuardianH (talk) 15:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * , that's not an image of the library at Linacre College, it's an image of the college itself, i.e, it's main entrance, according to the file's name. The section mentions that he was a student at the college. Thomas's education section says that he attended Holy Cross from his sophomore to his senior year and obtained a BA. It doesn't mention him studying at the library, and why would it? It's a given when you're a student at the college. Fenwick Hall, "the college's flagship building", according to the caption of the image at College of the Holy Cross, would be more appropriate. Space4Time3Continuum2x  (talk) 13:33, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @Space4Time3Continuum2x Notice now that you are changing your argument — you first favored removing the image, now you say that an image of the college's flagship building is appropriate.
 * You are doing an incredible amount of hair-splitting in your above message. Thomas was a student at the college, he studied in the library, and not just per your own comment (It's a given when you're a student at the college); the article does mention him studying at the college in the caption. The bottom line is that the college's library is an appropriate representation of the college, and so it is a due illustration. GuardianH (talk) 19:45, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * , I’m Amy, you’re Tom, and why do you keep dragging the library and the purported precedents to justify adding the library image into this discussion of an image of Thurgood Marshall and mention of Marshall in the nomination section? When I added an actual source connecting Marshall to the nomination via the televised hearings, you reverted it, saying that "section details his nomination to the supreme court, not what Marshall thought of it". By your reasoning, the picture of Thomas's predecessor is DUE in a section detailing Thomas's nomination, and so is a caption with details about Marshall's retirement and "giv[ing] advice to Thomas after his confirmation" (presumably also based on a primary source quoted somewhere) but the quote of Marshall voicing an opinion on Thomas's qualification for the job to a reliable witness while Marshall is watching the hearings is UNDUE? (BTW, that was an appropriate use of a primary source, a quote cited in a reliable secondary source with proper attribution.) Space4Time3Continuum2x  (talk) 12:43, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * ...why do you keep dragging the library and the purported precedents to justify adding the library image into this discussion of an image of Thurgood Marshall and mention of Marshall in the nomination section — Actually, you have it backwards – you were the one who brought it back. Check your message on 5 October 15:14. "Similar story — the image of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon ever in a long section about the detonation of the device designed by Oppenheimer is relevant. Image of the library at a school Thomas attended? Not so much." I was responding to that.
 * Once again, I never doubted the reliability of the said source. The problem is that it is pretty obviously WP:UNDUE; the entire passage doesn't have anything dedicated to Marshall's opinion, or the opinion of any legal figure for that matter. It's especially out of place to lazily taper this quote about Marshall criticizing Thomas at the end of the first section, where it is obviously also out of place on the section chronology. If we had a part for primary stuff dedicated to the opinions of [X] figure, it would be a soapbox for Thomas hagiographies by supporters and a soapbox of polemics by his critics. GuardianH (talk) 23:27, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

you were the one who brought it back — I was replying to your message at 16.27 20.27, 4 Oct 2023 (UTC) (that's 16:27 EDT). I replied at 11:44, 5 October 2023 (UTC) (9:44 EDT) and 12:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC) (8:49 EDT). 5 October 15:14: that's your edit.

obviously undue: you made it relevant and due by adding the picture of Thomas's predecessor, with a caption that you have to drag in by the hair and pound into submission to claim it's based on the sources. None of the other current SC justices sport a picture of their respective predecessor on their WP page, although Ketanji_Brown_Jackson's page has a picture of her and her predecessor smiling into the camera, no dragging or pounding required there. Space4Time3Continuum2x (cowabunga)  12:59, 10 October 2023 (UTC) Fixed typo (UTC timestamp). Space4Time3Continuum2x (cowabunga)  19:32, 28 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I didn't have to do any dragging or pounding for the caption — or any wailing for that matter. An image doesn't necessitate the views of a subject in the same manner that an image of a building doesn't necessitate a clause about its architecture. See WP:OTHER, the only articles worth comparison are FAs, since they are used as examples for other articles. It doesn't have to be a strictly legal article, there are a number of FAs that have an image of a subject's predecessor in the same manner as this one. Like I said, it is probably one of the oldest editing gimmicks out there in terms of imagery, much in the same way as the library image. GuardianH (talk) 18:08, 10 October 2023 (UTC)::
 * Unarchived, discussion to be continued — considering RfC. Space4Time3Continuum2x  (cowabunga)  15:04, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The only FA you mentioned is that of Matthew Quay which has an image not of his predecessor in office but images of Simon Coleman Simon Cameron and his son J. Donald Cameron. Quay, for almost two decades, worked for and worked with closely with Simon Coleman Cameron and worked closely with J. Donald Cameron. He eventually "eclipse[d] Don Cameron as Pennsylvania's Republican political boss", hardly an official title. Marshall did not have any kind of working or other relationship with Thomas. Thomas paid all SC justices the customary courtesy visit after he had been administered the judicial oath. Thomas himself wrote about the encounter in "My grandfather's son": What was supposed to have been a brief courtesy call on Justice Marshall ballooned into a two-and-a-half-hour visit, and I loved every minute of it. He regaled me with tales of his long, remarkable careeras a civil rights lawyer. "I would have been shoulder-to-shoulder with you back then—if I'd have the courage," I said. "I did in my time what I had to do," Justice Marshall replied. "You have to do in your time what you have to do." Those words have stayed with me, too. This is trivial, while the caption (Marshall would later give advice to Thomas after the confirmation.) sounds as though Marshall was a mentor to Thomas. And neither Foskett nor Greenburg were in the room with Marshall, so their writing is based on Thomas's account. It's as much WP:PRIMARYNEWS as Marshall's opinion of Thomas, as recounted by his friend William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. to Marshall biographer Williams. Space4Time3Continuum2x  (cowabunga)  15:43, 12 November 2023 (UTC) Fixed Wikilink error (replaces incorrect name Simon Coleman with correct name Simon Cameron).  Space4Time3Continuum2x  (cowabunga)  19:17, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * And neither Foskett nor Greenburg were in the room with Marshall, so their writing is based on Thomas's account. Is there any actual evidence for this? Your synths of material regarding Greenburg and Foskett in making such a conclusion is WP:NOR until actually verifiable by either of them. Like I said previously, we can't make such assumptions as we weren't in the room when they were writing their books. Without any explicit evidence, this is clearly original research on your part and a wild misconclusion. GuardianH (talk) 19:21, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

