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HBO's Palin Pollution
Townhall.com ^ | February 24, 2012 | Brent Bozell

Posted on 02/24/2012 4:01:50 AM PST by Kaslin

Sarah Palin's top aides held a conference call to denounce the forthcoming HBO movie "Game Change," which like any ultraliberal media production, knocks Palin as a mentally imbalanced moron. Reporters are already underlining the Palin aides haven't seen the movie.

But isn't that the point? As Pat Buchanan once said about another subject, "Does one need to lift the manhole cover to know what's below?" Did the Clinton team wait to see the movie before begging ABC to kill "Race to 9/11"? Did the Kennedy team wait to see the miniseries "The Kennedys" before getting it demoted to the Reelz channel? The Palin folks can be pretty certain -- especially since the trailer itself announces it's a hit job.

Just see the rave review of Baltimore TV critic David Zurawik, who has seen this transparent propaganda, and the game is over.

"In a rational world, this film will help guarantee that Sarah Palin will never be elected to any major office again," he asserts triumphantly. Zurawik lines up just a few snippets of the Palin-bashing he relished.

1. McCain strategist (and Palin-bashing media darling) Steve Schmidt (played by Woody Harrelson) offers this analysis of the McCain-Palin ticket: "This wasn't a campaign. It was a bad reality show."

2. More than one adviser raises the possibility of Palin being mentally ill. And some of the actions and words attributed to her in the film lend credence to that smear. Zurawik adds, "I can't wait to hear the self-serving howls on Fox News when they see how Roger Ailes' million-dollar analyst mistake is depicted in the film."

3. Standing onstage on election night when it's all over, McCain says privately to Palin: "You are one of the leaders of the party now. Don't let yourself get co-opted by Limbaugh and the other extremists. They'll destroy the party if you let them."

4. Zurawik loved "how deftly the film uses documentary evidence to show Palin's incredible ignorance of foreign and even national affairs. Yes, the Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson interviews are front and center -- and amplified. And Palin looks even more uninformed, dazed, confused and silly because the filmmakers share the point of view of senior McCain advisers, such as Schmidt, who literally moan in agony as Palin infamously starts talking about the geography of Alaska and Russia."

The filmmakers use real footage of Couric and then cut in Julianne Moore's fake Palin. Other reviews note that Steve Schmidt's actual Palin-trashing, "Game Change" book-promoting interview on "60 Minutes" is the exclamation point at the end of the film. HBO is merging their leftist "docudrama" with real liberal-bias "news" clips to leave one unmissable point: Never vote for Sarah Palin. Ever. For anything.

The last HBO docudrama from this team of director Jay Roach and screenwriter Danny Strong was "Recount," which made heroes out of Al Gore's aides and lawyers in 2000 as they tried to change the Florida election results. One reviewer summed it up as "a screechy example of liberal Hollywood condescension," and "the film's flair for exaggeration is as flabbergasting as it is embarrassing."

It should be safe to assume that HBO launched this hatchet job into production with the notion that Palin was going to run for president. (She's still hinting that she'd love to be picked if the GOP has a brokered convention.) This whole enterprise reeks like a super PAC ad, complete with a pile of Obama-supporting actors and an Obama-bundler as executive producer--Tom Hanks.

The film is called "Game Change," after the book with the same title. But in the actual book, when does Sarah Palin really appear? In Chapter 20, titled "Sarahcuda," on page 353. When the book came out in early 2010, the hottest backstage tidbits were about Obama. Harry Reid praised Barack Obama's political appeal as a "light-skinned" black man with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Ted Kennedy was furious at Bill Clinton after Clinton sneered that Obama was so inexperienced that "a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee." But HBO had no interest in hiring actors to smear Obama or Reid or Clinton. How about the relationship of John and Elizabeth Edwards, which is clearly ripe for cinematic exploration/exploitation? HBO ignored how Edwards staffers told the authors that Mrs. Edwards made them feel like "battered spouses." In brief, the authors wrote: "What the world saw in Elizabeth: a valiant, determined, heroic everywoman. What the Edwards insiders saw: an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazy woman."

