Free Republic

There is nothing like historical context to help evaluate and better understand current events. So, in regard to the mainstream media’s breathless, non-stop coverage of the self-levitating Trump-Russia collusion theory, consider this bit of trivia: In 1991, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the archives of the Soviet Central Committee, Western researchers quickly descended on Moscow to plow through the treasure trove of previously classified official documents. Among those researchers was Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times and the BBC who found a May 14, 1983 letter from KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov....

While the world finally gets to witness the unvarnished truth of the events of Chappaquiddick, in the name of lust, greed, or political power, the modern left continues to deceive. Whether the personal failings of democrats such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, the illicit past of democrats like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, or the kooky—yet dangerous—causes of democrats such as Al Gore and Bernie Sanders, an inevitable reckoning with the truth awaits each of these individuals, those who’ve conducted themselves similarly, & their enablers... Perhaps in another 50 years Americans can watch The Great Russian Collusion Delusion. In this...

Three and a Half Stars (Out of Four)

What did people think..? Would you recommend the movie to other Freepers..? Do you plan on seeing the movie..?

This devastating time capsule can't help but stain the Kennedy legacy. There’s a good chance the upcoming biopic of former Vice President Dick Cheney won’t be fair or balanced. The film’s writer/director, Adam McKay, is an ardent leftist who injects his politics into his work. McKay even flirted with a “comedy” about a dementia-addled President Ronald Reagan. Har har. The minds behind “Chappaquiddick” ditch the partisan approach like an inconvenient campaign promise. Their tale sticks to what we already know about the car accident that killed both Mary Jo Kopechne and Sen. Ted Kennedy’s presidential dreams. That’s more than enough.

"Chappaquiddick" did an estimated $1.9 million in ticket sales in 1,560 USA theaters. I can't find how much the movie cost, but if it's more than $20 million, it will have a very hard time breaking even.

In a New York Times op-ed published Friday, a liberal journalist and film critic complained the new film Chappaquiddick was a "character assassination" of its central character, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy. "How ‘Chappaquiddick’ Distorts a Tragedy" wrote Neal Gabler, who is working on a biography of Kennedy. Gabler complained the film, released in theaters Friday, has been "heavily promoted by conservative media outlets, and reviewers across the political spectrum have praised what they deem its damning but factual approach. Damning it is; factual it is not." There actually was no "cover-up" of Kennedy's car accident that led to the death...

On July 18, 1969, Sen. Ted Kennedy drives his car off of a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island. The accident results in the death of passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old campaign strategist who worked for Kennedy. The ongoing investigation into the mysterious and scandalous events forever alters his political legacy -- and ultimately changes the course of presidential history, and let's be honest, America as we knew it before Ted Kennedy.

The new movie about the Ted Kennedy's involvement in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne highlights the progress women have made in the Democratic party. Mary Jo Kopechne was 28 years old when she died, trapped in a car that had plunged into a Massachusetts waterway. Experts believe she didn’t drown, but suffocated: Air pockets in the car allowed her to keep breathing for many hours after the crash. This is important because Kopechne wasn’t alone at the time of the accident: Then-Senator Ted Kennedy was behind the wheel. The left does continue to struggle with how to treat misdeeds...

On the April 5 Fox show The Five, the crew was discussing the movie Chappaquiddick and how some "powerful people on the left" tried to block the movie. It is telling that some still want to block a movie about how Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to die inside the submerged car that he drove off the bridge in 1969. Kennedy is dead, so why hide the truth at this late stage? Williams said he didn't know the "story" of Chappaquiddick. You would expect that someone whose job is a paid political commentator would know the story. Kennedy would have...

On April 6, Chappaquiddick, a movie detailing the events involving Senator Ted Kennedy on Martha's Vineyard in July 1969, will be released. That incident demonstrated the depths to which the Kennedys were willing to go to salvage the political career of the last of the Kennedy sons. In subsequent years, the actions of Ted Kennedy that night were forgiven by the Democrats, as were subsequent actions as noted below. The movie is based on a book, Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Coverup, by Leo J. Damore, who committed suicide in 1995. Well, that is the official version, at least. The Kennedy...

