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.

So the White House gives filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal all kinds of exclusive access and what does President Downgrade gets in return – between production costs ($25 – $30 million) and advertising — is a $50 -$75 million in-kind political contribution from Hollywood set to hit theatres just a few weeks prior to the November 6 election.

See how that works?

By the way, Oscar season rolls right through December, so that’s no excuse.

I wonder how SEAL Team 6 and the rest of the military feel about this?

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.

My point is – there were no roadblocks, no gridlock – because there were no Republicans! Back in 2008, that party was more run down than Charlie Sheen’s penis. Obama was the running back with the ball and nothing but daylight.

What he didn’t expect: the folks in the stands rushing the field.

The Republicans didn’t galvanize the public. The public galvanized the Republicans.

So Mo and O are wrong. It’s good that the Prez calls for consensus. But he shouldn’t be making peace with Republicans – try those crazy voters instead. And right now, they aren’t cheering him down the field – they want him to punt.

Let’s hope the man listens, for once.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist, homophobic gridlockophobe.

Tonight:

Andrew Breitbart!

Imogen Lloyd Webber!

Jedidiah Bila!

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?

The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and produced by Damian Jones, is a bit of a roller coaster and it was hard at times to keep track of what time period it was, even with it written right there on the page in front of me. Flitting back and forth from present day (noted in the script as 2008) to 1943 to 1990 and many different years in between, we “see” the world through the eyes of a Thatcher who is losing touch with reality and who frequently travels back through time to relive a life once full of activity and purpose - a life which has now been reduced to the occasional dinner party and trips to the doctor. And don’t forget the whisky – lots of whisky. To dull the pain of what’s become a menial existence, I suppose.

Once surrounded by powerful men and the occasional woman, Thatcher’s constant companions now consist of her home health aide, her private secretary, and her grown  daughter Carol (Olivia Colman), who pops in often to check on Mum and make sure she is okay.

Oh, and husband Denis Thatcher (Jim Broadbent). Trouble is, Denis died back in 2003. Lady Thatcher is talking to a ghost – or, rather, a lively figment of her imagination that only she can see and hear, causing concern for the few people who she sees on a daily basis. In the film, Denis acts as her confidante and her conscience – at times trying to cheer her up by doing silly things like wearing a pink turban, while at other times he lectures that no one listens to her anymore because she is just an “old lady who is losing her marbles” and when a public bored with socialism votes the conservatives back into power, “they’ll wheel you out to show again.”

Denis also – and this is key – claims that what Lady Thatcher achieved during her long and storied career was really not any of her doing. He says that all of her accomplishments “would have happened anyway darling” because that’s “the way politics always goes” and she was “just in the right place at the right time.” He continues by saying that she’s “yesterday’s news, just another footnote in history.”

Isn’t that the narrative about Ronald Reagan,  Lady Thatcher’s international friend and ally? He had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet Union and the eventual destruction of the Berlin Wall – he just happened to be in office when it happened. Mikhail Gorbachev is the one who deserves all of the credit, right? In this, The Iron Lady is simply another vehicle to for the contemporary Left to rewrite history more to their liking, despite polls like this one where Lady Thatcher is considered the most influential woman 20 years after leaving office.

The script also alludes to Lady Thatcher being an absentee mother who placed her career above the well-being of her children. There is truth to this claim, as her own daughter was quoted as saying, “A mother cannot reasonably expect her grown-up children to boomerang back, gushing cosiness and make up for lost time. Absentee Mum, then Gran in overdrive is not an equation that balances.” But that doesn’t mean that Thatcher’s children are thrilled with the upcoming portrayal of their mother. In fact, according to a family friend, they are “appalled” by it and “think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy.” Blood is thicker than water, after all.

Women have always walked a fine line when it comes to balancing family with career, and women in politics face even more scrutiny than the average working mother. But while the Left has always told us that a woman’s place is not in the home but out furthering her own career ambitions, when a conservative woman does just that, she’s demonized by those who might naturally be her ally.