But HBO wants to paint the Democrats as the valiant heroes and paint the Republicans as the paranoid crazy women. Nobody needs to wait until March to wonder whether HBO is ridiculous when it puts out a statement calling this movie "a balanced portrayal of the McCain/Palin campaign."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: hbo; palin; sarahpalin
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To: Kaslin

Words have value and consequences. Deride those who use libel or slander directed at Palin, point and laugh at the village idiots. Catch them alone and beat the crap out of them. Use some finesse and back into them, knocking them down and if your years are not too advanced, fall on them, loudly accusing them of tripping you. Make the Sobs pay for their bovine scat.


21 posted on 02/24/2012 7:44:11 AM PST by W. W. SMITH (Obama is Romney lite)
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To: LoveUSA

Woody started out playing an idiot on “Chees” It was a part that was perfect for him. He didn’t have to act.


22 posted on 02/24/2012 8:56:11 AM PST by Venturer
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To: Kaslin

>>>When the book came out in early 2010, the hottest backstage tidbits were about Obama. Harry Reid praised Barack Obama’s political appeal as a “light-skinned” black man with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Ted Kennedy was furious at Bill Clinton after Clinton sneered that Obama was so inexperienced that “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” But HBO had no interest in hiring actors to smear Obama or Reid or Clinton. How about the relationship of John and Elizabeth Edwards, which is clearly ripe for cinematic exploration/exploitation? HBO ignored how Edwards staffers told the authors that Mrs. Edwards made them feel like “battered spouses.” In brief, the authors wrote: “What the world saw in Elizabeth: a valiant, determined, heroic everywoman. What the Edwards insiders saw: an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazy woman.”<<<

Which is to our shame. There is no reason - none, zero, nada - that similar movies about the left shouldn’t be made, and I’m even willing to go so far as using the same kind of docusmear that the left uses. How about the boyhood of Barack, complete with Muslim indoctrination, a crazed mom, an abusive dad, and pedophiliac fellatio on the beach from Uncle Frank, all the while spouting communist platitudes? Why not a John Edwards movie? Or Teddy on the swim team, so to speak? We have the money, there is talent out there, and there is always a way to get out the message.

Instead, we get the Palin smear. Our side plays nice. It’s killing us, our culture, and our country.


23 posted on 02/24/2012 1:07:14 PM PST by redpoll
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To: Josephat

Including the movie Act of Valor? I plan on seeing it tomorrow


24 posted on 02/24/2012 1:16:23 PM PST by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Blue Turtle

I have tried joining Netflix, but never found movies that interested me


25 posted on 02/24/2012 1:20:43 PM PST by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Zhang Fei

Got rid of NetFlix too. Once they started jerking around with their rates, we said, “Enough.” The movies usually sat for over a month before we watched them, and we never watched instant queue stuff.


26 posted on 02/24/2012 1:32:19 PM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: Kaslin

Certainly there are worthwhile movies and producers who deserve and need our support. They are far outnumbered by the bad guys. We have to be descerning and support those that support America.


27 posted on 02/24/2012 2:33:25 PM PST by Josephat (The old claim your evengelizing people who haven't heard the gospel, but go to a Catholic country tr)
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To: Kaslin
typical (liberal).

28 posted on 02/24/2012 3:41:31 PM PST by skinkinthegrass (Simple: Kill the terrorists, Protect (all) the borders, ridicule all the (surviving) Liberals :^)
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To: y6162

HBO are moving towards bankruptcy and they don’t even realize what they are doing. They are going to lose subscribers in millions...


29 posted on 02/25/2012 3:59:21 AM PST by SarahPalinForPresident2012 (Time to Reload)
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To: Josephat
Quit going to their movies.

Yeah, I know.

I keep holding out hope that I'll see vestiges of the old America in some "feel good" movie. And then the actor goes and uses their momentum from that "feel good" movie as justification to spew anti-American crap.

Must ... be ... stronger ...

30 posted on 02/27/2012 7:20:01 AM PST by LoveUSA (God employs Man's strength; Satan exploits Man's weakness.)
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To: rarestia
"Yeah, I’ve been considering HBO out of my lineup too. I only have it for the series, and Boardwalk Empire is the only recent series I watched."

They are pushing "Luck" like their collective lives depend on it. HBO has made some extremely costly blunders lately.

31 posted on 02/27/2012 7:44:06 AM PST by moehoward
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