The Hollywood elite’s announcement over the weekend that it has created a commission to end sexual harassment in their industry – chaired by Anita Hill -- is the latest genuflection toward the secular saint they have created. Hollywood has made two TV-movies siding with Hill’s unproven version of events, Showtime’s Strange Justice (1999) and HBO’s Confirmation (2016). The media elite now tells this story by speaking in reverent tones about how she “brought sexual harassment to the national consciousness.”
But all this hype ignores what actually happened in 1991. After months of trying to defeat Thomas, the Democrats were about to lose the confirmation fight. So at the last minute, NPR and Newsday introduced Anita Hill and her unproven story. Hill testified, and Clarence Thomas strongly rebutted her allegations. When the weekend of hearings were over, a CBS-New York Times poll found the American people strongly believed Thomas over Hill, even women:
Americans' generally favorable view of Judge Thomas is reinforced by a generally adverse opinion of Professor Hill. Forty-six percent of those surveyed said they had an "unfavorable" opinion of her, while only 17 percent said they had a "favorable" view.
Asked whom they believed more, Professor Hill or Judge Thomas, 58 percent of the respondents said Judge Thomas; 24 percent said Professor Hill. Women were only slightly more likely than men to side with Professor Hill; 26 percent of the women said they believed her more, as against 22 percent of the men.
Politically, that’s a fiasco for Hill. But all of the mythical treatments of Saint Anita ignored what the American people concluded. The liberal elites have spent the last 25 years trying to revise history and reverse public opinion.
Few remember troubling details that made Hill's account less credible. For example, she followed Clarence Thomas around from job to job in the federal government, from the Education Department to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which doesn't exactly sound like someone seeking a less hostile working environment. Hill denied she was making the charges for her own personal benefit, but liberals raised an endowment to get her a job at the University of Oklahoma. After five years, she gained a prestigious professorship at Brandeis University. In 1993, she signed a two-book deal estimated to be "well over $1 million."
