The Necropolitan Sentinel

We talked a little about the movie Game Change and the psychology behind it in my last column. At Breitbart’s site they listed ten lies in the movie:

Lie #8: Game Change depicts Palin as unwilling to go on stage with Jeb Bradley, because he is pro-choice. At the 92 minute mark of the film, Palin tells a staffer, “there’s no way I’m going on stage with anyone who’s pro-choice.”

When HBO sends out statements telling people that they “ensure” the “historical accuracy” of the research they conduct, they’re lying. If this woman refused to go on stage with anyone because they’re pro-choice, why did she attend rallies with Joe Lieberman in Pennsylvania and Florida during the campaign? Why did she also allow the Los Angeles President of NOW to introduce her at yet another rally during the campaign in question? Palin doesn’t ostracize people for having a different opinion than she does. Frankly, that’s more in line with behavior I have come to expect from the left.

Note that the Breitbartians list the “Top Ten Lies,” clearly implying that there are more. John Podhoretz discusses the way Palin is treated in the film:

In this respect, Game Change handles Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore, blah) more charitably than you might expect. She is shown as a loving and caring mother with some kind of raw genius as a politician who is placed under almost unimaginable pressure at a moment’s notice when she is clearly unprepared for it. But in doing so, Strong and director Jay Roach exhibit not understanding but rather an almost excruciating condescension.

It’s much like when people used to say that Willie Mays was a “great natural ballplayer”—which implied that a black man wouldn’t be a serious strategic student of the game. It’s not possible that a non-Ivy League person might be tactically more brilliant than they are—thus, their skill must constitute a kind of “raw genius.” This is why the Democrats keep playing the “quitter” nonsense—as if her resignation wasn’t one of the single most brilliant political moves she made.

I think the Democrats would have loved to have her tied down in Alaska, still serving a term, and unavailable to appear on television or campaign across the country for all kinds of candidates, as she does now.

Nicole Wallace is another story. Stacy McCain found Podhoretz’s line about her to be the most telling:

Podhoretz makes an excellent point, and one which might have been extended to book length to address the Culture of Backstabbing that so dominates the Republican Party nowadays.

My limited experience with political operatives suggests that an awful lot of this kind of thing takes place. Operatives are much more concerned about their next paycheck, versus actual success. And when you can no longer make a living in the GOP, you can always turn to MSNBC, and make a career of bashing Republicans.

Ask Ms. Wallace.

As they said at the Crawdad Hole, “Sarah didn’t like her; Sarah didn’t trust her. Sarah has good instincts.”

Or maybe the Governor was just, you know—smarter than the people who employed her.

I watched a bit of Reliable Sources on Sunday; the makers of Game Change were on the show, defending it.

Generally, filmmakers are very relaxed doing interviews; it is the most common part of promoting a film, so they are old hands at this kind of thing. Yet I’ve never seen filmmakers less at ease then those two guys taking questions from Howard Kurtz.

I wonder why. (I really don’t, you know.)

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Speaking of filmmakers, for my “Saturday Diners” feature at my own blog I went to a place in West Boylston called the Country Kettle Cafe

I interviewed the owner, who by an odd coincidence is a godson of Milton Berle:

Funny, the different directions life takes you.

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There is a new show on ABC called GCB (short for “Good Christian Bitches”). As you might guess, any Christian characters are not treated with Christian charity. On the campaign trail Newt Gingrich raised a very good question concerning the show:

“Here’s to show you the biases of the elite media: look at the new show that’s on that has the word ‘Christian’ in it, and I want you to take the exact name, drop out ‘Christian’ and put in ‘Muslim,’” Gingrich said. “And ask yourself, is there any network that would have dared to run a show like that? And you know the answer is not one—because anti-Christian bigotry is just fine in the entertainment industry, but they have to be very protective of Islam.”

Well, you can’t blame them for being protective of Islam; if they hit Christians, they are unlikely to get their heads sawed off.

Gingrich made a good point in that case, but he hasn’t done all that well otherwise. Santorum destroyed all comers in Kansas, Romney took the American Islands, and the second round in Wisconsin. Newt didn’t finish better than third in any of those contests.

I really don’t see how Gingrich gets back in this race, but then that’s why we have elections.

