Williams took a lot of heat from the left when he defended Clarence Thomas.
>>HUME: Talk to me a bit, if you can, about the experiences you've had. I mean, I remember you were writing a column for "The Washington Post" back in the late '80s, when Clarence Thomas was nominated. Yes, the late '80s.
And you defended him on a number of grounds. Not all, but some. What happened?
WILLIAMS: Oh, well, gosh. Immediately there was a great deal of calls to my desk at "The Washington Post" at the time, saying, you know, what do you have on Clarence Thomas? I said, well, I don't have anything on Clarence Thomas.
And then later I wrote about a body of knowledge, which was that Clarence Thomas was someone who had come along in this town, who had developed his way, found his way in the Reagan administration; was not always the most conservative, was not someone that you could easily pillory as some sort of stick figure, but was rather an intellectual.
And that, of course, then brought down all the heavens on me, in terms of the civil rights establishment -- I think driven by people who said, you know what, we don't like Clarence Thomas' story, as being sort of this young black man from Georgia who made his way up.
We don't like the idea that Juan Williams at "The Washington Post" would lend his credibility to this story. And therefore, one way to get at Thomas was to attack the messengers. In that case, to attack me.
HUME: So what happened?
WILLIAMS: Well, people then attacked me. Once he got into trouble with Anita Hill, and there were all sorts of questions about my behavior - have you told any flirtatious jokes, who have you flirted with at the paper? All sorts of accusations.
I mean, it just felt like the world had crumbled in on my head. I couldn't believe that so many of my friends who were in the newsroom at the time -
really, it was as if, well, you are no longer truly black. You don't belong and have the right to hold that seat.
As a matter of fact, I was, at that time, doing "Crossfire" for CNN. And I was then saying, listen, I think a lot of these charges against Thomas are ill-based.
And at the time, CNN said, well, you can't sit on the left side here and argue from a black perspective because you're not holding the official black position. So, you know, you can't, literally, appear on this show and do your job as the host on the left.
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