George H.W. Bush Lawyer: Anita Hill Film ‘Confirmation’ Is as Realistic ‘as Game of Thrones’
Mark Paoletta launches website challenging the facts in HBO’s “Confirmation”
Tony Maglio | April 14, 2016 @ 10:12 AM
Last Updated: April 14, 2016 @ 10:26 AM
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 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.
11 Famous Body Shaming Victims, From Kerry Washington to Gal Gadot (Photos)
WWE used body shaming in a 2010 storyline, in which frequent champion Mickie James was mockingly called "Piggy James" and had a cake shoved in her face. James won the feud, but the storyline was roundly panned. Fortunately, WWE seems to take their women more seriously nowadays.
After pictures showing his weight gain became Internet joke fodder in 2010, Wentworth Miller opened up about how he turned to eating to deal with his severe depression.
E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic has been the target of Internet comments for being too thin after undergoing a double mastectomy in 2011 after her breast cancer diagnosis.
Kerry Washington revealed in 2013 that she struggled with bulimia in college. She's re-entered the body image conversation in April 2016 when she criticized AdWeek for photoshopping her face on their cover.
When Gal Gadot was cast to play Wonder Woman in the DC Cinematic Universe, some fans criticized her on Twitter for being too thin or not having large enough breasts. On an Israeli talk show, Gadot declared she would be the "Wonder Woman of the New World."
In her 2014 lawsuit against Lukasz Sebastian "Dr. Luke" Gottwald, Kesha claimed that the producer called her things like a "fat fucking refrigerator" to the point that she went to rehab to deal with an eating disorder. She's now fighting back against body shaming on Instagram.
In a 2014 interview with USA Today, Emma Stone remarked how she often gets comments on the Internet telling her to "eat a sandwich." "We shame each other online," she said. "We're always too skinny or too fat or too tall or too short."
Before her recent spat with Glamour over being included in the magazine's "Plus Size" issue, Amy Schumer was honored at Glamour's Women of the Year ceremony, where she joked about comments made about her weight: "I'm probably, like, 160 pounds and I can catch a dick whenever I want!"
In October 2015, British model Charli Howard, who is 5-foot-8 and a size 4, was dropped from her agency for being "too big." She responded with a scathing Facebook post criticizing the agency's "ridiculous, unobtainable beauty standards."
Daisy Ridley hit back at an Instagram troll in March 2016 who accused her of setting "unrealistic expectations" by being too thin. "I will not apologise for how I look, what I say and how I live my life," she responded.
Erin Heatherton spent five years strutting the runway at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, but revealed in an interview in April 2016 that she left the company in 2013 after being told after her last two shows that she had to lose weight.
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Former Victoria’s Secret model Erin Heatherton is latest celebrity to share details about reaction to being labeled “too big” — or told to “eat a sandwich”