However, there are some  depictions of Lady Thatcher’s maternal nature in the script. Lady Thatcher is depicted as a woman who, no matter how hard she tries, will never be “one of the guys.” What’s an alienated female politician to do? Act like a mother hen to both her husband and colleagues, buttoning the cuff links of one and pouring tea for another, saying, “Shall I be mother?” This script is chock full of such moments calculated to show Lady Thatcher in a most unflattering light.

It’s always galling to see conservative women held to different standards than their liberal counterparts. Take this comparison of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin by the ever-classy Maureen Dowd, for example. Dowd claims Hillary has finally come into her own and has conquered any doubt that she can’t manage without riding Bill’s coattails, while Sarah – who worked her way to where she is without having a politically powerful husband – is described as “bizarre babe-at-large, a Nixon with hair extensions” and a “whiny presidential contender.” Keep it classy, Maureen. I might suggest that your bile toward Sarah is reflective of your own fading beauty and inability to form a lasting relationship with that special someone, but that wouldn’t be nice.

Hillary’s famous comment about deciding to forge ahead with her career after marriage instead of “baking cookies and having teas” also comes to mind in The Iron Lady during a flashback where Lady Thatcher tells hubby Denis that she refuses to be one of the women who stays “silent and pretty on the arm of their husband…washing up the teacups.” In fact, she declares, she “will not die washing a teacup.”

Guess what the Iron Lady is depicted as doing in the final scene? 

Cameron McCracken, managing editor of Pathe Films, says of the movie:

“It is a film about power and the price that is paid for power. In that sense, it is the story of every person who has ever had to balance their private life with their public career.” He says Lady Thatcher’s health will be featured, but insists that it will be “treated with appropriate sensitivity”. He adds of the film: “Although fictional, it will be fair and accurate.”

I have to wonder: Someday, if (heaven forbid) Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi or another powerful female politician is struck down with dementia, will filmmakers do a ”fictional” but “fair and accurate” movie about a woman who preferred to be a formidable political force to staying at home with her daughter, creating a completely unsympathetic character who deserves to face impending death alone with only memories of a career fit for being “just another footnote in history” for company? 

I leave you to guess.

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.

But none of that made her column.

Odd.

So, how is calling a lady a whore not seen as mean, but Sharon Angle asking Harry Reid to “man up,” is? I’d ask for an explanation, but that might be too mean.

It’s also just too funny seeing Dowd go after Angle for being aggressive in a debate. It’s what you do in a debate, sister.

But maybe Mo thinks Reid can’t defend himself, or that a debate is just no place for chicks.

And so women’s worst enemy are always women. And the media eggs this girl-on-girl action on – but only in one direction, of course. See Meghan McCain, yet again – being asked her opinion on a Republican lady: 

Eloquent.

Yep: when you’re looking for a chick to bang on a conservative chick, you can always count on double M. She criticizes O’Donnell for being inexperienced -and I, for one, totally back Meg on this. She may be the foremost authority.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobic tyrannophobe.

Tonight:

-Juliet Huddy!

-Angela Maglowan!

-Jim Norton!

and special guest: Bill O’Reilly

PLUS, some other surprizeys.

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.

In conjunction with the laws of political correctness as perfected by the Democratic Media Complex, it would take prominent women to take down an unlikely and unexpected conservative feminist symbol that threatened to steal away Mrs. Clinton’s votes from the Chosen One.

While the vanquished then-senator from New York conspicuously removed herself from this task – going so far as praising Sen. John McCain’s running mate as “a very composed and effective debater” – a trio of media partisans, each with a unique skill set, rose to the task of tearing down Sarah Palin.

Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey – Mr. Obama’s Angels (featuring Joy Behar in the role of “Bosley”) – used a potent mix of mockery, snobbery and vitriol to undermine Mrs. Palin’s feminist bona fides.

You can read the column in full here.

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. 

