Yes.
There’s pretty much a knife’s edge to walk down here I think, though I am willing to confess I am far from an expert on sexual harrassment law.
The exact statement itself - “no other woman said she was sexually harassed by Thomas” is probably true (none that we know of, anyway).
However, there is a question of relevance of it, and in fact it might be a very misleading statement. Dio’s original comment, that it all comes down to subjective feelings, isn’t 100% accurate. Some behavior is, I believe, sexual harrassment whether the victim feels she is being harrassed.
But more importantly, sexual harrassment doesn’t just involve the maker of remarks and the person to whom the remarks were made. If the harrassment is in the form of hostile work environment, then it affects the entire office. Therefore, even if this one person did not feel the environment was hostile, the fact that the actions are alleged to have taken place is extremely important for a couple of reasons (at least):
a) As Dio said, it adds credibility to Hill’s claims; and
b) More importantly, it makes it extremely likely that there was sexual harrassment going on in the office. As the woman stated, it was the kind of behavior other women would likely find to be harrassment (or something along those lines). Therefore that Thomas did it to her, even if he did not do it to other women in the office, creates a strong possibility that those other women were sexually harrassed by the hostile workplace environment.
Are you suggesting that the human race abandon the technique of argument by analogy, or that just the participants in this thread do so?
More that you are **tone-deaf **in your selection of analogies.
I offered a generic analogy several times over the course of this thread which work to illustrate the basic point I was making.
I agree with those statements. Wright’s testimony strengthened Hill’s claims.
Then it falls to you to distinguish my selection of analogies; to explain why they are not in fact analogous.
Asked and answered. I and other Dopers have done this for each of your analogies upthread. What about it? What about my generic analogy doesn’t illustrate the point and form a sound basis of discussion? Why cross the international date line and go for Smart, Galileo, whatever? Explaining that falls to you, counselor.
Some numbers:
Voting Patterns in SCOTUS 1956-2004
Scalia and Thomas voted together 67% of the time. High, but not top ten of all time.
Breyer and Ginsburg voted together 68% of the time, which unless my math is off, is slightly higher.
Warren and Marshall voted together 88% of the time.
Now, generally speaking, I like the side that Breyer and Ginsburg, and Warren and Marshall ended up on.
But, if you are going to imply that Clarence Thomas in incapable of making a decision without Scalia to guide him, what does that say about either Breyer or Ginsburg, and either Warren or Marshall?
But do you also agree that Wright was testifying to actual sexual harrassment, even if she didn’t feel personally harrassed? That’s the point I am trying to draw out.
…how about: it says nothing relevant to the topic in the OP?
How about if someone makes an stupid ass remark it is worthy of addressing? I’m not planning on letting the commonly accepted falsehood sit out there unaddressed just to make you feel better.
You’re welcome to start another thread about it.
Here’s where we differ. In my understanding of the concept, the objective correctness of your position is explicitly irrelevant. The “deafness” is not to the *content *of your utterance, but to its *tone *-- that is, how it will sound to your audience, and therefore how your audience will perceive you and your motives because of it.
Again, even if Hill was 100% lying and Ms. Thomas was 100% justified in asking for an apology, the way she asked was tone deaf. The way she asked makes her seem deluded, or stupid, or driven by an agenda other than getting the apology.
The Elizabeth Smart hypothetical is irrelevant not because of the relative guilt or innocence of the people involved but because of how the audience would perceive the apology request. (And “the audience” does indirectly include the public in both cases, even if the caller magically implanted the message directly in the recipient’s brain, because the recipient’s understanding of popular opinion is relevant.)
And yet you don’t address that remark to gonzomax, who started talking about Thomas voting with Scalia all the time.
+1
ETA: villa, sorry; I am new at this and I was offline for sleep. Sure, other posters have pulled the discussion off topic. That doesn’t the nature of your post as a hijack.
Ya think? But you won’t. Color me surprised.
I suspect you are the only one able to reach that conclusion.
Uh-huh. So first we didn’t know about any previous demand/request for an apology. Then we couldn’t show that Ms Hill knew about the previous demand/request. And now we cannot know how Ms Thomas came to know of Ms Hill’s refusal to accede to the demand/request. Aren’t those goal posts getting pretty heavy? I know the field is certainly all plowed up from you dragging them hither and yon.
No surprise about your refusal to acknowledge what is obvious to pretty much everyone else. As for what you were thinking, it seems capable of reorganizing itself into whatever position remains defensible after the previous position has been rendered untenable.
And I am contending that “the audience” views the apology request as more sympathetic (and less “tone deaf”) when made by the Smarts because “the audience” assumes the Smarts were actually wronged and the Thomases were not.
That is precisely why I dragged them into this.
She should issue a right winger appolgy:
“I apologize to Ms. Thomas for my truthful testimony that allowed the whole world to know that her husband is a four finger misogynistic asshole. I apologize to all Americans for the fact that my best efforts to derail his nomination failed to convince enough senators that he would be exactly the worthless sort of Scalia rubber stamping jurist time has shown him to be.”
That is an extremely fair comment. The fault is mine for failing to clarify immediately what I thought, but I absolutely acknowledge that it looks like I’m moving the goalposts.
Had I planted the goalposts firmly at the beginning by specifying I was picturing a real-time interaction, where each could respond immediately to the other, we would not be having this discussion. Since I didn’t, the fault is mine.
[Bolding in the above quote mine]
It was ***decided in a court of law ***that she ***was ***wronged. That can have an effect on public opinion 
and is different enough from the situation here to render that analogy irrelevant.
Next.