Wednesday, October 21, 2015

'Truth': A Movie Based on Six Pages of Lies

In Hollywood, "dramatic or artistic license" is something audiences have learned to live with whenever there's a movie based on a questionable "real life" story.  For example, take the movie 'Captain Phillips'.  In that film, Phillips is portrayed as a complete hero.  The problem here, is that Phillips ignored past hijack warnings for the waters that he deliberately sailed into;  thus jeopardizing the boat and his crew.  Is that really heroic?

Now, we have a movie from Robert Redford called 'Truth' which takes 'dramatic license' to new heights of lying.  The entire film sets out to rewrite history and discredit George W. Bush's time in the Air National Guard by painting him as a less-than-good soldier.  The only problem is that all of the assertions of Bush's poor behavior while in the National Guard were based on 6 documents that were dated between 1972 and 1973.  All 6 documents had been created using Microsoft Word and a specific font that didn't exist until two decades after 1973.  Thus a consensus of typewriting experts declared them  to be fraudulent; and instead of Bush being discredited, CBS anchor Dan Rather -- who is portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie -- was discredited for airing a false story; along with '60 Minutes' and producer Mary Mapes.  CBS was forced to publicly apologize and Rather was summarily fired and publicly disgraced.

But now we have the very liberal Redford producing and portraying Rather as some kind of American hero in another attempt to rewrite history, by once again, painting George Bush as a less than stellar serviceman.  Too bad a noted A-List actor such as Redford saw fit to tarnish his image by putting personal politics ahead of the truth in 'Truth'. The reality is that most of Hollywood is liberal, and so anti-Bush that they see no problem with the lies Redford is trying to sell.  Unfortunately, many uninformed will see the movie and assume it to really be "Truth".

References:

Should Hollywood get its 'true stories' straight?: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/10/10/true-stories-hollywood/2955851/

CBS network refuses to advertise Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford's Truth: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/19/cate-blanchett-robert-redford-truth-cbs-wont-advertise

How the Dan Rather Movie 'Truth' Lies About Good Journalism: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/14/how-the-dan-rather-movie-truth-lies-about-good-journalism.html

George W. Bush military service controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy







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