Would Henry Fonda have volunteered his name and faultless reputation to “The Deranged Mr. Lincoln”?

Nicholas Wasphott in Reuters:

Streep plays Thatcher in her lonely dotage, suffering from crippling dementia, patronized by her carers and her daughter Carol, slipping in and out of a living nightmare where her dead husband Denis appears then disappears before her eyes. In flashbacks she recalls the heady days of her premiership, when she championed the removal of trade union privileges, sold off state assets to reduce the size of government, brought to a temporary end the grip the landed aristocrats held over the Conservative Party leadership, and restored British national pride by retaking by force the distant sheep-ridden Falkland Islands from the Argentines.

But it is the chilling image of a once dominant leader reduced to a fumbling, mumbling old crone that is the movie’s main theme and, while it may pass muster as a sly piece of brutal political theater, as a record of Thatcher and her many achievements, both for good and ill, it is a pitiless, poisonous travesty. Streep has lent her extraordinary acting skills to perhaps the most shameful and cruel piece of political revenge ever to have made it to the screen.

Would Henry Fonda have volunteered his name and faultless reputation to “The Deranged Mr. Lincoln”? Anthony Hopkins dignified Oliver Stone’s somber “Nixon” by trying to get beneath the skin of the paranoid president brought down by his private demons. Even Josh Brolin in Stone’s hilarious “W” made America’s most contentious president in recent times a likeable, surprisingly complex eldest son yearning to show his father he was worthy of winning the White House.

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Imagine the following scenario taking place on the world stage:

Scene 1: Employees of one of the world’s largest oil companies are found to be in league with a right-wing film producer in an effort to produce a documentary aimed at helping the company fend off a lawsuit in a third-world country’s court that, if lost, could cost the company more than U.S. $100 million.

Scene 2: New York-based lawyers, said to be working on behalf of thousands of poor plaintiffs in their suit against the oil company, ask a U.S. federal court judge to order the right-wing film producer to provide his court with outtakes from the documentary, and the judge says, “Yes.”

Scene 3: Recognizing that the outtakes are now part of the official court record, members of the news media request copies of them. In turn, the federal judge orders that copies of the outtakes should not only be provided to members of the media requesting them but to members of the general public.

Scene 4: After obtaining the outtakes, members of the media spend countless hours airing video snippets, painting the “Big Oil” company in the worst light possible and, in so doing, aiding and abetting the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Unfortunately, a real-world scenario diametrically opposite the one described above seems to be taking place now. Below is a list of the players involved: (more…)

The left in this country has a problem.  Well, they have a lot of problems, many of which involve personal hygiene and anger management issues.  That is a column for another day though.  The left is losing the pop culture media war in this country, and it bothers them.  In 2008 Reuters reported that the top four radio formats in United States were news talk, country, contemporary Christian, and Christian teaching. 

 
Stripper Pole!

Liberals failed miserably when they tried to take over the talk radio industry with Air America.  It reminded me a lot of the time that Pearl Jam took on Ticketmaster, which in turn reminded me a lot of a bowl of jell-o taking on a herd of wildebeests.  The left can’t compete in the Christian market.  Let’s face it, the folks who declare Robert Mapplethorpe “art” simply have no credibility in that particular market.  With that said, Country is a family friendly format they still think they have a chance of corrupting, and Miley Cyrus may be their perky little Trojan horse into that industry. 

Music and American politics have become linked, with most of the genres in the “Hope and Change” category.  During the 2008 presidential campaign, a country artist I am acquainted with talked about the stress of that election and how her vote was putting her at odds with her family, friends, fans, and industry (three guesses who she voted for).  To change the very culture of that industry, you need to pave the way for the shrill Natalie Maines types with the seemingly harmless Miley types.  Ms. Cyrus is presented to us a fully Disneyfied young lady with a Christian background and the values to boot.  This is the sort of person that the Middle America country fans should love, right?  As with many things in the entertainment world, her image is a well manufactured myth and the truth is that this young lady brings an entire suitcase of San Francisco values with her as baggage when she eventually breaks into the country music scene.   (more…)

The name was Fleming, Valentine Fleming. But to his four young boys, Bond creator Ian Fleming among them, he was “Mokie” — a baby-talk bastardization of “Smokie,” so called because he always had a pipe dangling from his lips, the same way Sean Connery would one day sport a cigarette in his debut appearance as James Bond in Dr. No. Curiously, no one in turn-of-the-century England thought to arrest Mr. Fleming for smoking in the presence of his children, nor did social services batter down his door to cart the poor cancer-threatened kids away. He was their Pop, and they adored him, smoke and all.

