PrintDishonest
I wrote my review of North Country as soon as I got home from the theater, concentrating on the film's amusing bits of political correctness run amok. Upon reflection, I realize I overlooked the biggest dishonesty in the film.
The movie did not exaggerate the ordeal of the first female miners on the Minnesota Iron Range. What they faced wasn't just crude jibes. Some of the abuse heaped on them met the elements of criminal assault and battery and in a more just world the perpetrators would have been tossed in jail. Those real life female miners predated Anita Hill and her complaints about what amounted to bad manners in the workplace by almost a decade. Yet in North Country the fictionalized miners are shown as taking their lead from Ms. Hill's controversial testimony.
How like the leftist elite to patronize the working class by putting one of their fellow professionals in the role of trailblazer in the fight for workplace equality when, in fact, Anita Hill and her followers were but act two of the story.
Rosslyn Smith 10 24 05
