Couldn’t See This Coming…

Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is raising eyebrows in all the wrong ways:

The Iron Lady, a new biopic starring Meryl Streep as Baroness Thatcher, has drawn an angry response from friends over its portrayal of the former prime minister as a lonely figure sliding into dementia.

In the opening scenes, a frail Lady Thatcher is seen shuffling into a corner shop to buy a pint of milk and expressing shock at 21st-century prices.

Back at her Belgravia home, her security team fret that she has left the house unsupervised.

Another scene shows her oblivious to the fact that her husband, Sir Denis, is dead. She imagines him to be in the room and conducts conversations with him, before revisiting her glory years in a series of flashbacks.

The article goes on to note that Thatcher is portrayed as being a strong leader in re the Falkllands, the coal miner’s strike, and so on.

But it’s sorta fleshing out my theory that the only way the liberal media – and Hollywood is a part, maybe the biggest part, of that media – can portray conservatives is as either caricatures (see every “conservative” that’s turned up on Law and Order for the past 15 years), effective leaders with dark sides that counterbalance or negate it all (see the TV “Reagan” biopic a few years back) or jokes.

16 thoughts on “Couldn’t See This Coming…

  1. Dang, Mitch. Don’t tell the Hollywood Liberati that we see right through the portrayals of Conservatives like Thatcher, Reagan and even W Bush as do-nothing dumbbells who are also at the same time conninvingly clever and accomplished in their evil doing. It is of great use in our mocking of these people who can hold such contradictory and false ideas in their tiny little brains.

  2. And the most recent mini-series produced by the notoriously conservative Hubbard family painted the Kennedys as flawless. And who would have predicted that?

  3. Never saw the mini-series. I rarely watch anything of the sort.

    But I just gotta ask:

    notoriously conservative Hubbard family

    Um – huh?

    I have a pretty detailed response to that, being a former Hubbard employee after all. But I just have to ask – how are they “notoriously conservative?”

  4. Mitch, if you really can’t even acknowledge the Hubbards are conservative Republicans, then there’s really no place to go. Look at their history. I’m not trying to cop out, I just don’t have the time to do a “detailed response” either.

  5. I’ll take that as a non-answer.

    I don’t have time for a “detailed answer” either, but to call the Hubbards “conservative” is way too simplistic. You say “look at history”; I’ve not only been “looking at” it for over 25 years, I lived it for a bit. I was a Hubbard employee; I’ve written about the regional media industry since long before I had a blog, and in particular about the Hubbard operation.

    Stanley III donates money to Republicans. His father donated a bunch to Rudy Perpich when I was working for them. I think it’s fair to say Ginny Morris (Stanley’s sister) is “moderate” at the very rightmost.

    The local left got the victorian vapors because KSTP-TV actually approached some of the issues in the last gubernatorial election from a perspective of balance, unlike Channels 4 and 11. To the regional left, “balance” is a sign of a right wing conspiracy.

    And that same “Hubbard” family blew up the conservative talk lineup at KSTP-AM – one of the most profitable media operations in the Twin Cities, a veritable license to print money in its heyday Their converting to sportstalk last year was just the last step in a series of concerted actions that started in 2004 with Morris and her people touting a consultant’s report that said “Conservative Talk is dead!”. Word from inside Hubbard was it was all because Ginny Morris was uncomfortable with the “conservative” label.

    (And no, conservative talk was not “dead”; along with sports and ethnic radio, it’s the most profitable format there is. So it wasn’t a business decision; Morris has been pouring money into ChickTalk 107 for a decade, and losing most of it, while KSTP-AM was carrying the entire operation, the TV station and both the FMs. If it was a business decision, it was an awful one).

    So calling the Hubbards “conservative” is simplistic labeling at best; to be fair, if the DFL and left didn’t have simplistic labeling, they would be mute.

    Anyway, Ears, I’m really not the guy to condescend to, or resort to local lefty conventional wisdom with, on this subject. Just saying.

    And no, that wasn’t the detailed answer.

  6. C’mon Mitch, casting Greg Kinnear as JFK must have been some kind of plot. I didn’t see the mini-series but from the review I read, the reviewer said sometimes Kinnear did JFK’s Hahvad accent and sometimes he didn’t – often in the same scene. If that isn’t proof that the Hubbard family is ‘notoriously’ conservative, I don’t know what more you need or as noted above, there’s really no place to go.

  7. Let’s see…Stan Hubbard?
    http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/stanley-hubbard.asp?cycle=10
    Ginny Morris?
    http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/114246754.html

    Mitch, forgive me but it’s hard not to be condescending when a guy can’t even distinguish fact from opinion. But I guess your ramblings about your career at KSTP is definitive proof? Hey, at least I’ll give ya credit, it’s rocket science compared to the post after yours.

    It’s real simple……..if ya don’t like condescending, try not being so simple and predictable.

  8. Ears,

    Sorry, big guy. You are the one that’s simple and predictable.

    You’ve latched onto an article that said Morris manages a company with a history of favoring conservative politics. You got anything about her?

    I do. But I figure I’ll let you scurry about for a bit.

    And do you know which Stanley Hubbard you’ve linked to, Ears? Because there are two still living (leaving aside the late Grandpa Stanley, who founded the company, and who gave heavily to both parties. As did Junior_. Which one’s records do you have? I’m guessing you don’t know.

    It’s real simple; if you want to take on an air of condescenscion, earn it. You have not.

    So until you do, I’ll just call on you for disconnected factoids that fit your apparent agenda. Deal?

  9. Mitch, forgive me but it’s hard not to be condescending when a guy can’t even distinguish fact from opinion.

    So Mitch’s opinion about Ginny Morris’s politics is opinion, while Neal Justin’s opinion is probative?

    Put it this way, Ears — Pat Reusse is on KSTP these days, while Jason Lewis, Bob Davis and Dave Thompson are not. If you like facts, it helps to pay attention to the fact pattern. Maybe Ed Sharockman or Lonnie Warwick can explain it to you sometime.

  10. Earsall Mackbee said:

    “forgive me but it’s hard not to be condescending when a guy can’t even distinguish fact from opinion”

    An unintentional self reference? Yeah.

  11. “Hey, at least I’ll give ya credit, it’s rocket science compared to the post after yours.”

    No it is not. I’ve worked on neurovascular stents and I can tell you that’s not even rocket science. But I also designed vertical missle launchers for the navy and I can certainly tell you that’s not brain surgery. 😎

  12. I wonder if Ears really read the piece he linked on Ginny Morris. The only mention of conservative that I find (F3 is your friend) is “Both companies have a history of favoring conservative politics, investing in community service and exploring ways to make a profit on the Internet” and “Sizable cash reserves and a conservative growth strategy help explain why both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have committed to providing debt financing for the acquisition.” No mention at all of Ms. Morris’s personal politics.

    As far as the “companies… favoring conservative politics”, liberal talk radio is not a money making strategy. Certainly Ms. Morris tried to put liberal voices on KSTP (Nick(olai “no monkey”) Coleman(offski) comes to mind.) I think the collective sound of radio presets being hit for other stations ended that painful experiment.

  13. Loren,

    I’m pretty sure Ears googled “Ginny Morris Conservative”, or something similar, and found this – and didn’t bother reading further.

    If he had, he might have noticed that not only does it not describe Ms. Morris’ politics, but at the very least fails to contradict my story. KSTP-AM had a *history* of conservative programming. It’s true; Rush Limbaugh – and then Soucheray, Lewis and Bob Davis – dragged them from the Arbitron two-point dungeon into contention as one of the top-rated stations in town, and from the sales block to carrying the entire chain, as I noted above.

    But as I noted – from people I knew at Hubbard – Morris was profoundly uncomfortable being “the conservative station”. Sources inside KSTP used to tell me that after some of Jason Lewis’ legendary fire-breathing conservative jeremiads, Morris would yell at him “we have to LIVE in this town!”. She’s no more conservative than Gary Eichten.

    Sorry, Ears. You are not qualified to condescend on this issue. Or any other, near as I’ve seen.

  14. Well, I remember listening in the day. And it seemed that whenever Soucheray, or even Lewis had a day off, all the station wanted to do was put on some local lib such as No-monkey Coleman or Pat Reusse to fill the air. It always seemed that management was uncomfortable with what they had created.

    Probably because they were uncomfortable. They had taken a flier on booking Limbaugh into three hours of programming, with the only cost being giving up ad slots that they were having trouble selling anyway. Then the tiger took off and they were riding on it’s back and hanging onto it’s ears for all it was worth! History and money were then made.

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