At some point during those two hours in the dark — maybe the attack on the FBI as a rogue outfit using trickery to frame innocent people, or the depiction of journalists as amoral enemies of the people, or the swelling agitprop of applause lines about common folks under attack “from our two most powerful forces — the United States government and the media” — that I’d began to wonder if I’d made a wrong turn....He's so afraid people will see this movie and be influenced. Whatever you do, don't look there! Does that even work?
Rarely have I seen a film that was so “of the moment” — but in the worst possible way.
In the time of a reality-TV president, Eastwood seamlessly blends facts with outright fiction to create a narrative that transcends truth. To get viewers riled up about “fake news," it fabricates a story. Yet, in the end, in making this movie intended to crush any remaining public faith in the news media, Eastwood has unintentionally reminded us of why democracy requires a functioning free press....How does Bunch know what was in Eastwood's head? I haven't seen the movie, but if it makes us anguish over fake news, why wouldn't that mean that Eastwood longs for sound, professional journalism? Hey... is Bunch doing fake news? So much of the anti-Trump news these days is assertion about what Trump intended. And here's Bunch, making assertions about what Eastwood intended.
[T]he film was green-lighted in 2014 when the notion of a President Trump would have been a crazy script no studio would touch....So... the film became more timely... and if only that had been predicted, it would never have been made. A left-leaning movie that synchs up with current events is praised as visionary. You've got to go see it, because it's more relevant now, an import warning, a valuable opportunity to heighten awareness. But to synch up by chance with current events is just horrible when the viewpoint seems right wing. (Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?)
Now, there is a huge problem about this movie that has nothing to do with left and right wing politics. A real-life reporter — Kathy Scruggs — is portrayed as sleeping with a source in order to get a story. I'm reading that this is not something she actually did. This isn't just a character who seems to be based on Kathy Scruggs, but a character actually called "Kathy Scruggs" in the movie. How could that happen?! The movie is supposedly a warning against fake news, but it engages in fake news. Everyone wants to spice up the story. Throwing sex into it is the oldest, lamest tactic.
Scruggs died in 2001, so maybe the filmmaker is counting on that as protection from a defamation lawsuit. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Scruggs's employer at the time) is asking for a written disclaimer to appear on this film and is threatening a lawsuit if that's not done.
Here's an article by Benjamin Lee in The Guardian that goes into more detail on the problem of sexualizing Scruggs:
In reviews of the film, Wilde’s portrayal of Scruggs has been referred to as an “aggressive, unethical” reporter possessing a “sultry greediness” who was “ruthless, manipulative” and who “all but looks at the camera and says, ‘I am the bad guy in this movie’”. It’s a raucous, vampish, overtly sexual performance that sees Scruggs complain about covering the Olympics, calling it a “fucking nightmare” while complaining that it doesn’t get her “hard” without any crime occurring....The filmmaker embodies the nefarious FBI in a fictional character played by the actor central casting would send over for the role of fuckable male. Meanwhile, the main character in the movie is challengingly unattractive.
The offending scene sees Scruggs slithering up to [Jon] Hamm’s fictional FBI agent in a garishly lit bar, seeking a scoop. After being stonewalled, she claims she already knows the bureau is looking into somebody via sources. “Well Kathy, if you couldn’t fuck it out of them then what makes you think you can fuck it out of me?” he says.
... After he reveals that the FBI is looking into Jewell, she calls him a “fat fuck who lives with his mother.”...
The film is based on both a 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner and The Suspect, a recently released book written by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen. Alexander was the US attorney for Georgia at the time of the bombing while Salwen was covering the event for the Wall Street Journal and they conducted over 180 interviews for their research. The pair acted as consultants for the film, drawing on their vast knowledge of what really happened.Oh! There were rumors... and she was a public figure. It's less a question of tort law than filmmaker ethics, hypocrisy, and the usual Hollywood sexuality that can be decried as sexism.
In the book [The Suspect... co-written by Kent Alexander who was US attorney for Georgia at the time of the incident] Scruggs is described as “a delightful throwback to the 1930s newspaper wars” who could be seen as rude, bombastic and wild but also authentic and hard-working. “Kathy never quietly entered a room, she exploded into it”.... One of her tactics was using her sexuality to flirt with cops at a local bar after hours but rumours that she would sleep with sources were just that.