One measure of how old we're getting is realizing how many voters today have no familiarity with the Chappaquiddick scandal. In July of 1969, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond with a young woman in the passenger seat and left the scene of the accident alone. Kennedy waited 10 hours to report it, and Mary Jo Kopechne died. This is one compelling reason why many older voters thought liberals sounded preposterous when they suggested Donald Trump's presidential campaign should be canceled over the "Access Hollywood" tape of him boasting of grabbing women in the crotch. Kennedy...

Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the most famous members of America’s most famous family, understood that he belonged as much to popular culture as to political culture. Now, nine years after his death, comes a movie about the event that, almost as much as the circumstances of his birth, established him in the tabloid pantheon: Chappaquiddick.

Brian De Palma’s 1981 political thriller Blow Out was the first movie that dared address the events conjured by the single term “Chappaquiddick.” It was a generational provocation. De Palma, whose comedies Greetings, Phantom of the Paradise, and Hi, Mom! were obsessed with the JFK assassination, advanced to make a deeply emotional film reenacting a well-known loss of life (a supposedly disposable female victim played by Nancy Allen) and national disillusionment. De Palma raised that tragedy, involving both a callous political cover-up and society’s general naïveté, into larger concerns: Blow Out’s daring aesthetic examination of a film technician’s (John Travolta)...

Chappaquiddick, the movie, is going to be released nationwide tomorrow, nearly 50 years after the actual incident nearly deep-sixed Teddy Kennedy’s political career. It might surprise you to know that there is an entire generation that has never even heard of Chappaquiddick let alone Mary Jo Kopechne1, including the movie’s thirty-something screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan. “This is our first screenplay; it was something that we had been really passionate about since we first heard about Chappaquiddick. Which, despite being reasonably politically engaged people, I hadn’t heard of it until 2008 during the primary for that year’s presidential election…We...

p>I won't run through the usual litany of misdeeds. If you don't already know them by heart, you'll commit them to memory eventually when you finally tire of liberals screeching at you for "hating women" while holding this guy up as a secular saint. (Chappaquiddick material is abundant online, but this post will get you up to speed on another legendary incident.) I've got to say, in all sincerity: I appreciate their brazenness in building a convention around the theme of a "war on women" while not only inviting Bill Clinton to be a headline speaker but having a video...

On April 6, a bombshell will hit America's theaters. That bombshell comes in the form of an understated, well-made, well-acted film called "Chappaquiddick." (Full disclosure: They advertise with my podcast.) The film tells the story of Ted Kennedy's 1969 killing of political aide Mary Jo Kopechne; the Massachusetts Democratic senator drove his car off a bridge and into the Poucha Pond, somehow escaped the overturned vehicle and left Kopechne to drown. She didn't drown, though. Instead, she reportedly suffocated while waiting for help inside an air bubble while Kennedy waited 10 hours to call for help. The Kennedy family and...

Unreal! Snowflakes need to be warned that a movie set in the Sixties has scenes with characters smoking cigarettes?

So the producer of the new film about Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal says some “very powerful people” tried to kill his movie. What a surprise — NOT! “Unfortunately,” Byron Allen told Variety last week, “very powerful people tried to put pressure on me not to release this movie. They went out of their way to try and influence me in a negative way.” Byron Allen is a TV comedian from the ’80s who has become a successful Hollywood mogul. He just bought what’s left of The Weather Channel for $300 million. By the way, he’s also black, so you would...

RUSH: Talk about how things have changed, in my first year, sometime between August of 1988 and September of 1989, there was a woman that called here, and she’s a big fan, and she was scared to death that I was going to be arrested for some of the things I was saying about the Kennedys, in public. And she was serious. We were playing a song, a parody of The Wanderer, by DiMucci, Dion DiMucci, called <>a href=https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/videos/?groupId=5&episodeId=0?autoplay=true#!/38/27071/The-Philanderer>The Philanderer, sung by Ted Kennedy, and this woman was scared to death I was gonna get arrested. And she was serious!...