Home
Today's Pick
Reviews
Top 5
Categories
Contributors

Posts Tagged ‘Propaganda’

Andrew Leigh

For Liberty Lovers ‘We The Living’ Arrives on DVD

by Andrew Leigh

An extraordinary film just came out on DVD which couldn’t be more timely.  It’s about a fiercely outspoken, beautiful woman trapped in a country rapidly descending into socialism, with the government steadily ratcheting up control over all aspects of life.

No, it’s not The Ann Coulter Story.

The movie is We The Living, based on the Ayn Rand novel of the same title.  Rand said that We The Living “is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.”

image-main

Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the scarcity of movies that depict the evils of communism.  Let’s see, there’s Doctor Zhivago, The Killing Fields, The Lives of Others, and… and, well, now there’s We The Living — a long-lost classic filmed in 1942, and now available on DVD for the first time ever.

WTL takes place soon after the Bolshevik takeover of Russia (which Rand experienced as a young woman).  The stunning Alida Valli plays Kira, a fiery college student who detests the communists ruining her country.  (Valli is perhaps best known to American audiences for her indelible performances in The Third Man and The Paradine Case.) (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Oct 30th 2009 at 4:03 pm in Film, Politics, Reviews | 34 Comments

Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King

A Name Americans Should Know – Jodie Evans and the Obama- Hollywood-Terrorist Connection

by Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King

How much access can a possible agent of influence for state sponsors of terrorism buy from President Barack Obama? For Jodie Evans, a progressive Hollywood activist, the going rate appears to be $30,400 for dinner and a conversation.

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

codepink

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Jodie Evans helped rally the Los Angeles progressive community to Obama’s side by co-hosting the first Hollywood fundraiser for Obama in February 2007 along with her partner (and ex-husband) Max Palevsky and the Dreamworks trio of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. Jodie Evans went on to be appointed a fund raiser for Obama.

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Oct 23rd 2009 at 5:00 pm in Culture, Featured Story, Obama, Politics | No Comments

James Hudnall

NEA: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda

by James Hudnall

Obama supporters are outraged that the president is called a socialist or a fascist by many of his detractors. But the reason for this just doesn’t just flow from his policies, which often follow the template of a statist dictator’s power grabs.

obama-change-sm

What’s disconcerting about these NEA revelations is they clearly show the administration trying to use NEA artists for propaganda means. Not
artistic propaganda. Propaganda isn’t art. It’s an advertisement for an agenda.

PROPAGANDA (according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary)
1. the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
2 ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 24th 2009 at 6:44 am in Art, Politics | 53 Comments

Leigh Scott

The NEA: Defending the Indefensible

by Leigh Scott

It was so much fun watching the ACORN people try and spin their way out of oblivion for the last couple of weeks.  After the first video was posted on Big Government.com they, of course, claimed it was an isolated incident and that the filmmakers were kicked out of numerous other ACORN offices.  When that proved to be false, they tried in vain to claim that the videos were faked and that their employees were the victims of CGI or something and not of their own stupidity and corruption.  When that didn’t work they claimed that the filmmakers, Andrew Breitbart and the entire Fox News network were racist.  Yawn.

Untitled-1-1623
NEA’s Yosi Sergant

Monday, we have the NEA under the microscope.  The Obama Administration was caught red-handed (is that “racist”?) funneling tax payer dollars into an official propaganda department.  I can’t wait to see what the excuse will be this time.

These people have mastered the art of defending the indefensible.

Let’s set aside the stupidity of this move.  Anyone familiar with the NEA knows that it pretty much exists to fund leftist propaganda disguised as art.  Officially coordinating it is a bit redundant. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 23rd 2009 at 5:03 am in Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 55 Comments

Charles Winecoff

The NEA: More Than Just A Little ‘Gay’

by Charles Winecoff

Last month, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman said that, in American politics, ”the arts are a little bit of a target.  The subtext is that it is elitist, left wing, maybe even a little gay.”