Scruggs would wear short skirts and low-cut blouses in a male-dominated office but any reputation that arose as a result was based on a regressive assumption....
After the bombing, Scruggs worked tirelessly to secure a lead, eventually finding an APD source who revealed that Jewell had become the new focus, a shift based both on inevitability (even in the film, Hamm’s fed barks that “You always look at the guy who found the bomb just like you look at the guy who found the body”) and a mounting collection of concerning yet ultimately circumstantial evidence (Jewell had found himself in hot water for impersonating a police officer in the past and lost a security job for alleged threatening behaviour while he was reportedly a user of a site that featured the notorious bomb recipe-containing Anarchist Cookbook)....Authors of the book the movie was based on put out this statement:
“Scruggs secured her Jewell scoop from a law enforcement source. We have been asked repeatedly whether we found evidence that Scruggs traded sex for the story. We did not. Though this exchange may be depicted differently in the movie, Richard Jewell, we urge everyone to see this excellent film which conveys the story of Jewell, the unsung hero, in a compelling, dramatic and entertaining manner.”And here's what the actress, Olivia Wilde, said:
“I think it’s a shame that she has been reduced to one inferred moment in the film,” Wilde said. “It’s a basic misunderstanding of feminism as pious sexlessness. It happens a lot to women; we’re expected to be one-dimensional if we are to be considered feminists. There’s a complexity to Kathy, as there is to all of us, and I really admired her.”
She also criticised people for condemning a project that allows “for a woman to be impure” without addressing the factual issues at hand.
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109 comments:
Eastwood is a real life Man With No Name.
Althouse- more thorough than the Siskel & Ebert duo were in the day!
Fictional aspects of a based on true story tale get grief when they don’t conform to the usual leftie narrative. What a surprise. Nobody’s whinging about the myths of climate armageddon in all the climate armageddon movies, we’re encouraged to view the narratives as truth. Otherwise seemingly intelligent people have accepted them as truth.
Good for the good guys they’re encouraging loathing of the media and a corrupt FBI through a despicable character.
Is this worse than the movie "The Truth?"
What is Prez Trump lying about?
Yesterday, we discovered that the initial "lie" that supposedly proved Trump was a raving, crazy liar, that the FBI spied on him without cause out of political animosity, is undeniably true.
Trump's lies, over time, always seem to be the truth and it's the media that is deliberately lying.
I have the feeling we'll discover over time that Trump is telling the truth about the Bidens' extortion and bribery rackets and that the media is lying about that, too.
Could be that 3 years of deliberate lying by the media about Trump has something to do with loss of "public faith in the news media."
I used to read and believe most of what I read in the NY Times and The New Yorker. That's gone.
Sleeping with a source? Never Happen. It's A Wonderful Life influence anybody??? Just asking. I'm so old I remember... "better 100 guilty go free than one wrongly convicted imprisoned". Are we all in the cloud with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.'s screenwriters who were likely predating Harvey W's escapades with the script girls???
Pass the Adderall please.
It sounds good to me. I'd assume she's sleeping around just from being a reporter.
I like the spectacularly empathy-deaf and job-focussed lady detective in "The Bridge," while you're waiting for Jewell on DVD. In Swedish or possibly Danish with subtitles.
From s1 episode 1, who knows where it goes. They also lay pipe for some uninteresting subplots. So a threat and a promise.
Thurber did a New Yorker essay describing how the New Yorker worked, with it army of fact-checkers and proofreaders, in which every fact was wrong.
Scruggs would wear short skirts and low-cut blouses in a male-dominated office but any reputation that arose as a result was based on a regressive assumption....
So, she would pretend to seduce men to try to make fools out of them and gain advantage over them.
This is less blameworthy than actually sleeping with them?
Looks worse to me. "Whores who don't put out," was how my late wife described this type.
If there movie makes the Left look bad, we must find fault with it, no matter how trivial.
The feminist bitch trying to bait me into sexually harassing her was a stock figure in the office over the last 20 years of my career.
Beaver shots and tit shots. Fishing to see if I'd swallow the bait.
At that time, my wife was still alive and she filled me in on the game and what these bitches were trying to do.
I became immune to the game.
The feminist bitch playing this game with me was invariably a fag hag allied with the gay men in the office against the white hetero men. And, here's the most infuriating part... the bitch was usually bitching and moaning about being single and alone and whining that no man wanted her.
Returning to politics after debating an empty chair, Eastwood wanted to smear the American media, female journalists, and the FBI.
I don't recall the AJC providing disclaimers in its coverage of Richard Jewell.
Bunch is the looniest lefty of all the far left journalists.
Should have named the journalist character Ali Watkins.
Kathy is dead, no harm.
"Eastwood wanted to smear the American media, female journalists, and the FBI."
In view of what has/is happening in Washington DC these past three plus years what is wrong with that. Someone with a loud voice should.
"Whatever you do, don't look there! Does that even work?"
"Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor!"
Anyone who was paying attention during the Atlanta Olympics saw an innocent man vilified on the say-so of "profilers" who might as well been using a Ouija board. And the Pravda press fell right in line.
Of all the criticisms I can imagine of a fictionalized movie account (as opposed opposed to a documentary, which also can and will be fictionalized to a degree) of an incident like this, this has to be the silliest and most diversionary. Kathy Scruggs in real life was like this: "Scruggs would wear short skirts and low-cut blouses in a male-dominated office...One of her tactics was using her sexuality to flirt with cops at a local bar after hours but rumors that she would sleep with sources were just that."
Well, what would the Hollywood dream factory do with a character like that? They might show her wearing short skirts and low-cut blouses and flirting with an unreasonably studly-looking FBI agent in a bar. The horror! The horror!
Why can't they have been historically accurate the way they were in the underground scene in "Darkest Hour"? Or what about Oliver Stone's "JFK"? All the best scenes in that one were made up and potentially libelous. And I watched "The Irishman" last week. Full of lies, starting with the fact that Jimmy Hoffa was a Pennsylvania Dutch guy from Indiana who lived his whole adult life in Detroit, not an Italian guy from Brooklyn, as Pacino played him. I'm sure "Bombshell" is full of truth and accuracy.
There is one problem with this movie from Will Bunch's point of view: it portrays the mores and the mentality of the press as venal, opportunistic, cruel, and stupid. Well, Mr. Bunch ought to go rent "Ace in the Hole" for Billy Wilder's take on the press, and then rent "The Front Page/His Girl Friday/Chicago" to see himself as others see him. But he won't do that. He's much more likely to rent "All the President's Men" and practice self-abuse in his lonely little room. It makes him feel...alive!
Richard Jewell was smeared by the lying Media. They ran with that story and ruined his life. Very similar to what the Media does to Conservatives now, and especially innocent people like Carter Page. The FBI is what it is. I no longer trust any of the elite agencies when I see what they almost got away with if Hillary won. We would have NEVER known their deception.
Returning to politics after debating an empty chair, Eastwood wanted to smear the American media, female journalists, and the FBI.
@Gary, when you’re “smeared” by someone telling the truth, perhaps you ought to consider mending your ways. If Kathy Scruggs herself didn’t get scoops on her back, and keep in mind that every now and then “rumors” are actually true, plenty of female reporters have been found to have done just that.
Hey, Gary! Will Bunch would like to talk to you. It sounds like you have the inside scoop!
Gary--go rent JFK. That will open your eyes. A conspiracy so vast...
You'll swallow it hook, line, and sinker, because, as President Trump knows, there's a sucker born every minute.
The story wasn't "fake news". The FBI did think Jewell was the suspect, and the newspaper reported that. Problem was, FBI was wrong and, perhaps, the newspaper was unwise to publish, but they published facts, not fake news.
When I first read a review of the movie and learned how the Scruggs character was portrayed I looked at it as a statement by Eastwood: putting a little fake story line about the media in A movie about how fake news created by the media ruined a man’s life. Sort of putting the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, with the intent of getting reactions from the media like this. Let the Bunch’s of the media world see what it is like.
People on the actual left have been complaining about the news media forever. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent came out over 30 years ago, and for years the left was warning about the dangers of ever-increasing media consolidation and conglomeration.
This isn't a fake news problem.
It is an arrogance, stupidity, venality problem. And the Tribunes of the People (the press) will consistently fall in line with a narrative that has some real problems without questioning it for a variety of reasons based in human nature. Then, add an leftish ideological bias, and you get American Pravda.
I have a friend who emigrated from the Soviet Union who says that no one, not even stupid people, believed Pravda. You have to get to places like Yale before it had any credibility.