Inside was a “Star Trek” / Obama administration comparison chart, written by Maureen Dowd. Obama was Spock. Rush Limbaugh was a Klingon commander. Rahm Immanuel – RAHM IMMANUEL! – was Captain Kirk. The Un-American. Bastards. 

This got me angry enough to do some poking around. All around the web, we are seeing comparisons of Barack Obama to Mr. Spock. Maureen Dowd, who is without question the dimmest bulb in the burned-out chandelier of the once-glorious New York Times, wrote a piece in the Times comparing Spock to Obama and ended the piece with the line, “Kirk out.” 

When I regained consciousness I was in the ambulance. 

So here is the result. It examines the terrible danger of putting intellectuals in charge. Not that I think Barack Obama is an intellectual. He, like Larry Fine, simply looks like one standing next to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Joe Biden. But I granted the premise and tried to show why intellectuals are so dangerous and so spectacularly and consistently wrong when they try their hand at politics. 

Not my deepest work ever, but it was a blast to make. Two desires in life hold monumental power over me: 

1) to wear a custom-fitted gold velour jersey.

2) to work with my friend Maurice LaMarche. He was the voice of The Brain in Pinky and the Brain, plays Morbo, Calculon and Kip on Futurama, and who is the go-to guy for William Shatner impressions. As a matter of fact, he can teach you – yes, YOU! – to Talk Like William Shatner by going here.  

So without further ado, here’s “The Dowd Conundrum.” I hope you like watching it as much as I enjoyed making it.

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? 

BAM BAM (giggling): Special Olympics… Heckuva job Timmy… 

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Somebody get me the stimulus salts! 

Twinkletoes opens a wallet under Bam Bam’s nose and he groggily regains consciousness

BAM BAM: Whuh… huh… whuhappened? 

RED KRUGMAN: Yeah, dat’s what we wanna know! What happened to the kid’s uppercut? C’mon, Pappy, we got a deadline for the morning edition! 

BAM BAM: How… duuh… did I do? 

SPITBUCKET BEGALA: T.K.O., 13 seconds in the first round. Lucky shot. You’ll get ‘em next time champ! 

SCOOP KROFT: Champ, champ! Scoop Kroft, Columbia Broadcasting System. Are you punch-drunk? 

BAM BAM: heh… hehheh… wheeee! 

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Put down da notepad, Kroft! You an’ da rest of you scribes! Let the kid come to. Give ‘em a chance to clear out da cobwebs. 

PAPPY AXELROD: C’mon kid, shake it off. What’s the last thing you remember? 

BAM BAM: I… uh… remember getting, uh, fit with the new, uh, silk robe… then the, uh, Ring Magazine cover shoot… duhrrr… I remember people cheering… after that it’s kinda uh, all fuzzy like… 

PAPPY AXELROD: You were doing great, champ! You were magnificent in the walk-in. Magnificent! You shoulda seen the crowd go wild, all the way up until you stepped through da ropes. 

RED KRUGMAN: That was one helluva tumble you took there, kid! Are you still feeling that concussion? 

BAM BAM: Is dat where I got dese rope burns? 

SPINDOC GREENBURG (examining Bam Bam’s face): Damn! Dis ain’t no cut, it’s an irrigation ditch! I ain’t got enough styptic to close this thing. Somebody fetch my stitch bag and polling charts. 

FRANKIE RICH: Hey, what gives, Axlerod? You told us this kid was a natural. You said he was ready for a title shot. I even said so in my column! Now there’s an arena full of angry jamokes out there hollerin’ for a refund! 

RED KRUGMAN: Yeah, I told everybody dis was a sure thing. I put 50 bucks of my own 401k on the kid myself! 

PAPPY AXELROD: Aw hell, he just had a bad week. Everybody has bad weeks. He just wasn’t used to fighting without his headgear. You saw him win the Chicago Golden Gloves in ‘04, you all saw that unanimous decision over Johnny Arizona. 

SCOOP KROFT: That old crippled tomato can? C’mon! If I didn’t know better I’d say the kid took a dive tonight. 

