ADDED: Wonder what the Federal Election Commission thinks about this? This is a terrible thing Sony’s doing, using the bravery of these men to help Obama – politicizing their heroism. The decent thing to do is to move the release date well into December.

Screenwriter Mark Boal with director Kathryn Bigelow

Our utter failure of a president is looking to Hollywood for an October 2012 Surprise to save his hopes for a second term. Maureen Dowd says out loud what we all knew the moment the movie’s release date was announced:

The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.

The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.

“To the surprise of some military officers.” There’s an interesting statement.

(more…)

[Ed. Note: Andrew Breitbart appears on "RedEye" tonight.]

So true to character, Maureen Dowd weighed in on the election, and got it wrong. See, she believes the vote wasn’t about Obama, it was about gullible voters.

She writes that Republicans “were able to persuade a lot of Americans that the couple in the White House was not American enough, not quite “normal,” too Communist, too radical, too Great Society.”

Wait – you forgot “too Muslim and too Kenyan.”

Anyway, she missed the point about the election – and so did Obama. He spoke today, saying – and I paraphrase, because I’m lazy:

“America wants us to act, not to stand still.”

Okay – Maybe it’s me, but I think it’s the reverse. I think Americans don’t want him to act, and would like him to stand still.

Here’s why: President Obama is the most successful progressive politician I’ve seen, ever.

He passed health care reform, which Clinton couldn’t even do. He got two really liberal judges on the Supreme Court. Really, that’s going to matter more than anything. He got a pile of other left-wingers appointed, and called them czars. He passed the stimulus – and nearly got cap and trade through. (more…)

Editor’s note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product. 

Author’s note: There are a couple of spoilers in this review. If you are dying to watch this movie when it is released in 2011 don’t read any further. 

When BH editor extraordinaire John Nolte asked me if I wanted to do a Sucker Punch review of the script for The Iron Lady, the upcoming film featuring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, my response was (and I quote), “Yes!!!” After reading the script, however, I almost wish I had declined the offer.

Why? Well, when I think of Margaret Thatcher, I think of an extraordinary woman who defied the odds to become the UK’s first woman prime minister and who did her best to bring her nation, kicking and screaming, into a period of prosperity - a nation that was on the brink of financial collapse when she first came to office in 1979. Being human like the rest of us, she had triumphs, and also some failures. For a comprehensive look at both her successes and what she might have done differently, see this article at The Heritage Foundation.

Unfortunately, Thatcher (formally known as Baroness Thatcher, having had the lifetime peerage bestowed upon her by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992), after a lifetime of strength, courage and fortitude, is now known to be suffering from dementia, a terrible disease in which one begins to forget little things and slowly forgets more and more. I cannot imagine how frightening it must be to begin to forget one’s loved ones and, perhaps, oneself.

But it’s great fodder for a movie, especially if the subject is a strong conservative woman whose policies have always been loathed by the left. Who cares if she’s still alive but unable to defend herself against the film’s implications? (more…)

So according to Maureen Dowd, we’re seeing a rising tide of vicious bullying this political season – the kind you might see in high school, when “teenage tormentors” would “spread rumors that you were pregnant.”

Oh how I hated that.

For Dowd, these new “Republican Mean Girls,” are angry, aggressive women who are angry and aggressive. And mean.

Why not just call them bitches?

Anyway, to the irony. Here Mo laments the evils of smearing women – right before doing essentially the same thing. In a way, she becomes that cliched head cheerleader who always supports the loutish jock. “You better leave him alone, or I’ll say you banged the gym teacher under the grandstands!”

Funny thing is – I did. I always did.

But Dowd’s biggest blind spot? She writes this column only a week after Meg Whitman was called a whore -and – after the California NOW chief said “whore” was an apt description. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska’s governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall.

The assassination of Sarah Palin – by media.

For those who didn’t pay attention, Mrs. Palin’s unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political figure threatened the media’s preordained presidency of Barack Obama.

In light of how the Obama machine took down Hillary Clinton, which unsettled many feminists who believed 2008 was their time, many who saw sexism at play – the destruction of an ascendant Republican female icon was an urgent imperative for the Democratic Party. (more…)

I was sitting in my dentist’s office a few weeks ago, and there on the side table was the Star Trek issue of Newsweek with some kid’s hand holding up a model USS Enterprise against the sun. 

Now I haven’t opened an issue of Newsweek in years, although I have to admit that Evan Thomas is a valuable – actually, essential – addition to society. He forgets to speak his true mind only among his friends, you see, and that gives us a little insight into what these media elites actually believe. He recently said that Barack Obama looked to him like a god, a man above petty things like “America.” 

Click to play

It was Evan Thomas who in 2004 admitted that liberal media bias was good for fifteen points at the polls. (That was for John Kerry. If you take away Obama’s 15 points of bias – I suspect is was much more — he would have won Vermont and the District of Columbia and that’s all he would have won – but I digress.) 

Anyway, the Newsweek cover showed the outline of the Enterprise – without the nacelle caps. Whoever made the model for the cover forgot to put them on. It was obvious to me from across the room, but then, that’s the kind of accuracy I have come to expect from Newsweek. And I digress yet again.  (more…)

ACT 1
SCENE 1

A stark dressing room in the underbelly of the White House, bathed in the dim yellow light of a 25-watt compact fluorescent bulb. The dingy walls are plastered with Shepard Fairey “HOPE” posters. Off stage is heard the cringing, muffled gasps of a stunned arena audience. Suddenly the door bursts open and enters BARACK “BAM BAM” OBAMA, former champion, unconscious on a stretcher carried by his handlers — cut man TWINKLETOES EMANUEL, manager PAPPY AXELROD, SPITBUCKET BEGALA and SPINDOC GREENBURG. His nose is bleeding profusely, his eyes nearly swollen shut, and his forehead is embossed with a reverse “BRUNSWICK” from an errant bowling ball. They are trailed into the room by a pack of concerned sportswriters as they place the stretcher on a stark table. 

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Alright, alright! Give ‘em some air, you mugs! 

PAPPY AXELROD: Can you hear me, Champ? 

BAM BAM: We would save enough money… uhh… we would… money save… the ones we are looking for… 

PAPPY AXELROD (gently slapping Bam Bam’s face): Champ, Champ! Look at me! How many teleprompters am I holding up?  (more…)

The Federal Office of Trend Management announced today that “Obamania” has officially replaced “Europhoria” as the favorite new high of the far left. Europhoria is the absolute adoration of anything European over anything American. Until recently progressives in the United States preferred coveting things European when they needed a lift. For example, if you were considering buying a new car and said something about a Ford Explorer or F-150 pickup they would tell you all about their Saab or BMW. Then they would segue into how in Europe they have very expensive gasoline because the governments understand that high gas taxes are good for the environment and keep the hoi polloi off the highways.

A lot of their sentences would start, “You know, in Europe…” For example when talking with a progressive friend about the current debate about health care they might bring up the European model of social welfare and yap on about it greatness. Your progressive friend might say, “You know in Europe everyone has free health care, thirty weeks vacation a year and is eligible for retirement at 47.” You try to mention how you have to wait in line for five months to get a prostate exam but they are already recounting how great it was to ride the public transportation three blocks to the Opera House in Vienna. New Your Times Columnist Paul Krugman even managed to a plug for Euro socialism in a recent column when he said it was like an ongoing government stimulus package so great for the economy! (more…)