The campaign seems to be working. Early screenings for conservative bigwigs have reaped rave reviews. L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, which has been so successful in getting federal crackdowns on network “indecency,” declared the film “a masterpiece” and e-mailed 400,000 of his closest friends urging them to see it. That’s four million bucks in the box office right there! The National Review exclaimed “God bless Oliver Stone!” Conservative columnist Cal Thomas called it “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.”
And, of course, it’s completely apolitical.
That’s the problem, because since the Republicans hijacked 9/11 as its campaign mascot, the catastrophe has been politicized almost beyond recognition. Just ask Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, who has incorporated lurid images of the burning towers (computer enhanced, it turns out, not unlike a Hollywood movie) and portraits of the 9/11 hijackers in his TV ads to defame his Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown’s stance on terrorism. And what’s to be made of the US District Court of Alexandria’s decision to release more than 1200 exhibits, some gruesome and graphic, from the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, to the Internet (a first for any court, as they themselves admit). I’m just bracing for what Karl Rovian stunt is in store for us on September 11, 2006.
With the upcoming November elections poised to determine the future of Congress, what better gift could Republicans ask for than a popular Hollywood movie that conjures — without context or analysis but with maximum emotional manipulation — the image that for five years has granted them power and impunity? Ironically, the film that Stone claims to be totally without politics might be the one that proves the most politically influential of all.
On the Web
World Trade Center: http://www.wtcmovie.com/
Loose Change: http://www.loosechange911.com/
