Post Modern History By Disney, GOP

[DaveT]

The Disney adventure in wingnut history is just the latest salvo to come from a culture-wide assault on the very premise of civil public debate -- a nihilistic anti-ideology overtly attacking the notion of objectivity itself. It started in Florida six years ago, as James Baker so pompously preached us that post-modernist sermon about how a person cannot be trusted to report on objective reality -- her "bias" would inevitably influence her account and turn a Bush vote into a Gore vote. According to Baker, only a machine could be trusted to tell the truth. What irony!

Thus the Republicans and their corporate sponsors openly proclaim their new way of looking at the world. "Facts" are whatever you can make people believe, and there is no point in trying to find consensus about an object like a ballot or an event like the attempted killing of Osama bin Laden.

The most remarkable thing about the firestorm of these last few days has been that there is no overt defense of Disney's accuracy. Instead, we are accused of hypocrisy for favoring censorship, or because we tolerate supposed fact twisting by Michael Moore or Oliver Stone.

When conservatism abandons the ideals of truthfulness as a public virtue, we are definitely through the looking glass, people.

As a scruffy college student some 30 odd years ago, I recognized the logical appeal of relativity -- there is no preferential frame of reference. Old Einstein weren't no dummy, let me tell you.

But absolute relativity is incompatible with civilization. If everybody is "free" to impose their reality as far and as deeply as their individual accumulation of power can go, we are definitely back to the Dark Ages.



There is nothing new with fictitious representations of historical figures in film. One of Hollywood's most venerable genres is the bio-pic -- my personal favorite for absurdity is the William Bendix version of The Babe Ruth Story. In an early scene the prodigy Ruth throws a baseball through a window, leaving a perfectly round hole in the glass. In a bit of shtick stolen from James Finnemore Cooper's Natty Bumppo, the Babe throws the ball again toward the window and it passes unimpeded through the hole he had made with the previous toss -- demonstrating what an accurate throwing arm the Babe had.

This sort of phony baloney artistic liberty shows up in practically every Hollywood treatment of real history. Most of the time, the hokum is dedicated toward making the movie sell tickets, with little or no conscious political spin. It is only the linking of fiction to political spin that causes controversy -- which brings us to a consideration of Oliver Stone and JFK.

In the most infamous sequence in JFK, Stone has the historical figure of the Orleans Parish District Attorney, Jim Garrison, fly to Washington to meet with Mr X -- a totally made up character who supposedly worked in the higher levels of the "Intelligence Community." The factious Mr. X tells Garrison about how he was sent to the South Pole to get him out of the way of the assassination of the President of the United States.

Personally, I can defend Stone's technique in cinematic and political terms. But, jesus, even Oliver has to admit that there are some problems with this Mr. X dodge . . . .

I think it is hilarious that Disney is now copying the most questionable excesses of the most controversial director in Hollywood.

The First Amendment gives Stone and Disney an equal right to spout off their opinions and to lie without malice about public figures. And if Disney wants to distribute this film to movie theaters, and take its chances with Bill Clinton's libel lawyers -- more power to them.

But we are seeing a new degree of chutzpah here with Disney using its television network to get this garbage into America's living rooms.