Today we have two hilarious and related items:
First, we go to Tinseltown.
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Montana's own Gerald Molen, the producer of the right-wing documentary "Obama: 2016," is complaining that his film has been snubbed by the Academy of Motion Pictures. The film, alas, was not nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Documentary, as Molen thought it should be.
I can't imagine why. Surely the Academy overlooked the high quality of this piece of fine art.
This film, to refresh your memory, claims that Obama is a kind of Manchurian candidate, a militant African who has worked his life to achieve power in America so that he can now punish white people for the evils that white colonialist visited upon his African ancestors. Now that he is in his second term, the film posits, he will put in place the final solution, taking things from white people and giving them to dark people. If you are interested in getting a flavor for the movie, just watch this trailer, and get the basic idea as you watch shot after shot of hordes of impoverished dark-skinned people, taking to the streets, marching and rioting.
How could such a film not be nominated for an Oscar? It's hard to believe.
The film got lots of ink during the 2012 presidential campaign. Molen thought that his film would help win the election for Romney, and timed the release of the film accordingly. But like Karl Rove, whose racist theories of how to win an election expired some time around 2004, Molen's film probably backfired if anything. Inciting racist anger is no longer a viable strategy to win a national election. America has wised up, and the electorate also is a little less white than it used to be.
For being snubbed, Molen, who lives up in Kalispell, is accusing the Oscar committee of "liberal bias." He says that his movie should have received a nomination simply because it grossed more money than any of the other documentaries that were nominated.
Meanwhile, the director and writer of the movie, and the author of the book on which it is based, has been caught with his pants down.
"Obama:2016" was written and directed by Dinesh D'Souza, who based the film on based on his book entitled "The Roots of Obama's Rage." D'Souza is (or was) also the President of King's College in New York, an evangelical university.
But now, the University has fired him. It turns out that D'Souza, who is 51 and married, made the mistake of bringing his mistress--a 29-year-old bleach-blond--on the road with him to an evangelical conference in South Carolina, where D'Souza gave the keynote speech. But unlike in Las Vegas, what happens at the evangelical conference does not stay at the evangelical conference. And so the University fired him for violating its mission statement, which is a “commitment to the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview.”
As the New York Times recounts the incident at the evangelical conference, D'Souza got busted when a reporter for a Christian news service, who was covering the conference and the speech, saw D'Souza checking into his hotel with the young blonde. The reporter called D'Souza to inquire who the woman was.
Later that day, when he realized that the story was about to be published, D'Souza hastily filed to divorce his wife. He then tried to argue, in the press, that he did not violate Christian principles and thus should not have had to leave his job.
Cross-posted at the Montana Cowgirl Blog.