Well, the NEA has certainly earned that reputation these past few weeks.  Just like the LGBT community, the NEA – which purports to help struggling artists of all kinds - is following in lockstep with The One, regardless of whether it’s good for artistic expression, free speech, or real people.

nonconform

Last fall, I was amazed at how many folks in the gay community let themselves believe that getting Obama elected would be the magical first step towards achieving “equality” – at least in terms of appropriating the word “marriage” - despite the fact that He had already stated clearly that He is against gay marriage.

And no one seemed to care (much less recall) that, in 2007, The One had told CNN that building a consensus for gay marriage would be “difficult and distracting” – you know, like the Iraq war?  (Or gnats.) (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 22nd 2009 at 3:33 pm in Art, Politics | 73 Comments

Orson Bean

Artists and Their Marching Orders

by Orson Bean

My old Communist girlfriend was an exotically beautiful actress whose parents had emigrated from Russia and settled in New York City. Nola went to Party meetings and kept up with the correct way to think and behave by reading The Daily Worker. This was back in the fifties. In those days, the bulldog edition of the next morning’s Times, Tribune, News, Mirror and even the Worker would appear at the news stand on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Forty Second Street shortly before midnight. Actors, anxious to read tomorrows review of the latest Broadway play would be waiting there, along with entertainers curious to see if they’d made it into Walter Winchell in the Mirror or Ed Sullivan in the News.

stalin

Beautiful Nola was anxious to read the review of the new Off-Broadway show she’d just opened in. The Times and Trib would be covering it but Nola wanted to see what The Daily Worker had to say. Her face fell when she read it. The play was a socially relevant drama, of course, about the struggles of the Negro. She had chosen a dazzling white suit for her wardrobe. The critic said that this was unconscious racism on her part. She had, in fact, picked the suit because it made her boobs look good.  (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 21st 2009 at 5:03 am in Art, Culture, Politics | 64 Comments

John T. Simpson

Mainstream Media: The Devil Wears Pravda

by John T. Simpson

From the riots and chaos of the 1960s to the anti-war rallies of the Bush years, the American Left’s revolution has been widely televised. In fact, the Big Three and Dead Tree Press played a major part in that revolution. From negative field reporting during the Vietnam War to negative reporting on McCain/Palin and the beatification and election of Barack Obama, the MSM has been marching in lockstep and waving the banner for the American Left all the way. RatherGate, anyone? Doesn’t get much more lockstep than a reporter trying to subvert a presidential election to the Left’s advantage.

herd-of-sheep

But there’s another revolution underway in America today, and you sure as hell won’t see it televised or reported on by our new fourth branch of government. It’s not in their interest to do so. Nothing new there. For a long time now, political corruption has been rampant in the Leftist ‘mainstream’ media. In 1998, Matt Drudge made his big mark breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which Newsweek had buried to protect President Clinton. Think Obama’s Tiger Beat would have done that for Bush? (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 19th 2009 at 5:31 pm in Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics, Television | 76 Comments

Alexander Marlow

What Did Kumar Know, and When Did He Know It?

by Alexander Marlow

Meet the face of Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda: Kal Penn.  Best known for being one of the hapless stoners in the sex-bong-fart franchise “Harold & Kumar,” Penn was brought on to the Obama Administration to be the President’s Associate Director of Public Engagement.  After failing to grab more than a headline or two in the five months since his hiring, he has entered the fray in a big way as the White House representative to a National Endowment for the Arts conference call promoting the Obama administration’s political agenda.

kumar nea

Patrick Courrielche reported on the call this morning:

Kalpen Modi, Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, was to represent the White House and key representatives from the National Endowment for the Arts were also to participate.

Did you catch that? Kalpen Modi is the given name of the actor known as Kal Penn. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Sep 8th 2009 at 5:39 pm in Art, Celebrity News, Featured Story, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 89 Comments

Jason Killian Meath

Message Overdrive in ObamaWorld

by Jason Killian Meath

According to a new study from Accuracy in Media, the Obama administration spends $100,000 per week on message control.  It seems in ObamaWorld, a picture is worth a thousand paychecks — $5 million a year distributed in salaries alone.  Everyone from ethnocentric Message Coordinators to Town Hall Organizers to Speechwriters will divvy it all up.

