Dinners With Ruth

An affidavit is a written statement about a legal case. Just like verbal testimony in a courtroom, the writer of the affidavit swears under oath that their statement is true. Totenberg relays how Anita Hill was willing to discuss her sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas with Totenberg as long as Totenberg could read her sworn affidavit. It was important to Hill for the Judiciary Committee to read her allegations in her own words, since FBI interviews at the time were not recorded and transcribed, but paraphrased by the interviewing agents, making misrepresentation more likely.

National Public Radio is a non-profit media organization that was founded in 1970 and offers news coverage and other programming. The radio broadcasts across the US and other content is available online through their website. Totenberg frequently mentions NPR in her work, as she has worked there as a journalist since 1975, becoming one of their best-known journalists. The author praises the organization for hiring women in important positions in the 1970s and fondly remembers the close personal and professional relationships she forged over several decades of working for NPR.

The US government holds confirmation hearings in order to publicly investigate and confirm or reject Supreme Court nominees. These hearings include interviews with the nominees themselves. In Dinners With Ruth, Totenberg explains how confirmation hearings were central to some of her most important experiences as a journalist. The author describes how covering Clarence Thomas’s confirmation process was one of her most challenging and stressful assignments, as her interview with his accuser, Anita Hill, put both women under vicious scrutiny from the public and the press. She also describes Ginsburg’s confirmation, in which she had to answer hours of questions about her legal opinions.