George H.W. Bush’s former lawyer has created a website to combat what he says are “mischaracterizations and falsehoods” in HBO’s upcoming movie movie “Confirmation,” about Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas.
As a lawyer for the Bush Administration, Mark Paoletta helped usher Thomas through his Supreme Court confirmation hearings 25 years ago. Now, he hopes to give his side of what happened with the site, www.confirmationbiased.com.
The HBO film, starring Kerry Washington as Anita Hill, debuts Saturday and tells the story of Thomas’ nomination to the United States’ Supreme Court, which was endangered when his former colleague, Hill, testified he had sexually harassed her.
“This HBO film is as realistic as ‘Game of Thrones,’” Paoletta said in a statement. “For 25 years, Justice Thomas’ ideological opponents have tried to re-litigate baseless accusations made against him by Anita Hill and to ignore her multiple contradictions. Those of us who were at the hearings have an obligation to set the record straight.”
Other public officials and commentators who have raised questions about the film include some former U.S. senators, radio host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News commentator Katie Pavlich, among others.
Hill herself expressed some concerns in a recent Rolling Stone interview: “There were, for example, composite characters, the sort of thing that, as a lawyer and a professor and as someone who was involved, kind of bothered me,” she said. “Language that was used or things that were portrayed weren’t exactly the way that people were behaving in that moment.”
The film’s screenwriter and executive producer, Susannah Grant, recently told the Washington Post the film did not try to choose sides between Thomas and Hill.
“The movie only has credibility if it’s not espousing one point of view or presenting only one side,” she said.
“Confirmation” debuts Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO.