{"id":32322,"date":"2012-12-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32322"},"modified":"2012-12-11T08:03:03","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T14:03:03","slug":"he-who-writes-the-cultural-textbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32322","title":{"rendered":"He Who Writes The Cultural Textbook"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw Argo <\/em>a few months back. \u00a0As I noted at the time<\/a>, it was an excellent movie; engrossing, well-acted, and good enough that I forgot I was watching Ben Affleck.<\/p>\n

But as I watched it, it was pretty inevitable – something stuck in my craw.<\/p>\n

The narrative – especially the narrated backstory, taking us back to the CIA-engineered topping of the last pre-Shah president, Mossadegh – was suspiciously heavy on anti-American cant, but light on the role Jimmy Carter’s pusillanimity played in installing the mullahs to begin with.<\/p>\n

Andrew Klavan at PJM notes that this is part of a larger and more ominous trend<\/a>; Democrat-friendly Hollywood rewriting history in the only textbook that matters, anytmore, pop culture:<\/p>\n

This sort of Democrats-do-no-wrong and Republicans-do-no-right propaganda is subtle but pervasive in Hollywood historical movies. Consider Charlie Wilson\u2019s War, a strong Tom Hanks film that celebrated a Democrat\u2019s role in the Cold War. In both the film and the book, the right wingers who made Wilson\u2019s efforts possible are denigrated. And just the fact that Hollywood found practically the only 80\u2032s Democrat who did anything to help Reagan defeat the Soviets \u2014 whereas they\u2019ve never made a tribute to Reagan himself \u2014 is telling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And after that movie came out, do you remember how many leftybloggers suddenly became experts on the end of the Cold War – at least, Hollywood’s version of it?<\/p>\n

This is precisely what Conservatives have to learn to counter. The newspapers and history books may get it right \u2014 may \u2014 but it\u2019s the movies people will remember. I\u2019ve quoted him before, but I\u2019ll do it again. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson had his questionable actions rewritten as heroism in the dishonest film Fair Game, he said, \u201cFor people who have short memories or don\u2019t read, this is the only way they will remember the period.\u201d<\/p>\n

The imagination is the only nation where Democrats get it right. We need to conquer that country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Put another way – low-information voters’ votes count the same as the rest of ours. \u00a0We can’t keep ceding\u00a0them\u00a0to the Dems in perpetuity either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw Argo a few months back. \u00a0As I noted at the time, it was an excellent movie; engrossing, well-acted, and good enough that I forgot I was watching Ben Affleck. But as I watched it, it was pretty inevitable – something stuck in my craw. The narrative – especially the narrated backstory, taking us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32334,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32322\/revisions\/32334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}