IT has been almost five years since Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed as the 106th Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. During that time, he has come under sharp and unrelenting criticism from the liberal media.  He has also been criticized by those who one would have expected to welcome the ascent of a black American to the pinnacle of his profession: the civil-rights community. To give but one example, at the 1995 convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Thomas was repeatedly called a “pimp” and a “traitor.”