Here's something intriguing about Virginia Thomas's disgraceful phone call to Anita Hill: She asks Hill to apologize for what she did "with" her husband. Not "to."

Is Thomas suggesting that Hill had a consensual affair with her husband? If that's what she's thinking, then she is upholding a grotesque, archaic, sexist meme: that it's the fault of the other woman - the temptress, the whore - when a husband cheats. It's remarkable that this is somehow less humiliating to Thomas than what most of us accept as fact: that Clarence Thomas was a loutish, harassing boss.

Or maybe not. It's always easiest to blame the woman.