Memo to the MSM: stop being like Pravda.
He's so afraid people will see this movie and be influenced.
Will Bunch is more like Tom Tuttle of Tacoma Washington than he realizes.
(Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?)
Are you kidding? There was a great deal of suspicion towards the news media and the FBI on the right 25 years ago. And not just the fringe right. Ruby Ridge? Waco. The Cuban kid? Richard Jewel!?
As for women reporters sleeping with sources, two separate cases of this were reported in the last couple of years.
Artistic license anyone? Why is this even a subject discussion? My moral and intellectual betters have been "explaining" things like this to me for decades. Leftist authors, writers, movie producers, directors, actors have lectured me. I learned the lesson. Why can't the teachers learn the lesson?
What happened to the Woman emotional standard for truth?
"not true in fact" but true because someone else claims to have experienced it.
Recently applied to Brett Kavenaugh
NEW RULES?
Ron Winkleheimer beat me to it.
In addition to Randy Weaver, I'll add... Ron Paul and his newsletter recipients, Bircher remnants, soon to be TownHall commenters.
Someone who doesn't have an ax to grind said that the sex for scoop was implied, but not shown explicitly. It's definitely a lot more gray than the ninnies are reporting. I'm completely annoyed that my hometown sports columnist decided to retweet in support of a boycott. Journalists are so thin skinned. And after reading an old profile of her, the implication doesn't seem wrong. Her own brother says her wild and reckless lifestyle led to her early death. I hope this movie makes 100 million.
The FBI did think Jewell was the suspect, and the newspaper reported that. Problem was, FBI was wrong and, perhaps, the newspaper was unwise to publish, but they published facts, not fake news.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Except the FBI had no facts or evidence to support the Jewell theory. They outright lied about it remember the raid on Jewell's house? They claimed they had obtained a search warrant, which would have to be based on sworn statements and present at least probable cause. Truth was, Jewell consented to the search so warrant was not needed. Another FBI lie.
Remember the FBI taking boxes of "suspicious" evidence? Turned out most of the boxes were empty.
AJC spread lies - possibly knowingly - to get exclusive scoops from FBI. Different kind of whoring than just sleeping with agents. But whoring nonetheless, and probably worse.
Anyone else remember the actual perp? Guy named Rudolf. Who also had a habit of bombing abortion clinics. FBI already were looking for him before the Atlanta bomb. The bomb had hallmarks of a Rudolf device. Maybe Jewell was an easier target than finding the real perp.
Hurt journalists?
"The AJC was the only news outlet who refused to apologize for their coverage of Jewell, and instead of settling with him, waited him out until his death in 2007. When the Atlanta-Journal Constitution apologizes to the family of Richard Jewell, perhaps only then should Eastwood offer his own concession."
from insty quoting:
https://spectator.us/everyone-pretending-sleeps-sources-eastwood-richard-jewell/
People like that writer will not see the movie and "Bombshell" will be popular with the left. Eastwood is doing a service.
I'm completely annoyed that my hometown sports columnist decided to retweet in support of a boycott.
Boycott talk will guarantee that the movie is a hit. Ask Chick fil A.
Born Kathleen Bentley Scruggs on September 26, 1958, she and her older brother by 10 years, Lewis Scruggs Jr., were the products of a prominent family in Athens, Georgia.
Those who knew Kathy Scruggs, including her friends and family, remember her as a wild child with a rebellious and adventurous streak. She broke away from the family tradition of attending UGA, like her parents and brother, instead enrolling at Queens University (then Queens College) in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After a stint at two newspapers, she came to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution (AJC), where she worked the police beat. Her colleagues can vividly describe her short skirts, gaudy stockings, expletive-laden language, hard-charging personality, and knack for being thorough with her reporting.
A reporter who worked with her spoke about her network of police officers, fearlessness at crime scenes, and tendency to arrive at the scene even before the cops. This former colleague of hers also described her past relationships with a few cops, an editor who allegedly beat her with a telephone, and the prominent writer and AJC columnist Lewis Grizzard.
Scruggs Never Revealed Her Sources
Most of the news outlets Jewell sued settled with him and buried the hatchet. But the AJC, at Scruggs’ insistence, refused to settle and fought the lawsuit.
Scruggs’ former colleague said that she was ordered to reveal her sources for the FBI story or face jail time. She refused, protecting her source’s identity, and avoided jail on appeal.
Scruggs stood by her reporting and sources, proclaiming that she hadn’t falsified anything. Litigation naming the AJC was dismissed in 2011 by the Georgia Court of Appeals, stating, “the articles in their entirety were substantially true at the time they were published.”
However, Scruggs didn’t live to see her name being cleared.
The journalist suffered from multiple ailments and depression, worsened by the stress of defending her reporting during the Jewell debacle. In the last year of her life, Scruggs was on medical leave from the publication.
An injury while on the job left her with chronic back pain for the rest of her life. She was prescribed pain-relieving medication for the backache, but she suffered from more complications later in life. They included Crohn’s disease, anxiety, and depression.
Family and friends repeatedly claimed that the stress from the legal action took a toll on her frail health. Ultimately, as her brother said, “Her heart gave away.”
Scruggs was found dead in her Woodstock home on September 2, 2001, days before her 43rd birthday. The cause of death was reported as acute morphine toxicity, but coroners couldn’t determine if the overdose was accidental or intentional.
https://www.earnthenecklace.com/kathy-scruggs-wiki/
If you're not constantly telling journalists how wonderful they are and giving them awards and prizes then you obviously hate the First Amendment and are likely a Nazi.
One of her tactics was using her sexuality to flirt with cops at a local bar after hours but rumours that she would sleep with sources were just that.
How is the following scene anything more than barroom flirtation?
The offending scene sees Scruggs slithering up to [Jon] Hamm’s fictional FBI agent in a garishly lit bar, seeking a scoop. After being stonewalled, she claims she already knows the bureau is looking into somebody via sources. “Well Kathy, if you couldn’t fuck it out of them then what makes you think you can fuck it out of me?” he says.
Matt Sablan said...
Is this worse than the movie "The Truth?"
I was going to make the same point. The left media didn't criticize the ridiculous revisionism in the Truth including the final soliloquy in which the Mary Mapes character still claims the fakes are real. But in this case the left media objects to the truth about the FBI's incompetence because it conflicts with the political narrative they've constructed.
These people are absurd.
It's interesting that the local morning news radio show on WTMJ in Milwaukee covered this story but made no mention of yesterday's bombshells from the IG session. Really strange since they breathlessly covered every anti-Trump Russia collusion story they could get their hands on for the last three years. It's enough to make you think the MSM is filled with dishonest slime bags.
I remember a story about jets flying over Clinton's inauguration and a lefty saying, "What the hell?" objecting to the militaristic display. Another guy answered, "Oh don't worry, they're our jets now."
I guess they feel it's their FBI now. Maybe it is.
It's enough to make you think the MSM is filled with dishonest slime bags.
I'm surprised you have such a high opinion of them
Remember the bang up job the Catholic Church did investigating the transgressions of the pedo priests? Or how Penn State got to the bottom of those awful rumors?....One thing seems fairly clear: institutions are not very good at revealing or correcting their flaws. Journalism and its high acolytes are no exception to this rule and might even be its worst practitioners.
Sounds like the movie is actually pretty accurate about Scruggs. The reviewer is just blowing it up as an excuse to condemn a movie that makes his industry look bad. Meanwhile the left and MSM routinely lies about not just public figures like Trump and Nunes, but even teens like Nicholas Sandman.
I wonder how Lois Lane will be portrayed in the next Superman movie. I guess they'll go for a Christine Amanapour look. Maybe get Kathy Bates for the role.
However, Scruggs didn’t live to see her name being cleared.
I don't think she was "cleared" in any meaningful sense. I don't think people generally believed she was lying. They believed she - along with the rest of the media - was irresponsible. The fact that she relied on the FBI which turned out even more irresponsible doesn't change that.
There are very few journalists left in the US. Most are Democratic operatives with bylines, a SuperPac for the Dem Party
But it's 13 and Don Draper, so they had to bang to appease the movie gods. What was Clint to do?
I wonder how Lois Lane will be portrayed in the next Superman movie.
Superman will be gay and his love interest will be Lewis Lane.
The role might still be played by Kathy Bates, though.
Gary: Telling the truth is not smearing.
I guess they'll go for a Christine Amanapour look. Maybe get Kathy Bates for the role.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Perhaps Xaviera Hollander would be more realistic?? Or Heidi Klaus?
