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A President Fit for Hollywood
Steyn On-line ^ | February 16 2019 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 02/16/2019 4:05:16 PM PST by Twotone

These are strange times in America, with Andrew McCabe and the senior leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice living out their own Seven Days in May fantasy, except that in the Deputy Director's cut it's already halfway to Seven Years in May. We shall leave that disturbing convergence of Tinseltown and the Swamp for another day, but on this Presidents Day weekend I thought we'd take a look at the kind of president Hollywood lefties come up with when they're given free rein to design their ideal. There was a fashion for such films during the Clinton years, when a liberal president somewhat over-endowed with all too human flaws prompted a slew of movies with presidents of Clintonian bent but shorn of his appetites.

As it happens, the first big presidential hit of the Clinton years was really a Bush holdover. Ivan Reitman's Dave (1994) is a story about a lookalike and also a lookalike story: it looks a lot like The Prisoner of Zenda, but it dumps the most potent aspects of Anthony Hope's Ruritanian adventure — a gentleman adventurer torn between honor and love, and a princess torn between her duty and her heart. Because, of course, this is Washington, not Zenda. Instead, Dave starts with President Mitchell, a Bush-like stiff, requiring a night off for an extramarital legover and the wily Chief of Staff signing a doppelgänger to cover for him at a dinner on the rubber-chicken circuit. The doppelgänger, a pliable nobody called Dave, is told it's for national security reasons. Both the President and the nobody are played by Kevin Kline, so it's fun to watch.

Unfortunately President Mitchell over-exerts himself during the sheet-crumpling and has a stroke...

(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: andrewmccabe; christopherwray; jamescomey; lisabarsoomian; lisapage; marksteyn; michaelcohen; movies; perjury; peterstrzok; robertmueller; rodrosenstein; steeledossier

1 posted on 02/16/2019 4:05:16 PM PST by Twotone
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To: Twotone

All the movies that I have seen with a president are passably entertaining except Jamie Fox. He can’t act and he is lousy as himself.

(Politics aside)


2 posted on 02/16/2019 4:17:25 PM PST by spintreebob
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To: Twotone

This added at the top of the article:

Programming note: In a couple of hours’ time Mark will be joining Kat, Tyrus and his fellow Torontonian Dr Debra Soh on “The Greg Gutfeld Show”, live across America at 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific. We hope you’ll tune in!


3 posted on 02/16/2019 4:18:14 PM PST by map
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To: Twotone

That would be Ronald Reagan.


4 posted on 02/16/2019 4:23:59 PM PST by Kirkwood (Zombie Hunter)
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To: Twotone

I saw Steyn speak several years ago at a Synagoge near me. He’s far better in person than he is on Fox News or filling in for Rush.


5 posted on 02/16/2019 4:25:44 PM PST by Gay State Conservative (Mitt Romney: Bringing Massachusetts Values To The Great State Of Utah.)
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To: Twotone
Programming note: In a couple of hours' time Mark will be joining Kat, Tyrus and his fellow Torontonian Dr Debra Soh on "The Greg Gutfeld Show", live across America at 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific. We hope you'll tune in!...should be worth watching.....
6 posted on 02/16/2019 4:31:23 PM PST by Intolerant in NJ
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To: Twotone

***signing a doppelgänger to cover for him ***

Sounds like a takeoff on THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT with George M. Cohan and Jimmie Durante.
Favorite scene...Durante is giving a pep talk, told to cease, and he looks at the rear end of the police horse, whose end morphs into a politician giving a speech inside..


7 posted on 02/16/2019 4:47:58 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Gay State Conservative

Mark Steyn’s one liners & ad libs are priceless. `Dry English wit’ doesn’t begin to describe them.

For a female version, listen to Katie Hopkins, “the most hated woman in Britain”.


8 posted on 02/16/2019 5:08:33 PM PST by elcid1970 (My gun safe is saying, "Room for one more, honey!")
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To: Twotone
At any rate Douglas gives a fine sober performance of a White House widower. Alas, he's surrounded by spinners and fixers and focus-groupsters who analyze things only in terms of whether it'll add two points to his approval rating among soccer moms in Ohio. Until, that is, a lobbyist called Sydney shows up and he falls in love. No, not Blumenthal. This Sydney is Annette Bening, playing an environmental lobbyist who stiffens President Shepherd's resolve: is that a firm set of principles in your pocket or are you just pleased see me? As it happens, both. The American President was a therapy exercise for disillusioned Hollywood liberals midway through Clinton's first term, when they were just beginning to realize he was a trimmer and triangulator who didn't care about anything except how much action he was getting. Douglas can't quite throw off the whiff of liberal condescension, but Richard Dreyfuss does such a good job as evil GOP cartoon villain Senator Bob Rumson that, as with Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, I'm sure a lot of us were rooting for the baddie.

That flick was the biggest pile of manure to come out of Hollywood in twenty years.

9 posted on 02/22/2019 6:52:25 AM PST by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel.)
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