Last night the missus turned on Charlie Rose to help with her insomnia and caught Niki Caro, director of “North Country.” Ms. Caro may be a brilliant filmmaker but she really is an unimpressive person when it comes to politics. Case in point was her insistence that until the “Anita Hill trial” (Rose corrected her and said Ms. Hill only testified at a hearing), the words “sexual” and “harassment” had never been joined together. In other words, until the Thomas-Hill hearings, no one ever heard the term “sexual harassment” before.
This is what intellectual historians call “a crock of [expletive deleted].” Nexis has thousands and thousands of hits on the term pre-dating the Thomas hearings. But what was amazing is that when she said this Rose did a double take and said something to the effect of “Really? I didn’t know that.” And she reasserted it with the sort of confidence that makes me think she’s been using this talking point a lot.
Indeed, the film is about a woman who is inspired to sue her employers by seeing the Thomas “trial” on TV. ” “Look at Anita Hill, she’s you,” Woody Harrelson apparently tells Charlize Theron in the movie. I haven’t seen the film and I have no immediate plans to.
Anyway, it’s not a huge deal. But I just couldn’t believe Caro had made it this far still believing such an obviously untrue thing.