Quote whores on the campaign trail

As many have suspected, there seems to be something fishy about the poor box office showing of David Zucker’s right wing satire, “An American Carol.” After all, who doesn’t enjoy a hearty laugh at  such witty notions as Hollywood being renamed “Bin Laden City” with billboards pitching “Victoria’s Burkas” (okay, that is kind of funny). So, no surprise that the filmmakers report they have been getting complaints from would be patrons who were mysteriously sold the wrong tickets or otherwise misdirected by those crafty, left-leaning theater owners and exhibitors.

Seems like they might be taking a page out of the RNC playbook for disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters. Meanwhile, Zucker and company are “investigating.

Predictably, as the movies become more like elections, the elections are becoming more like movies or, more exactly,like movie promotion. Just the other night after I had turned on the mute button when the latest McCain ad came on I noticed something odd. The scare quotes that appeared over the demonic images of Obama and other “liberal Democrats” were attributed to “The Washington Times,” that Moonie-owned rag that’s a rubber stamp for the Repuublicans. That’s about as valid as a movie ad with a quote from Pete Hammond or Earl Dittman! Or more like one from David Manning, the fictitious critic invented by Sony Pictures a few years back to serve as a source for their own bogus encomiums.

Confirming my suspicions about this strategy is this boo boo in which the RNC put out an ad with a glowing review of her debate performance (“She killed. It was her evening. She was the star.”) with the attribution “Famous Person.” Like they hadn’t quite gotten around to getting anyone to put their name on the quote they had already written up. It's just like what happens at a movie junket when a publicist passes through a room full of "critics" with a list of quotes and asks which one they want to be blurbed for.

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