Local Theater, Sierra Cinemas, Now Showing Anti-Obama Propaganda
Our local movie theater weekly schedule arrived in email today, and I was surprised to see that Sierra Cinemas is now showing (starting today at the Del Oro Theater in Grass Valley) the right-wing propaganda documentary by author Dinesh D’Souza, “Fear and Loathing in 2016: Obama’s America,” based on his own widely-derided 2010 book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
Here’s Sierra Cinemas‘ one-liner from its schedule:
“Immersed in exotic locales across four continents, best selling author Dinesh D’Souza races against time to find answers to Obama’s past and reveal where America will be in 2016.”
A tri-cornered hat is not required for admission, but you might feel more comfortable if you wear one while viewing this “campaign-season partisan hackwork.”
The following comments about the film are by Simon Maloy, from his blog at Media Matters for America:
“The most charitable thing I can say about 2016 is that it’s poorly timed. The movie argues that President Obama’s true ideology (inherited from his absentee father) is a “failed Third-World collectivism” that seeks to reduce America’s stature in the world, as evidenced (in part) by Obama’s determination to “lower NASA’s horizons” so that it no longer exists as a symbol of American greatness. And this might be a compelling argument had NASA not just successfully deposited a Volkswagen-sized robot with a rock-vaporizing laser on the surface of Mars a few weeks ago.
“Similarly, D’Souza’s film argues that this “Third-World anti-American” viewpoint of the president’s leads him to be “weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadis” captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, outside the movie theaters, news broke this weekend of an air strike that killed a senior Taliban official in Pakistan. (The obvious counterexample, Osama bin Laden’s demise, doesn’t merit mention in the film)
[…]
“D’Souza provides us a dossier for each of “Obama’s Founding Fathers,” drawn from the well-worn rogues gallery of intellectuals and fringe characters (Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, etc.), combined with the standard-issue warning that “we haven’t seen the real Obama.” He whips up some apocalyptic rhetoric about the debt, saying Obama will use it as a “weapon of mass destruction” to tank the country, and his discussion of the debt with former U.S Comptroller General David Walker is accompanied by — and I’m being completely serious here — high-pitched slasher-film music. (The fact that Walker also lays blame for reckless spending at the feet of George W. Bush does nothing to dampen D’Souza’s enthusiasm.)
“He whacks Obama for “blocking” the Keystone pipeline (not true) while loaning “billions of dollars” to Brazil to pursue offshore drilling (also not true). There’s a bit of Glenn Beck-inspired paranoia as snaking thorns of red, black, and green encircle the Middle East and North Africa, forming the new “United States of Islam.” This in turn leads to fearmongering about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and attacks on Obama for a) doing “nothing” to impede Iran’s nuclear progress (not exactly true), and b) seeking to reduce nuclear stockpiles globally.
“Here’s where D’Souza’s Reagan boosting comes back to bite him. The documentary attacks Obama for signing the New START Treaty with Russia, which calls for steep reductions in both countries’ nuclear stockpiles, and mocks the president for his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. “Dreamy idea,” D’Souza quips, sparing no sarcasm. Unmentioned is the fact that the abolition of nuclear weapons was also the stated dream of… Ronald Reagan, who first proposed the original START Treaty with the Soviet Union. As Reagan told the nation in a January 1984 speech: “My dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.”
[…]
“On Friday, after a sparsely attended showing Washington, I talked with Ray, a white, middle-aged DC resident who first came in contact with D’Souza through Glenn Beck’s Fox News program and was plugged in to conservative commentary (he went to see the movie after reading conservative columnist Thomas Sowell’s rave review). Ray thought 2016 was “very well done” and reinforced his belief that the president is motivated by anti-colonialism, though he was slightly dubious regarding some of D’Souza’s facts. When I asked if he saw any tension between D’Souza’s attack on Obama’s rhetoric on nuclear weapons and his Reagan boosterism, Ray said: “Well, every sane person wants a world without nukes.”
Read the full review here: “Fear And Loathing In 2016: Obama’s America”
Further Resources:
“2016″: Dinesh D’Souza’s demented anti-Obama crusade
‘2016: Obama’s America’: Fact checking conservative author Dinesh D’Souza’s film
2 thoughts on “Local Theater, Sierra Cinemas, Now Showing Anti-Obama Propaganda”
Since D’Souza is happy to psychoanalyze Obama, Andrew O’Hehir does likewise with D’Souza:
“D’Souza’s entire career is based on being a man from the developing world who resists the left-wing dogmas of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism so common in the intellectual circles of those countries, and who has instead embraced a cartoon version of Americanism. Being born an Indian Catholic was evidently not weird enough; in his American life D’Souza has reinvented himself as an evangelical Christian, and authored apologetic tomes about the nature of God and the prospects of the afterlife. Neither was it sufficient to become a Reaganite in favor of hawkish policies abroad and trickle-down economics at home; D’Souza had to become the kind of William Bennett-on-steroids nutjob who argues that the cultural left in America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and that gay marriage can’t work because women are the only force that can civilize men. In a disarming if ill-considered moment, he once told Stephen Colbert that he shared Islamic militants’ hostile view of liberal American decadence.”
From “2016″: Dinesh D’Souza’s demented anti-Obama crusade
I’d agree with D’Sousa that women are responsible for civilizing men. Just look at California during the gold rush when the male population, deprived of female companionship, routinely raped the land when they weren’t killing Indians and each other. I doubt if gay miners would have flourished in such an environment.