After all, it is unheard of for a female reporter to sleep with a source to get a story just like it is unheard of for an actress to sleep with a studio exec to get a part.
Also, there is no fake news and the FBI is the epitome of integrity.
Everybody knows all that!
(Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?)
25 years ago was 1994, a year after the Branch Davidian massacre. It was already a right wing view then. Maybe you're thinking of 50 years ago in which case the answer is everyone who understood the left.
"I'm reading that this is not something she actually did."
How do you know that isn't fake news?
I've got several "friends" who are journalists. They're almost all San Francisco lefties, some even openly socialist or communist, and they share a disturbing habit of using their anti-establishment attitudes as a social lubricant, making sure to affirm - or fill the heads of others with - crazy, political, conspiracy theory-laden apocalyptic fantasies as a way to make associates.
How that makes them friends to "the people" has never made much sense to me.
I consider them dangerous.
The sleep-with /or not/ angle will be used to discredit the whole film.
His girl Friday is supposed to have a positive role for a female reporter. I bailed out quickly because I can't stand the formal acting method of the time. I see all frame and no content.
This was 20 years ago and the former rapist-I -Chief was President.
No one cared.
Women were like that in the 90s.
Gary: Telling the truth is not smearing.
It’s Swiftboating. Lololol
For the media, any movie portraying them as anything less than Woodward and Bernstein is just more proof of Trump's war on the media.
Typical Film Critic response:
When the usual Lefty movie is false to the facts: "Its just a MOVIE dude, Relax"
When an unusual Righty movie is false to the facts: "OMG, its untrue. Its fake news!"
"Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?"
True! Profound and amusing.
The critical point about the trends in US culture over the last few decades.
Here we are debating these matters and not a single expert amongst us.
Why is nobody interviewing Ali Watkins to get an actual expert's opinion?
Only the liberal/left film makers can lie about Historical Truth. Then its A-OK. Remember all those critics who were upset when Oliver stone implied Nixon was involved in killing JFK? OR that Oswald really didn't do it? OR that Nixon was a pill popping drunk?
Yeah neither do I. But suddenly they all become history professors UPSET that a Movie is not being scrupulously correct and factual when the Liberal/Left's ox is being gored.
Woodward & Bernstein violated every ethical standard journalism pretends to have.
"His girl Friday is supposed to have a positive role for a female reporter. I bailed out quickly because I can't stand the formal acting method of the time. I see all frame and no content."
Oh, I love that stuff. His Girl Friday is one of my favorites. I guess you could go to The Front Page, which didn't have Rosalind Russell tut-tutting about in her hats and whatnot. But then you get no Cary Grant, either.
If you want a spoof of that, Jennifer Jason Leigh does a great turn in The Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy.
Its astounding that eastwood is still making movies at 89. hard to believe he and McQueen were the same age. Poor steve died almost 40 years ago.
"I can't stand the formal acting method of the time."
Its just a different forms and conventions.
In some ways not as stilted as modern conventions.
Like Gilbert&Sullivan or Javanese Wayang or Japanese Kabuki.
Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?
Anyone who thought "the FBI and the news media" would become pretty left?
" which didn't have Rosalind Russell tut-tutting about in her hats and whatnot."
From long experience, even professional women tut-tutt about hats and whatnot a LOT.
Olivia Wilde is way more attractive than Scruggs was. That’s the real complaint about the accuracy of the movie.
People think the FBI is "Right Wing" full of patriots and hard nosed law men. Now we know it can be staffed with Liberal Democrats Lawyers and frauds like Comey and McCabe. Same with the CIA, Brennan voted for the Communist Party is and to the Left of Hillary.
ANy Organization can be Right or left - it just depends on who's heading it. The military, based on their screaming over Trump's Transgender ban, is now full of left-wing Generals.
Its amazing how many members of the chattering classes suffer from Depression or some sort of mental illness and turn to opiates and/or booze for solace.
If this movie was approved five years ago, has it been sitting on the shelf? Given that several other movies came out at opportune times, I can't but wonder how many projects are sitting on the shelf not expecting to see release until current events suddenly change their prospects to turn a buck.
This whole kerfuffle is about changing the subject away from what they did to Richard Jewell.
As to the "heroic" Kathy Scruggs, if you reported like she did, wouldn't you hide your sources? I bet some of them couldn't talk to you anyway.
