In many ways, the new HBO film Confirmation, about Anita Hill’s testimony at the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, looks like another of the network’s high-profile recent-history reenactment pageants, like Recount or Game Change, in which top-drawer movie stars are cast as political figures whom they moderately resemble and events are spun in a way that exacts retroactive revenge for high crimes and misdemeanors against American liberalism. In other words: a winner, albeit a shallow one—but then, if we wanted profound victories, we would be voting in off-year elections and not waiting for HBO to get our backs…
