Now we know one more of the reasons for the staged raid!
Opening on October 12, 2012: The Obama Is Totally Awesome blockbuster movie
posted at 1:30 pm on August 7, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
The way the economy has turned out since the launch of Obamanomics, some people speculate that the only argument Barack Obama might have in 2012 is, “I got Bin Laden.” Apparently, Hollywood has the same worries. That may be why a new film about the mission that killed al-Qaeda’s master has an opening date that comes three weeks before the election — a coincidence that even Maureen Dowd can’t buy:
The White House clearly blessed the dramatic reconstruction of the mission by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker — so vividly descriptive of the Seals’ looks, quotes and thoughts that Schmidle had to clarify after the piece was published that he had not actually talked to any of them.
“I’ll just say that the 23 Seals on the mission that evening were not the only ones who were listening to their radio communications,” Schmidle said, answering readers’ questions in a live chat, after taking flak for leaving some with the impression that he had interviewed the heroes when he wrote in his account that it was based on “some of their recollections.”
The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.
Well, the project is off to a great start. The writer has already been caught fibbing about his sources. The combination of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal worked well in The Hurt Locker (I interviewed Boal twice before the film opened) and gave a fair presentation of the military, in most estimations; this film will almost certainly be worth the price of the ticket. That is, it will be if the film focuses on the bravery and accomplishment of the SEALs (an acronym that the NYT manages to get wrong in Dowd’s column — it’s not “Seals”) and not on Obama. Its opening date signals a different intent.
Dowd, however, notes that the “blessing” in this case is extraordinarily self-serving for this particular administration:
The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.
The entertainment industry seems pretty worried about Obama’s prospects, and they should be. This time, money won’t be enough. They need to make a two-hour campaign ad, apparently. For a President who rudely and ignorantly scolded the Supreme Court over its Citizens United decision, Obama sure seems happy to take advantage of it, doesn’t he?
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