The MSM perpetrated the lies against Richard Jewell.
And their argument for "limited purpose" public figures was rejected.
The Court should have revisited NYT v Sullivan and limited its holding.
so, based on this review;
she DIDN'T sleep with the FBI?
he just accused her of sleeping with her sources?
WHICH WAS THE RUMOR AT THE TIME?
HOW is this fake?
"At some point during those two hours in the dark — maybe the attack on the FBI as a rogue outfit using trickery to frame innocent people, or the depiction of journalists as amoral enemies of the people, or the swelling agitprop of applause lines about common folks under attack “from our two most powerful forces — the United States government and the media” — that I’d began to wonder if I’d made a wrong turn."
Hey, bud, thanks for reinforcing Eastwood's point.
Besides the content of the movie, a bit of semi-con agitprop, judging by the early descriptions, the reactions are also useful: for once, progs have to contend with something that pricks their bubble every so slightly, and the sheer lack of self-awarness in their protestations further exposes them.
The Richard Jewell story isn't about today. It's more universal than that. It's about how the government and the FBI steamroll people who are either convenient or inconvenient.
Never forget, the heroic Deep Throat turned out to be a disgruntled FBI guy who got passed over for the Director's job, and who later got a pardon from Reagan for his illegal activities, which let Billy Ayers, among others, off the hook.
I guess the bright side is that it saved Obama from pardoning Ayers and simultaneously releasing a gush of drivel about the Weathermen.
Billy Ayers: Guilty as hell, free as bird. Thank you, Mark Felt.
Like Rick @ 8:17, I too thought that 50 years ago was a better referent than 25. For those of us Althouse's age, sometimes we forget how old we actually are.
A movie can never BE a true story, even, or especially, if it's BASED on a true story.
The #MeToo catechism pretends that all women are guileless and vulnerable, and it is a terrible distortion.
I estimate a good 30 percent of all American Women are fine with actively exchanging their sexual favors for "power" as they perceive it -- if/when the opportunity presents itself. (and I say, it's the most natural thing in the world)
What are groupies, like all those women clustered around old Kissinger back in the day? lusty ego/power seekers.
Remember when Al Gore got so huffy with the masseuse in Portland that refused to go for his cock? my guess is its because he was used to all the masseuses giving it up for him cheerfully, a new notch in their power belt.
How could Weinstein be so awful with women? Because the vast majority that visited his office were thrilled with the chance for a "power exchange" with that distinctively powerful man. The ones who balked may have been rare exceptions.
Clint is reporting this womanly dynamic, reminding us of reality. That is very healthy for all men and women.
In the time of a reality-TV president, Eastwood seamlessly blends facts with outright fiction to create a narrative that transcends truth.
Says the writer for an industry whose business model depends on blending facts with outright fiction to create a narrative that transcends truth.
Or is that still news to some of the participants?
Don't worry lefties.
Eastwood won't get any awards for this one.
You'll sleep well at night believing you "won".
Definitely will watch the movie!
And, I do recall, back in 1996 when it happened, I bought the lie/propaganda that Jewell was somehow involved in the bombing, and, based thereon, formed a negative opinion about him. Back then -- pre-internet -- you had only the NYT and the nightly news, and some CNN, and some talk radio, but it was nothing like today. The leftwing major media controlled the narrative.
(Who would have thought, 25 years ago, that suspicion about the FBI and the news media would become a right-wing point of view?) Me. That's why I've always identified as lower-case libertarian, and have of late adopted the Upper Case.
I strive to be a good citizen. I volunteer, I give. I just don't believe that letting the government mediate my good intentions is a good idea.
This Eastwood film is going to disclose more about the Feds Justice Dept/ Federal District Attorneys Criminal Operations than anything Horowitz or Durham or Barr will dare disclose.
Clint is not afraid.
"Back then -- pre-internet -- you had only the NYT and the nightly news, and some CNN, and some talk radio, but it was nothing like today. The leftwing major media controlled the narrative."
Actually, that's a lot like today.
Even "pre-internet" (not quite), there as still a lot of media, and there was a nonstop barrage of anti-Jewel news and commentary. There were pundits on cable news, in newspapers, on radio, etc., concluding all kinds of nonsense about the bomber's identity, and talk of FBI profiling being as accurate as fingerprints, only even more revealing. They were on the royal road to the truth, and they had Jewel pegged.