Child-abusing barbarians, I know.

They were rich, the Flemings. Grandfather made his fortune pioneering investment trusts, and when Valentine came of age he inherited hundreds of thousands of pounds. Thus it was that his second son Ian, born in 1908, grew up in a world of wealth and privilege. Mother was a typical socialite, a lover of status and all the good things that money could buy, but Father was different. He ran for government office as a conservative, and was by all accounts a thorough patriot of crown and country much admired by everyone who met him. When war became imminent, there was never any question whether he would use his money and influence to weasel out of the fight. Valentine joined the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars of his own volition and trained for combat, counting among his friends a fellow officer named Winston Churchill.

Ian and his family watched with dread as their Dad headed off to the front in 1914, and for the next three years they saw him but seldom. Valentine sent his family cheery letters to lift their spirits, but his missives to Churchill laid bare the truth: (more…)

Reuters:

“Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors. …

“Last weekend, comic actor Jim Carrey’s “A Christmas Carol” became the latest celebrity-driven movie to stumble at box offices, opening to a lower-than-expected $30 million.

“Aside from Jim Carrey and “Carol,” which cost at least $175 million, A-listers who suffered box office flops recently have included Bruce Willis (“Surrogates”), Adam Sandler (“Funny People”), Will Ferrell (“Land of the Lost”), Eddie Murphy (“Imagine That”) and Julia Roberts (“Duplicity”). (more…)

To which I respond to my unofficial biographer Conor Friedersdorf’s Daily Beast criticism of your’s truly and bigger fish Andrew Sullivan’s two-thumbs-up to it:                             

Andrew Sullivan (left) and Conor Friedersdorf

In the piece you link to and affirm in the Daily Beast, “The Right’s Lesser Press,” Conor Friedersdorf refuses to interview me as he continues to be my unofficial biographer. (I’m VERY reachable, Conor.) He writes opinion pieces on me purporting to be journalism. He doesn’t quote or cite me, he simply assumes and pushes the point of view he thinks I have and makes an argument based on these alleged positions. It’s sloppy and you, of all people, should know better.

Breitbart.com is MOSTLY a news aggregator. It carries the Associated Press, Reuters, even, Agence France Presse, from those dreaded croissant eaters!!!

It even carries the New York Times on its front page — a benefit that even Big Government and Big Hollywood don’t receive.

Big Hollywood is what it is: a counter-voice to the virtually monolithic Hollywood left. How dare I grant a platform, and a means for the defense of those in Hollywood who would dare go against the strident and intolerant Hollywood left.

Big Government, too, is providing an outlet for voices and ideas that are not proportionally represented in the traditional and mostly biased mainstream media.

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Somewhat fresh off the trail from despicable attempts to distort the events and facts surrounding Columbine, 9/11 and the American health care system, filmmaker Michael Moore is back to perpetuate new mis-truths and to face off with a new “villain” – capitalism. In case of shear irony, in his new film entitled, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore sets out to unravel the very system that gives him notoriety, fame and, no doubt, opulence.

Fortunately for Moore, we live in a free society. Despite the fact that his films are comprised of antics and obnoxious absurdities that only small-minded Americans would believe in their totality, he has every right to continue his idiocy. It is the coverage of Moore and his half-witted films that cause one to question the media’s promotional motives.

Mainstream outlets can’t seem to get enough of Moore, as they offer him positive coverage galore and provide him with valuable air time to push his insidious projects. Meanwhile, conservative film projects receive little to no praise – or even attention, for that matter. (more…)