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."
You know I am so positively worked up over these tow films, “2016: Obama’s America” and “Last Ounce of Courage”, I an going to e-mail Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and...many more TV & Radio Talk Hosts.....telling them to get on this right away and play up these flicks big time. You also gave me another excellent idea, contacting church groups, which, now, I will also undertake.
I am however, only one person. Could use some help from “our’ grass roots kindred spirits. Jim Robinson, can you help in any small way...and trumpart the causes of these two excellent movies.
Don't waste your time on this person. I suspect that "wideminded" is possibly one of those whose mind is so opened so wide that it lets in Dim spin. Read his/her posts: wideminded's posts
The comments are primarily "corrections" of conservative thought. Doesn't usually respond to direct posts. In other words, a concern troll.
-— Nothing in that flick which isn’t the cold, hard truth. If Obama sends his flying monkeys after Dinesh D’Souza, he’s even stupider & more arrogant than we even thought.-—
He’s more stupid and arrogant than I thought, four years ago. I knew he was a commie. But his childishness is breathtaking.
His attack is giving the movie a second life. But he’s so upset by anyone contradicting him that he can’t act in his own interest by keeping his mouth shut.
If Odumbo is reelcted, we can blame the media and school-propagandized youth. If, thanks be to God, we pull out this election, we need to revolt against these institutions.
D'Souza has a theory that a major way to understand Obama is by assuming that he is channeling his father's anti-colonial feelings. This doesn't make any sense to me since Obama apparently only spent a few days with his father in his entire life. Even most people who get to spend a lot of time with their parents do not end up thinking exactly like them. It just seems to me that this is the type of provocative but big-stretch idea that academics sometimes like to engage in.
I haven't seen the movie nor read "Root of Obama's Rage". I have heard D'Souza speaking on C-SPAN on multiple occasions. I do agree with some of the things he says.
‘Scuse me. “Dreams From My Father” was a book written by Obama.
If "Dreams from My Father" was about his father's dreams, you would have a major point. But as I recall, it is not.
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.
Doesn't that sound like one of those convoluted psychiatric theories that ultimately don't make sense?
I haven’t read the book and haven’t seen the movie, although I have read D’Souza essays on the subject, so I think I know his thesis, and I ask why not take Obama at his word when he says as clear as can be: “Dreams From My Father”? And is it about his father’s dreams or as other reviewers interpreted it, his dreams?
The comments are primarily "corrections" of conservative thought.
Looking back through my posts for which you kindly posted a link, I agree that I do often post with corrections (although that is not all I post). But I never correct people's thoughts, only factual misstatements. And it hardly ever happens that someone says that the corrected fact I have presented is wrong, because I do research on the things that I post.
I recognize that correcting people can sometimes be an annoying trait, although I try to be polite. And maybe I do sometimes get a little bit of sick pleasure out of having a hunch that something is wrong and then proving that I am correct.
One the other hand I feel that "conservative thought" can stand on its own. It shouldn't be necessary to support it with misinformation. I am not a person who feels that it is OK to lie about something in support of a greater cause except perhaps in very limited extreme circumstances.
Doesn't usually respond to direct posts.
I usually respond to direct posts although sometimes I don't immediately have time to do so, and when I finally do, it's not clear that it is worth continuing a discussion from days earlier. I'm not on here as much any more.
I tried to find out if you (arasina) had posted me and I didn't respond. I couldn't find one of these posts but if you remind me about it I'll answer you.
Which is more likely: that a child abandoned by his father will sometimes dream about or imagine him; or that the child will somehow totally absorb the father's way of thinking, which he has no way of knowing?
Stanley Ann kept Obama Sr’s. memory and theories alive for Obama (Li’l. Jr.). His father was a hero in his mind, just as all children want their parents to be heroes. They were her theories, too. She kicked Soetoro to the curb when he wouldn’t go along with her anarchist theories. Obama’s behavior toward our allies (Gr. Britain) has been embarrassing; he could wish for a day when he was worth Winston Churchill’s little finger! His kowtowing to the Muslims has resulted in them seeing him as WEAK - he IS - and in this disastrous current situation. - By his fruits, I know him well enough that I’m not voting for him, never voted for him, never shall vote for him.
At this point, my patience with giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, given the abuses of power and privilege he and Michelle have engaged in, is long ago at an end. DeSouza’s explanation of Obama’s actions which have resulted in the “Arab Spring” that has turned the Middle East over to the Muslim Brotherhood seem entirely plausible to me. Even if that’s not the explanation for Obama; something not so good IS the explanation for Obama - and I’m not content to twiddle my thumbs waiting for Wideminded to go along with it. DeSouza’s explanation is, I’d wager, certainly at least as plausible as Wideminded’s explanation.
One the other hand I feel that "conservative thought" can stand on its own. It shouldn't be necessary to support it with misinformation. I am not a person who feels that it is OK to lie about something in support of a greater cause except perhaps in very limited extreme circumstances
Do you put forth as much effort when it comes to "liberal thought"? How many of their lies do you refute? Were the circumstances in the killing of Ambassador Stevens "extreme enough" for the "greater cause" that you believe it is acceptable for this administration to lie to the American people?
You may be polite, but you're condescendingly so. I get a whiff of Eau de Obama in your posts.
Yes, you nailed it. The point isn’t that his father indoctrinated him but rather that he was indoctrinated by his mother and her family because they were big time commies who thought his father the polygamist revolutionary was a pretty cool dude.
The movie does an incredible job of using Obama’s own words and his family history to explain who he is.
I thought I knew all this before seeing the movie, but the movie taught me some new things and brought it all home very well. Get your friends to the theatres to see this thing.
Believe it or not I have never posted on a website devoted to liberal politics. I have commented in places where there are a lot of liberals and there I have also corrected factual errors as well as defended and explained conservative positions.
Were the circumstances in the killing of Ambassador Stevens "extreme enough" for the "greater cause" that you believe it is acceptable for this administration to lie to the American people?
I haven't followed every detail of this but as far as I can tell the exact circumstances are not yet clear. There could be some big smoking gun lie which has come out that I just haven't heard about.
Just focusing on the rape claims that were made on this website, it appeared to me that the initial reports of this were just guesses based on one picture. If this did happen it wouldn't surprise me at all, but let's say that the administration knew it all along. Not leading with that aspect of the story could be interpreted as respect for the deceased.
Someone once said that the job of an ambassador is to lie for his country. So maybe it follows that the State Department has this job as well. And of course a presidential spokesman will at least lie by omission. I would not want that type of job because I think it is in general bad to lie. When I spoke of special extreme circumstances I was thinking more of life and death not mere CYA.
I also don't think that it is OK to lie just because the other side does so.
Evidently you are a ruminator of the third degree.
Sometimes what you see as your greatest strength (being "wideminded") can actually be your biggest weakness.
Dreams FROM his father, from the man’s own mouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsobm33ATC0
D’Souza wins, I’m afraid.
I think he is channeling his mother's Communist feelings.
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