PAPPY AXELROD: Dive? C’mon you mugs, you saw it. You saw Bam Bam open up with that flurry of jabs. You saw him connect with that huge left hook haymaker! 

RED KRUGMAN: Yeah. We saw it. We also saw him land it square on his own damn glass jaw. How are we supposed to make that look good? Half the dopes in this city lost their entire paychecks wagering on this stumblebum, and now they’re gonna blame us newspaper boys. 

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Okay boys, here’s how you’re gonna play it. Three column headline, 60 point type: “BAM BAM SCORES FIRST ROUND KAYO. ECONOMY FAILS TO LAND SINGLE BLOW. CHAMP READY FOR NEXT TITLE BOUT.” 

SPITBUCKET BEGALA: Yeah yeah! That’s the ticket! 

BAM BAM: I like tickets. 

TRIXIE DOWD: C’mon Pappy, the only people drunk enough to swallow that line of malarky are the winos down in the Nutroots skid row. 

BIFF OLBERMANN: Don’t listen to her, champ! I still believe in you! 

TRIXIE DOWD: See what I mean? If we keep printing this stuff our circulation is gonna drop below Newsweek! 

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Let me remind you that you’ve got as much riding on Bam Bam as me. Do you really want to help him? Here’s how you can help him. Leave him alone. Print the headlines like I told you, and let the Champ train for the next main event. 

FRANKIE RICH:  I dunno, Twinkletoes. He don’t look so good. 

TOMMY FREIDMAN: Yeah, dose are da worst pair of cauliflower ears I ever seen. 

BAM BAM (singing): Don’t stop! Be-leeeee-vin’! 

TRIXIE DOWD: You sure he’s ready to go up against Max Tehran? I heard he’s kind of a scrapper. 

PAPPY AXELROD: You just leave him to us. Bam Bam’s got some new fancy footwork that’ll make Tehran unclench his fist. Guaran-teed! Ain’t that right, Champ? 

BAM BAM: I extend my hand like this, right? 

RED KRUGMAN: Okay Pappy, we’ll hype his big comeback. But eventually the public is gonna start noticing the bookie odds. C’mon boys, let’s go. 

The reporters leave, morosely. 

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Okay champ, let’s not let a good disaster go to waste. Get a good night’s sleep ’cause tomorrow we start training bright and early. 

PAPPY AXELROD: See you at the Oprah studio gym at 5 AM. 

The handlers leave.   

BAM BAM: (sighs) I coulda been a contender.

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!

Wealthy Progressives usually vacation in Europe, especially if they are New York Times columnists like Krugman or Maureen Dowd. They prefer Spain or the south of France to anything as pedantic or pedestrian as Florida or Mt. Rushmore.

In a column about a year ago Maureen Dowd indulged in both Europhoria and Obamania when she related to her readers how the Parisians have already elected Obama in their hearts. Her implication is that the people of Paris can predict the outcome of elections and since they are Europeans they must be more avant-garde that stupid Americans. With this sentence she also indulging herself in the first and most basic of all Progressive myths; you are stupid. This is some strange logic since the French elected their right winger, Nicolas Sarkozy, when the popular press in American had assured all of us that Socialist Segolene Royal was a shoe in.

New polling shows that the majority of progressives have recently switched to mentioning Obama when they wanted to put down something typically American like private property, baseball, free enterprise, capitalism, personal responsibility or regular bathing. Many of the sentences you hear in conversations with Progressives today now begin with, “Now that Obama is President…”

They praise the President for bringing change from the evil triumvirate of Bush, Chaney and Halliburton. Even though Halliburton is still the major contractor of the U. S. Government and will be well into the future. They laud how he got lobbyist out of government, except for the ones he wanted. They cheer how he closed Guantanamo but I believe there are still prisoners there. While we’re at it did those girls ever get a dog?

Obamania is all around us so be on the lookout for it. It is most often seen on CBS or MSNBC. Chris Matthews is one of its greatest devotees. Post up your favorite example of Obamania or Europhoria and let us bathe in his greatness and the wonders of all things European.