Posted on 09/16/2012 5:06:06 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In what is perhaps any filmmaker's best-dream scenario, President Barack Obama has issued a public response to the movie "2016: Obama's America" through his White House team. Although the film is criticized on the president's website, co-producer Dinesh D'Souza welcomed the opportunity to talk about the movie's success at the box office even without much media attention – or an endorsement from Obama.
"I welcome Obama's critique of the film. He has probably figured out that he cannot ignore it any longer," said D'Souza in an interview published on Deadline.com.
"Obama's response is a characteristic mix of name calling and false allegations. Some of the claims he makes refer to things that are not even in the film. Elsewhere Obama just gets it wrong."
Obama's "Truth Team" blog post last week with the headline, "'2016: Obama's America' is a deliberate distortion of President Obama's record and world view," includes digs against D'Souza.
"A self-proclaimed expert on the President, D'Souza bases the film around his own past works, which were previously described as 'the worst kind of smear journalism,' and riddled with 'lazy' errors," according to the president's website. "The result is what Variety calls a 'cavalcade of conspiracy theories, psycho-politico conjectures and incendiary labeling' and what the L.A. Times labels a 'badly disguised and overly long attack ad.'"
D'Souza told The Christian Post at the time of the film's release in late July that the film is broken down into two parts. "One looks backward into Obama's past and the other looks forward into what we can expect over the next four years. There's roughly equal time in the movie to both themes. The movie is also based on two books – my earlier book, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), and a new book called Obama's America. The earlier book looks back and the new book looks forward, and the movie combines both," he said.
A dispute over the movie's facts is nothing new for D'Souza, who last week suggested that The Associated Press, a not-for-profit cooperative newswire service owned by 1,500 U.S. newspapers, apologize for a fact check story on his movie.
In the interview with Deadline he answered the question as to how he responds to the claim the film is racist.
"There have been some factual attempts to puncture the film but those I think have not worked. So now we have the sleezeball attack," D'Souza said. "Basically an attempt to blacken my name and imply the film is some sort of a birther type film, which it most emphatically is not, or to suggest that there is some racial element in the film. Whereas in reality I go out of my way to diffuse the race issue to say this is not about race.
"What Obama is about, in my opinion, is he is a Global redistributionist. He's pursuing reparations but it's not racial reparations. It's global reparations for the sins and conquest of [colonialism]," he continued in his answer to Deadline. "So the film is manifestly not racial. Now it does explain that part of Obama's appeal is that he, you know, offers White America the certificate of racial absolution, if you will. That he makes people feel good about voting for him, as if by doing that they are somehow transcending America's racial past. … But that hardly makes the film a racial film.
That's simply part of the film's intelligent analysis of what's going on out there."
The movie has earned more than $26.1 million as of Tuesday, making it the second-highest grossest political documentary ever. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the highest earner, taking in $119.2 million in 2004.
"The box office success is a reaction to a much larger issue of the American public not feeling that they know their president after four years," John Sullivan, the film's co-writer and director told CP on Wednesday. "We continue to be humbled by the response the film has gotten. Just today we learned of two groups taking out their own newspaper ads encouraging people to see the film. It is this type of effort, where someone will spend their own money to promote '2016' that demonstrates this film is touching a deep chord in America."
I agree, D’Souza is a great speaker. He narrates the film very well and his books are good solid conservatism. He is one of my favorites on the conservative side.
I haven’t watched this movie and I’m one of those people that thinks they know what’s in it...but I really believe this movie is damaging Obama more than people realize.
>> D`Souza and other movie producers and book authors who deign to offend 0bama
The precedent was recently set; offend America’s enemies, and the man with the pen is publicly excoriated and detained for questioning.
How about that, all you faux evangelists of the 1st Amendment?
A lot of D’Souza’s theories would make more sense if President Obama and his father were the same person.
Has Obama ever cut himself off from the Communist beliefs of his parents and grandparents, and the anti-colonialism of his alleged padre?
What do you mean? Have you seen the movie yet? (I haven't.)
See this compilation of Eastwood's GOP speech and the Superbowl ad...
A gritty gut wrenching indictment of Obambi policies in 2 mins and 39 seconds
Folks...this is the “real” movie that has the Muslims in the WH in an uproar, not the little trailer on the internet...lol. This has got to be peeing him off to no ends. I doubt that he has ever faced most of those demons from his childhood...now, before the entire nation....the emperor has no clothes.
bm
This da** president has time for everything except his job. Imagine that! Now, he’s a film critic too.
We went to see it a couple of weeks ago; and it was ON THE MONEY. De Souza was a patriot to do this film; and a patriot for not letting Obama bully him into pulling it.
Wouldn’t it be cool if churches organized (Barry’s favorite word) a trip to the movies after services on Sunday?
Or someone with money could make a “gift” of an afternoon movie to those in retirement homes—including busing them in?
Wish I had the dough to do it, but, alas, I’m living in Obama’s economy.
Uh. ‘Scuse me. “Dreams From My Father” was a book written by Obama. In fact, DeSouza shows that Obama has taken on the psychological burden that his father created as a sort of life’s tribute to a father that was based on the rage and hatred of the typical paranoid Marxist. Lolo Soetoro was a better example of a seemingly realistic man trying to make a living for his family. Dunham’s dedication to her Communist dogma overrode what might have allowed Barry to be normal and herself a less dramatic life.
It’s now sold 3.7 million tickets, which is more than An Inconvenient Truth. So you can see the difference between a cultural phenomenon and a media-created phenomenon. Unfortunately everyone in the country hears a whole lot more about what the media wants you to hear about even when less people care about it.
http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=documentary.htm&adjust_yr=1&p=.htm
However, 2016 is declining in popularity now. In the last week it made $4 million, but in the previous weeks it made $7 million, $9 million and $8 million. I wonder if people are just bored with the idea of Obama after seeing his ho-hum DNC speech. 2016 will hit position #4 on the all-time documentaries list, but if you adjust that list for inflation, it will probably stay where it is now at #5.
I used to talk to Dinesh at the Heritage Foundation’s “3rd Generation” lecture series in the early/mid 90’s. He was a bit younger with a boyish smile, but he was sharp as a Gensu knife, extremely astute about politics and ideology, and knew how to hit his target.
Glad to see that the “kid” has gotten better, like a fine, wine, with age.
Can’t wait to see what his has in store for the marxists in the new year.
Oh wait, the New Year (Jewish New Year) is here today. Dinesh, go to it! and Have a Happy Roshasanoh.
We should encourage the hosts of Fox News and the many radio Conservative talk show hosts to see it. Many of them do not begin to realize who BO really is.
“A lot of D’Souza’s theories would make more sense if President Obama and his father were the same person.”
There’s a reason why D’Souza narrows the scope of his discussion to exclude arguments over Obama’s place of birth or speculation concerning who sired him. D’Souza’s declared methodology is to accept everything Obama has said or written about himself as the literal truth, then proceed from there.
“A lot of D’Souza’s theories would make more sense if President Obama and his father were the same person.”
Please disregard my post. I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.
I have thought many times about the courage it took to make this movie...God bless him.
I bet Michelle is vacationing w/ Jarrett, I haven’t seen the ole dudette lately.
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