Deadline’s Doc Talk Podcast: Director Michael Kirk On The Long Strange Trip Of Clarence Thomas From Malcolm X Fan To Supreme Court Conservative
deadline.comIt’s unlikely the U.S. Supreme Court would have adopted a code of ethics, as it did this week, without a series of revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas and his appetite for first-class vacations paid for by a wealthy Republican friend.
Consider it another example of Thomas’ influence on the Court. Thomas and his wife Ginni are the subject of the Frontline documentary Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court, directed by Michael Kirk.
The multiple Emmy-winning filmmaker is our guest on the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast. Kirk’s investigative documentary explores what many consider to be Thomas’ questionable ethics – he did not report on federal disclosure forms that Republican activist Harlan Crow footed the bill for fancy holidays enjoyed by Thomas and his wife, or that Thomas sold a house to Crow in Savannah, GA, where the Justice’s mother, Leola Williams, continues to live.
But the documentary is about much more than Thomas’ ethics or lack thereof. It details his hardscrabble upbringing in Georgia and the evolution of his politics: At one stage of his life, Thomas’s hero was actually Malcolm X.
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