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Oh, and Santorum’s daughter is headed to Hawaii to do some campaigning prior to Tuesday’s caucus. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

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In the Florida-7 race Alan Grayson managed to crash his Mercedes into a public transport bus. As Mediate said, the optics are pretty bad, but I’m actually surprised this doesn’t happen to more pols. I have a vivid memory of chasing Scott Brown’s vehicle with Robert Stacy McCain in the passenger’s seat as the former headed to a press conference and we tried to keep up with him.

I’m glad nobody was hurt in the Grayson incident. I think he’s an ass, but that’s no reason to wish him physical harm.

Anyway, head over to Mark Oxner’s site and kick in a few bucks.

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You may or may not know this, but I’m a big fan of the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes movies. A prime example of them is Sherlock Holmes and the secret weapon:

My son has been on my case to watch the modern version on BBC TV, called Sherlock, and set in modern times. On Sunday I finally managed a peek at it.

It is very obvious that the same writer for this series writes Doctor Who. Every habit of the character screamed, “11th doctor!”—but it was still worthwhile.

For those who don’t like the idea of Holmes taken out of his time, remember all but the first two of the 13 Rathbone Holmes movies took place during World War II, rather than the Victorian Era of the books.

In Afghanistan a horrible thing has happened: it appears that an American soldier simply cracked, took whatever grievance he had out on Afghan civilians—killing 15 of them—and then turned himself in.

I wonder if this will generate the same outrage as the Koran stuff? I know the slaughters in Syria haven’t among Muslims.

I’m not a big fan of the death penalty, but assuming the facts of the case are as we have heard them reported, this man is going to have to be tried and executed under military law. More importantly, the world has to see us do it.

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Finally, let’s close with three more stories from the Limbaugh wars:

Story #1: Some boycotts are more effective that others.

The Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner consists of a lot of the same people who have been calling for Rush’s scalp; the group booked comedian Louis CK, who is infamous for his misogynistic rants against Sarah Palin. Greta Van Susteren declared that she was not attending, and the publicity from that was enough for Mr. CK to make himself scarce, proving that the outrage of these people is rather flexible. The real comedy from all this comes from this reaction at Gawker, which called for a boycott of Greta:

Before we jump off into a hellish debate about conservative and liberal media bias, let’s all just remember one thing: Louis C.K. is a hilarious genius. And Greta Van Susteren has stopped him from entertaining us.

Did she? She simply said she wasn’t going to the event, and she explained why. That prompted him to cut and run. They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I suspect this is going to get worse for allies of the left before it gets better.

Story #2: Some liberals learn to count.

Legal Insurrection, which has been ground zero on the Rush wars notes that amid some big talk from Media Matters et al., some on the left can still count:

The dustup over Sleep Train, along with the blowback suffered by Carbonite over that company’s public denunciation of Limbaugh, demonstrates that the iconic radio talk show host is dealing from a position of strength in the campaign to deprive him of advertisers. One tends to prosper when one advertises on Limbaugh’s show. But cross him, and one will suffer.

The one overwhelming fact is that Limbaugh commands many millions of listeners. There is no evidence that any of them have stopped listening because of the kerfuffle with Sandra Fluke. Indeed, one suspects that Limbaugh has gained listeners, curious about what the fuss is all about. As long as the show maintains its listener base, it does not matter if any advertisers bail on Limbaugh for political reasons. There will always be others who will want to take their place, because it is good business to advertise on the most listened-to radio talk show on the planet.

That now-larger audience is not going anywhere, and in fact people who have never listened to Rush before are now being exposed to his opinions and wit. The backfire effect is astounding. Talk about the law of large numbers.

Story #3: The Bishops would approve.

The final irony of this entire episode comes not from NOW’s selective outrage in order to re-elect Obama, but from the web site that calls for a “sex strike.”

In light of the recent war on women, we are calling for a nationwide sex strike from April 28th to May 5th. All women should withhold from having sex with their partners.

This will help people understand that contraception is for women and men, because men enjoy the benefit of women making their own choices about when and if they want to get pregnant.

Once congress and insurance agencies agree to cover contraception, we will then resume having sex. Until then men will have to be content with their left hand.

Am I to understand that the result of Sandra Fluke’s attempt to force a Catholic college to provide birth control is a decision by some unmarried women to refuse to have sex until they do? Boy, that’s really going to upset Catholic colleges all over the nation.

If that’s not proof there is a God, I’d like to know . . . what is?

See you next time.