He may be detestable and profane, but at least, up to this point, he's been right. No wonder Jeb says he wants be like him.
Posted on 01/06/2015 9:41:34 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Before I came to dislike the movie “Selma,” I was deeply moved by it. Twice it brought me to tears. A crane shot of Martin Luther King Jr. leading thousands of demonstrators over the Edmund Pettus Bridge was one such moment, and so was the vicious attack on John Lewis — bravely, steadfastly walking into the beating he knew was coming. Today, Lewis is a member of Congress. Forever, he’ll be an American hero.
Too bad, though, that the movie had to go Hollywood on Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, as if from the grave, has bellowed his protest. In its need for some dramatic tension, “Selma” asserts that King had to persuade and pressure a recalcitrant Johnson to introduce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The movie also depicts Johnson authorizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to smear King and — as King himself suspected — try to drive him to suicide. It is a profoundly ugly moment.
But a bevy of historians say it never happened. It was Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, who authorized the FBI’s bugging of King’s hotel rooms. Yet, for understandable reasons, Kennedy appears nowhere in the film. By 1965, he was no longer the AG and, anyway, he remains a liberal icon. But LBJ — Southern, obscene and, especially when compared to the lithe Kennedy, gross of speech and physique — was made the heavy. He should get a posthumous SAG card. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Presenting a scripted drama or historical fiction as pure history is both bad history and bad aesthetics. Dramatic conflation of historical events is in fact aincient. Everything from The Illiad to the Icelandic Sagas to ‘War and Peace’ (which is also horribly inaccurate in its portrayal of the French in the Napoleonic Wars).
Your comment about musicals is pretty funny though.
Hey, I didn’t realize that slavery wasn’t all that bad. And that you evidently kinda sorta know what it was like. Thanks for the history lesson!
Hey, I didn’t realize that slavery wasn’t all that bad. And that you evidently kinda sorta know what it was like. Thanks for the history lesson!
As silly a comment as you've ever made, and that's saying something. Nobody [statistically] with any sense will be watching this film. ALL of them will believe it is historically accurate.
Strict adherence to historical record is not a criteria for drama and has never been at any time in the history of western civilization.
Talk about "where are you getting these rules!?"
When a "drama" purports to be history, its historical accuracy becomes a criteria for criticism. That has always been true "throughout the entire history of western civilization."
And by the way, Toto, "we aint in western civilization anymore."
He may be detestable and profane, but at least, up to this point, he's been right. No wonder Jeb says he wants be like him.
Hint: those FReepers are full of crap.
The Selma march or whatever it was so-called, amounted to nightly orgies, openly committing acts of a sexual nature, alcohol, drugs, and other deviant behavior in the surrounding fields or wherever they happened to be staying on any particular night. Why does no one ever mention that?
The “War on Poverty” was a brilliant plan. Not sure who thought it up, but is sure gave the Dems a locked in base of votes.
I’m speaking from the point of view of an informed viewer. If you assume everyone is a moron then there’s no point in discussing anything. I got those rules from a knowledge of literary history. Please furnish examples of these sainted novels and plays which are historical documents on par with ‘The World At War’. Historical Fiction is as old as fiction (the oldest fiction was probably historical fiction). I recently watched the 1830 opera ‘Anna Bolena’. Instead of enjoying the musical drama I guess I should have been checking off all the historical errors eh?
Superb! But how many of the post boomer generations are even going to recognize the face?
No, that was Jackson. But LBJ is right there with him.
“Vilifying” LBJ through historical inaccuracy, is like worrying about depicting Adolf Hitler as being cruel to animals when he was not. Everything else he did...
LBJ doesn’t even deserve to be called a “libtard.” He is a “libturd”. His mismanagement of the Vietnam War (along with MacNamara) was treasonous, his “Great Society” B.S. that he attempted even while trying to finance a war was lunacy.
To say nothing about having recalled carrier aircraft that were dispatched to aid the USS Liberty that was under attack (by the Israelis). And to rub salt in the wounds, Captain McGonagle of the Liberty was given his Medal of Honor by the Secretary of the Navy at the Washington Naval Yard (in an unpublicized ceremony) instead of being presented with it by LBJ at the White House. No loyalty to the men who died for the US.
Its a shame that the beagle that he picked up by its ears didn’t dig up LBJ’s corpse and take a leak on it. But then again, a dog would never be as disloyal and treacherous as LDJ.
Awww. Poor Richard doesn’t like his liberal heroes turned into movie villains. I don’t see him whining and crying as Ronald Reagan routinely gets turned into the living embodiment of Satan in any Hollywood movie. Johnson supported the Civil Rights Movement as a cynical political calculation, period.
I notice that you didn’t contradict me.
LBJ was a lying, cheating POS who never met an election he could not buy.
And the WaPo knows it.
May his body continue to rot, fester, and smell.
Why did LBJ refuse to run for a second term?
LBJ announced he would not run again on March 31, 1968 and the convention began the last week of August, that year. Remember, in those days the convention was more suspenseful, unlike today, where the nomination has already been secured.
Considering that the Democrats are the party of the KKK, yes, a brilliant but evil plan.
I was THIS CLOSE >< to mentioning Jackson.
No, I didn’t contradict you. Alabama State Troopers beating the sh*t out of a bunch of unarmed people walking across a bridge in suits and ties was one of the small steps that brought us to where we are today. Better?
lolol
Oh, but they can go way WAY off the charts crazy with why Lincoln was the worst prez ever.
He was the worst States Rights offender ever. Stuff like that.
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