In popular culture - John Oliver addition
In the popular culture section of this entry there should be a new bullet point along the lines of:

- On February 18, 2024 Clarence Thomas was offered 1 million USD a year from actor John Oliver to sign a contract and step down from the supreme court.

Sources: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-VJrdHMug Jzkhockey (talk) 20:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The YouTube video won't work (primary source and all that), but there's plenty of secondary sourcing available, such as:
 * —Locke Cole • t • c 00:54, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @GuardianH removed a link to the main article discussing the piece John Oliver did (it was a section link) claiming WP:EGG was somehow applicable. I'm not seeing the issue? —Locke Cole • t • c 04:06, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, the link you provided went to the John Oliver Show under Supreme Court (referencing the Supreme Court as a whole), so I assumed that there was other material on the Supreme Court for Oliver under the section, but I just checked and there's just the Thomas event. It might be better renamed "Clarence Thomas wager" or something like that. GuardianH (talk) 04:45, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
 * So is it safe to relink to the section? —Locke Cole • t • c 19:58, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep GuardianH (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep GuardianH (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 April 2024
Change "In Hudson v. McMillian, a prisoner had been beaten, sustaining a cracked lip, broken dental plate, loosened teeth, cuts, and bruises." to "In Hudson v. McMillian, a prisoner had been beaten by respondent prison guards, sustaining a cracked lip, broken dental plate, loosened teeth, cuts, and bruises," to clarify the nature of the beating and mirror the language in Hudson v. McMillian. FinallyTheresSun (talk) 21:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

✅ PianoDan (talk) 18:18, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Add NYT article re Recusal of Judges - or Not?
Added text/ref (5/29/2024) to main article - then reverted - seemed relevant - Worth considering adding after all - or Not? - Comments Welcome from other editors - in any case - Stay Safe amd Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 10:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC) Drbogdan (talk) 10:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Recent edit by GuardianH
This edit:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clarence_Thomas&diff=prev&oldid=1229153723

--> and the removal of content, it may be for simplicity? But GuardianH says that the information is already included in previous paragraph, however, it is not!

Could some of the removed info can be reintroduced? Thank you everyone! 72.14.126.252 (talk) 01:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

more undisclosed gifts and vacations paid for by donors!
Just saw this article:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/clarence-thomas-accepted-yacht-trip-to-russia-chopper-flight-to-putins-hometown-democrats


 * Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been accused of not disclosing a yacht trip to Russia and a private helicopter flight to a palace in President Vladimir Putin’s hometown, among a slew of other gifts and loans from businessman Harlan Crow.


 * Buried on page 14 of a letter that two Democratic senators sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday, in which they urged Garland to appoint a special counsel to probe Thomas, was an astonishing list of dozens of “likely undisclosed gifts and income” from Crow, Crow’s affiliated companies, and “other donors.”


 * In the letter, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) said Thomas, one of the court’s staunchly conservative justices, even may have committed tax fraud and violated other federal laws by “secretly” accepting the gifts and income potentially worth millions.

Probably some of this should be included on the Wikipedia article, right? Or maybe there should even be a new article about all of the sketchy relationships and financial dealings that Thomas has with wealthy elites and billionaires etc? 72.14.126.22 (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)


 * easier to make a list of billionaires he HASN'T take gifts from. 2A02:2454:9976:7200:D5C5:56D0:E103:627A (talk) 16:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)