Dear Madame L,
I just read a bunch of your "pants on fire" entries and enjoyed them.
And they made me think of a question for you.
I have a friend who
listens to right wing radio talk shows all day (like Rush Limbaugh) and
she said something about a movie that is based on what "Obama's
brother" says about Obama, including that Obama actually despises
America and is trying to destroy it. She said it's been playing in NY
to sell out crowds.
Have you heard of this, and if so can you shed any
light on it. Because when she said it, it just didn't sound true, just
like the other lies you've been pointing out.
Thanks,
Not witty enough to think of a witty name :)
Dear Witty Enough,
Thanks for the question. Madame L has heard of this movie, "Obama's America 2016," and it is indeed full of lies.
Fox News wing-nut Dinesh D'Souza co-directed and starred in the movie, which facts all by themselves tell us everything we need to know about its tone, accuracy, and veracity. He calls it a documentary, but everyone else recognizes it as a paranoid conspiracy screed. In his recent column about the movie, D'Souza repeats his same old tired lies, including the idea that Barack Obama hates America and has an "anti-colonial view that blames Western colonial exploitation for the poverty and suffering of the Third World."
Here's an interview with George Obama, the half-brother who is willing to spread these lies so that... why? so he can become famous? so he can get rich? Madame L does not know why. But, whatever HIS motives, the motives of D'Souza have been clear from the beginning: to smear our President with lies. In fact, in an excerpt that Madame L read from the interview with George Obama, it appeared that he was just a whiner who was being provoked into saying more than he intended to say.
The movie was released in July and was supposedly going to be shown in 1,500 theaters across the country. It has been successful and has expanded to new theaters, though not as many as originally proclaimed.
In fact, your co-worker is right about one thing: According to
the Huffington Post, the movie is "drawing big crowds, even in New York City...Overall,
2016: Obama's America grossed an impressive $1.2
million last weekend as it upped its theater count from 61 to 169 for a
total gross of $2 million, the second-best showing of the year for a
documentary after
Bully ($3.2 million). That doesn't include nature documentaries
Chimpanzee ($29 million) and
To the Arctic ($7.6 million)."
This Huffington Post review provides an actually "fair and balanced" (i.e., nothing like Fox News) account of the movie's content and success, including a trailer. In case you don't want to read the entire HuffPo article, here are two essential paragraphs:
"Slate's David Weigel
reviewed it as 'mostly solid..
... 'There are no conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth, religion,
Social Security number, passport, or college transcript. Instead, there
is a deep dive into Barack Obama’s known Communist associates, his late
father’s avowed socialism, and his mother’s radicalism.'
"Variety's Joe Leydon critiqued the opposite, writing that 'for the bulk of its running time, the pic comes off as a cavalcade of
conspiracy theories, psycho-politico conjectures and incendiary
labeling.'"
(In other words, Madame L notes, the two reviews say the same thing.)
Which view does Madame L take? Madame L thanks you again for the question, which got her to find out more about it. But she will not be seeing this movie. She does not want to waste her time with lame old conspiracy theories and the people who dream them up. She doesn't even let herself waste much time with the televised debates, which she records and then watches bits and pieces of later.
Madame L takes this approach because she wants to look at what the candidates DO and HAVE DONE, rather than how well they're able to win a debate.
Thus she sees Mitt Romney as firing U.S. citizens so he can send their jobs to China while making millions of dollars, promising to lower the deficit and create jobs simply by his magnificence, and promising to do away with so-called "Obamacare," gut Planned Parenthood, and deny women their rights as citizens to take care of their own health.
And she sees Barack Obama as struggling against a "Just Say No" congressional leadership in order to get anything positive done for our country in the past four years, and succeeding in spite of those hypocrites in lowering the deficit and the unemployment rate while improving the economy more than anyone could have thought possible when he tok office.
That said, Madame L confesses she was glad to see Pres. Obama do so well in the second debate and hopes he will do as well, or better, in tonight's debate. That's not because she thinks it matters, but because it seems to matter to so many other people.
(And, by the way, Madame L has already voted. No surprise here: she voted for the Obama-Biden ticket.)
Sincerely,
Madame L
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