One of the little secrets in ObamaWorld is that, while the President made good on his promise not to raise salaries, he quietly added more high paid staff. Lots more. Hence, an army of image makers are paid by taxpayers to ensure the president’s message saturates the daytime airwaves, grocery aisle rags, demographically desirable blogs and that twitters are at full tilt.  Or, is that twit? (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 7:04 am in Politics | 109 Comments

Charles Winecoff

Britain to America: ‘Don’t Let This Happen to You!’

by Charles Winecoff

When I was a kid, American Idol wasn’t even a twinkle in Simon Cowell’s eye.  No, instead of Adam Lambert’s girly warbling, we listened to wrinkled pacifist Walter Cronkite rattle off the US body count as we ate our TV dinners.  (Thank God for I Love Lucy re-runs.)

But Vietnam wasn’t the only war raging.  There was a culture clash going on too, right in the privacy of our own home: the ’60s counterculture – seen in everything from Easy Rider to The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour - versus our deeply ingrained Anglophilia.  In other words, a tug of war between “social justice” and the Social Register.

Decades before it became cool to diss the Queen with an iPod, the Royals represented everything Americans were not, and never could be: educated, sophisticated, multi-lingual, above carrying cash – and worldly enough to know one doesn’t clean one’s antiques (think no housework).  Growing up in our comfy, middle class, anti-war household, I never knew if I was supposed to say “burn, baby, burn!” or “sod off, yank.”

This dichotomy took a psychic toll, which came to a head when I did my part for the revolution by proudly shoplifting a ballpoint pen from our local Lamston’s (”the establishment”).  To my amazement, my parents were not pleased.  Instead of a gold star, I received a verbal barrage of uncharacteristic cliches (”Do you think we send you to the best schools so you can steal?” ) that left me even more confused. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Jun 12th 2009 at 5:03 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 6 Comments

John Nolte

Angels & Demonizing: ‘Fiction With an Agenda is Propaganda’

by John Nolte

Warning: This post divulges the entire “Angels & Demons” plot. If you haven’t seen the movie and intend to, go no further for there be spoilers…

People whose opinions I respect have defended A&D as not being anti-Catholic. This is probably due to the end of the film which delivers a trumped up moment of warmth and reconciliation between Tom Hanks’ Robert Langdon character and the Church in the form of a new Pope.  From my perch, this moment is a subtle but devious cherry on top of a blisteringly unfair and wholly dishonest attack on the Church.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

One way to dishonestly destroy someone or something is to repeat only the negative about that someone or something. DreamWorks has just announced a new film about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and were it to focus solely on King’s extra-marital affairs no one would argue that the movie was anything other than a propaganda tool produced with the goal in mind of assassinating his character. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted May 19th 2009 at 9:37 am in Entertainment, Politics | 3 Comments

Orson Bean

What Would Walt Say?

by Orson Bean

“The picture got great reviews but let’s take a chance anyway.” That’s what I usually say to my wife when we’re planning a night out at the movies. Critics and I are not usually on the same page. But the Disney release called “Earth,” a compendium of brilliant nature footage cribbed from a BBC series, seemed irresistible, even though it got raves. True, there’d been quibbling about the corn-ball narration and the selection of stentorian-voiced James Earl Jones to deliver it, but the summation of the reviews was: don’t miss it.

