Plenty, according to a Federalist column from Mollie Hemingway.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation battle. We were shocked when reports first surfaced that Thomas, a well-regarded former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was being accused of sexual harassment. But then we heard his accuser’s ever-changing and uncorroborated testimony, and we compared it with the testimony of a dozen close female colleagues who effusively praised Thomas as a boss known for how well he treated the women around him. We learned that his accuser Anita Hill’s testimony was contradicted by data and evidence. Thomas won his confirmation battle. By the end of the confirmation hearing, surveys of the American people showed overwhelming disbelief in Hill’s claims.

But what about the HBO movie?

[I]t’s not a recounting of events, and certainly not a remotely faithful recounting of events. Here are a few things to keep in mind as we endure Round 417 of Operation Rewrite History.

1) Maliciously Negligent Storytelling

Brookings Institution senior fellow Stuart Taylor was a reporter covering the hearings. He wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal that details some of the major omissions and manipulations the movie makes. Hill’s claim was that Thomas pestered her for dates and spoke to her in a sexually explicit manner. Thomas strenuously denied any and all charges.

  • The movie ignored how dramatically Hill’s testimony changed over the course of Thomas’ confirmation hearings, as well as her claim that FBI agents had told her that was okay. The FBI agents said they never told her that.
  • It ignored the five times Hill denied being told something by a Democratic staffer that she later admitted, under oath, she’d been told.
  • It didn’t mention that Hill claimed she followed Thomas from one job to another because she feared losing her job. In fact, she was a career employee in the federal government, known to her to be an incredibly secure job.
    The movie presents her claim — that she followed him from one job to the next because he briefly stopped harassing her — as plausible.
  • The movie suggests that the many phone calls she made to Thomas over the years after they ceased being colleagues were just professional, despite evidence, such as a note from a secretary recounting Hill’s purpose in calling as, “Just called to say hello. Sorry she didn’t get to see you last week.”