William said...
I wonder how Lois Lane will be portrayed in the next Superman movie. I guess they'll go for a Christine Amanapour look.
Amanapour bedded a source.
From 1998 to 2018, Amanpour was married to American James Rubin, a former US Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department during the Clinton administration and an informal adviser to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to former President Barack Obama.
Maybe Eastwood’s next film can be about Steven Hatfill.
He can have a scene where Nick Kristoff sucks Mueller’s dick.
Clint is not afraid.
He has shown that many times in the past. The city of tried jerking him around on some property he owned. He ended up Mayor of Carmel.
A law firm was running a scam on disabled parking and access on small businesses in the Monterrey area. This paid plaintiff would accuse the business of inadequate disabled access, walkway to narrow, etc. They would sue and settle for less than the cost of defense. IT was a scam.
They tried it on Eastwood's place and he refused to settle and ended up putting the law firm out of business.
Hmm. Looks like moderation is back.
Who can forget the genius profilers who assured us over and over again that DC Sniper was a lone white male. I guess one out of three ain't bad.
Seems like hinting that Scruggs exchanged sex for info based on her history meets the Rather standard of "fake but accurate". Scruggs died of a drug overdose and allegedly suffered from severe back pain, actual journalists would question whether she was an addict and if so for how long.
Great movie. Eastwood needs to exfoliate his legs before his next movie.
"ANy Organization can be Right or left - it just depends on who's heading it."
I disagree. Any organization can be captured by the Left - the Long March has proven that. But not every organization can be on the Right. The only three tribal allegiances the Right properly respects are Family, Church and State/Country. Organizations that attempt to organize along other bogus leftist identity shibboleths are intrinsically left wing by nature, no matter how "right wing" they purport to be in other matters.
So far, nobody complaining that she was portrayed as trading sex for a story has been able to cite the scene where this happens. Instead, it's just innuendo, which fits perfectly with the apparent truth--she was flirtatious and tried to use her looks to get an edge. And good for her if she did.
I estimate a good 30 percent of all American Women are fine with actively exchanging their sexual favors for "power" as they perceive it -- if/when the opportunity presents itself. (and I say, it's the most natural thing in the world)
Or they turn the other cheek like Hillary.
Kevin Riley, the current editor of the AJC wrote in a column that Scruggs had zero problem using her sexuality to get stories.
When law enforcement and the media screw a member of my tribe, it’s a profound injustice. When law enforcement and the media screw a member of your tribe, it’s fake-news propaganda.
The point bunch misses is this fustercluck by the bureau allowed eric rudoph to commit a string of murders the following year and then seek sanctuary for five more years. It was a bloody jump to conclusion
From the post:
"Throwing sex into it is the oldest, lamest tactic."
Forget it, Ann, it's Hollywood.
From the quoted dialogue, it sounds like the movie raises the possibility that Scruggs slept with a source---Althouse writes that the movie asserts that she DID sleep with a source. Looking forward to seeing the movie, I'll be interested to see if the movie does more than just imply that Scruggs did sleep with a source--or that perhaps she was merely perceived by people as being someone who would do such a thing.
Didn't Kathy Scruggs die of a drug overdose? Enough said.
I'm betting that the criticism of this movie is as accurate as the criticism about The Joker. In other words, completely bogus.
With each passing opinion piece blasting this movie, the more they're making Eastwood's point.
They're just too arrogant to realize it.
Golly, where to start?
Althouse quoting the Guardian again. I guess it satisfies her need for style rather than caring that it’s a left wing rag that lies constantly.
After many dealings with”journalists”, my experience is that they are mediocrities that think they’re the smartest person in the room. I’ve never met a mediocre intellect that realized they were mediocre.
Women using sexuality in their careers—Kamala Harris anyone? The final decade of my career they were like office icebergs you had to avoid because they are career enders. And they did it deliberately to fuck with you or to get ahead. It often worked and still does.
Scruggs died at 43? Maybe God does have a plan.
Lastly, I’ve not stepped foot in a movie theater in15 years. But I will go see this one. It’s time the media And the FBI get shown to be the corrupt thugs they really are. I have zero faith in our government now. Scott Adams took the words out of my mouth “I hate my government and Pelosi is a fucking cunt”.
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