Disney had taken miles of extraordinary footage from the long-running English nature series and condensed and shaped it into a story of sorts: mama polar bear and her cubs emerge out of hibernation in the arctic snow, with the adorable babies blinking at their first sight of the summer sun. She begins the task of teaching them to survive. Papa bear, meanwhile, or “dad” as he’s known in the narration, is off on the ice floe, trying to catch a seal for his dinner. But “global warming” is making this difficult to do as the ice is breaking up earlier than usual. Dad falls into the frigid water and begins swimming for his life. He swims and swims till he gets to Antarctica where there is an abundance of seals. But dad is too weak from all that swimming, can’t nab a seal, and lies down and dies. End of family. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted May 13th 2009 at 12:48 pm in Entertainment, Featured Story, Politics, Reviews | No Comments

John T. Simpson

From Fourth Estate to Fourth Branch of Government

by John T. Simpson

I remember when the term investigative journalism used to mean something. My first introduction to it was through Peter Maas’ seminal classic The Valachi Papers at the tender age of eleven. Hooked me right away. A year later, at the age of twelve,  I devoured William L. Shirer’s monumental and award-winning ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany.’ A very heady 1250 pages of fine print in paperback, and I do mean fine print. Worth its weight in gold.

From that point on, I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough of Peter Maas, Robin Moore, Woodward and Bernstein, Nick Pileggi, Ovid Demaris, James Bamford, James Michener, Cornelius Ryan, anything from the Ballantine Espionage/Intelligence Library, and too many others to list here.

I only recently read Michener’s The Bridge at Andau, an account of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising based on hundreds of eyewitness accounts, written in novelized form to protect identities at the time. It takes you right into the chaotic and revolutionary Bupapest of the day as though you were there. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Apr 27th 2009 at 8:40 am in Media Criticism, Politics | 4 Comments

John T. Simpson

Team Oscar Praises Film, Women’s Rights in Iran

by John T. Simpson

In a recent interview in Iran with the Hollywood Reporter (THR), AMPAS President Sid Ganis and actress Annette Bening made the following comments on the state of Iranian film culture and women’s rights today.

First up, Mr. Ganis:

It is as buoyant as it is. They are making movies all the time, though they are not distributing them necessarily in Iran, but around Europe, Asia, and winning prizes all the time for it.

If by buoyant Mr. Ganis meant uplifting, I agree. Nothing’s more uplifting than a truck bomb. In fact, Martyrdom Productions, the Iranian Thugocracy’s film arm, recently landed a $500,000,000.00 defamation lawsuit from Anwar Sadat’s family for its killer thriller “Assassination Of A Pharaoh,” depicting the Hero Martyr Khalid Islambouli, who assassinated former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1979 for the heinous crime of signing the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel in 1978. (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Mar 25th 2009 at 6:27 am in Entertainment, Politics | One Comment

Veronica DiPippo

Og, The Original Forgotten Man

by Veronica DiPippo

Perhaps it went something like this…

Og, Bog, and Grog were out hunting mammoth one day somewhere in the mountains of Prehistoric Europe.  Grog’s job was to select the most succulent, Grade A Prime Mammuthus primigenius available in the Mesolithic grocer’s aisle and herd it towards his spear-bearing buddies who were hidden in the brush.  Grog made his choice and, using his trusty, flaming torch, chased the big woolly one brush-ward.  Unfortunately, in the midst of all the excitement, Grog forgot the cardinal rule of torch-bearing hunters everywhere: always stay at least ten stone lengths away from the back end of a mammoth after it’s eaten a fir tree for lunch.

Over Grog’s ashes, Og ponders the lesson of his friend’s untimely incineration and thinks: “I’m gonna recommend the Chief hold a hunter’s refresher course and change it to twenty stone lengths.”  Meanwhile, Bog, though he has access to the same information, processes it differently.  He ends up dismissing the whole episode as a fluke and decides that, even if the conditions were similar, the same result could never happen to him.  As Og is busy absorbing the cause and effect of Grog’s sudden demise, Bog thinks: “Let’s see, I had half a bison for breakfast, eighteen crow eggs, hand full of pine cones, pig fat smoothie with a scoop of roe deer hoof powder…which means, if I jog back to the cave reallyreally fast I can eat that entire pit of flame-broiled grubs.” (more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted Mar 22nd 2009 at 7:03 am in Political Humor, Politics | 106 Comments