Hollywood filmmaker Michael Moore used an edited picture to attack Judge Amy Coney-Barret on Twitter Monday, the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
In her Monday appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the masked Amy Barret was wearing a magenta dress, which Moore changed into red to look exactly the same with the red Puritan-style dress of a character from Hulu dystopian series, “The handmaid’s Tale.”
Barret is a devout Catholic and a member of another religious affiliation called People of Praise.
The Democrats have been falsely linking the judge’s beliefs to the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood (also adapted into TV series recently), where fertile women were forced to live as child-bearing slaves, and were called handmaids.
Vox reports:
The inaccurate link between the People of Praise and Atwood’s story, perpetuated by a series of confusing coincidences and uneven fact-checking, first emerged in a Newsweek article and was later picked up by Reuters. Both articles have since been corrected, but the right was furious at both. The Washington Examiner called it a “smear that just won’t die.” Fox News noted several other outlets have mentioned Barrett and The Handmaid’s Tale in the same story.
To be absolutely clear: People of Praise is not an inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale, and the group does not practice sexual slavery or any of the other dystopian practices Atwood wrote about in her novel. But the argument over whether or not the two are connected reflects the deeply contentious atmosphere in which Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court occurs — and the immense symbolic weight “The Handmaid’s Tale” carries in American popular culture.
As expected, liberals agreed with Moore’s tweet and see it as hilarious. But Republicans came to the rescue to defend Barret and mocked Moore.
User Lesa Carroll pointed out: “Nice misogyny Mike. I disagreed with RBG’S politics but I would never diminish her accomplishments. Mrs. Coney-Barrett graduated 1st in her law class, was a professor, a wife, a mother & and a judge. I bet she did more this morning before you woke up than you have done in a week.”