Persecuted

Via alicublog, a fascinating and depressing exercise in shameless tendentiousness rears its ugly ass.

With juicy cameos from every closeted Hollyweird conservatard, from Sideshow Bob to Angelina Jolie's crazy dad to Gary Coleman (the last of whom, to be fair, may or may not actually be conservative, but would show up to the opening of an envelope if his next few meals were comped). And they passed on Larry the Cable Guy to hand the starring role to Chris Farley's brother. I mean fuck, people, reckanize greatness when it's in your face!

I've been a fan of a lot of Zucker's stuff over the years -- even BASEketball -- but the more Hayes (who has the balls to call Joe Wilson a serial fabulist, when Hayes himself would have trouble getting an order of bacon and eggs straight) describes these painfully unimaginative, unfunny scenes as if they were polemic gems uncovering some hidden truth that the libruls won't let you hear, the worse it gets.

In all seriousness, they keep mentioning this word "satire", and I don't think that word means what they think it means. Satire is supposed to have a nugget of truth, duh. It hasn't been the ACLU that's been instrumental in getting 4th amendment and habeas corpus cases to the Supreme Court, it's been military lawyers risking their careers to speak out against something that nauseates them, something that they know intrinsically is un-American. The goal is not to give every terrorist a handjob and a suitcase full of money, it's to keep from treating every American like a terrorist. It's not nearly as complicated as they try to make it seem, but nor is it as simplistic as their idiotic attempts portray.

And in a war that has lasted longer than WW2, longer than the Civil War, where exactly do these terrible know-nothing protests they try to satirize take place, aside from universities? Like it's Vietnam all over again, when nothing could be further from the truth. "Overpopulation - Gay Marriage is the Answer!" reads one snappy satirical protest sign. Ow, ow, I'm splittin' a side! That is some grade-A satire all the players can and should be proud of. For too long upright heterosexuals and war supporters alike have been forced to hide in fear, in the attics of David Zucker and Jon Voight and other daring souls, from hordes of marauding fags and pacifists.

Some pretty choice hysteriquotes throughout, but some more stridently hilarious than others.

Eventually, the conversation turns from policy to punditry. Grammer, who is friends with Ann Coulter, says he quoted her once to some of the young people who work for him.

"'Ann Coulter,'" he says, recalling their horror and assuming their voice. "'She's the antichrist.' And I said: 'What the f-- do you know about the antichrist? You don't even believe in Christ.'"

Okely-dokely then, Sideshow Bob, howzabout this instead -- she's a liar, a calumniator, a prevaricating circus geek with the ethics of a swamp rat. No, she's not the antichrist, dear boy, merely an enthusiastic plagiarist and inventor of vicious fables to entertain people too stupid to know that she's lying to them. So, you smug, poncey smartass, what exactly has all that to do with one's religious belief, or lack thereof?

Or this one:

Robert Davi, who plays the lead terrorist in the Zucker film, joins us as the discussion turns from policy to the cable pundit shows. Davi is one of those actors with an instantly recognizable face--he was the villain in the Bond film Licence to Kill--but whose name is unknown to most of the country.

"I can't stand Keith Olbermann," says Davi. "Jesus Christ, I want to slap that guy."

....

Eventually, the conversation turns to the war and the opposition to it--the subject of their current project. "No one on the left wants to admit that radical Islamists want to kill Americans, the Jews--everyone in the West," Davi says. "I try to talk to my friends on the left and they just don't get it. Most of them have never even heard of Sayyid Qutb. How can you have an intellectual discussion about the war we're in without knowing who Sayyid Qutb is?" he asks, raising his voice so that actors from other tables glance over to see what's causing the commotion. JFK concentrates on his food.

Indeed, you don't want to make eye contact with ol' Pineapple Head when he's rolling, so you can't blame "JFK" for concentrating on his food. And Davi's right -- people should know who and what Qutb was, a vicious peddler of lies and smears explicitly meant to energize hatred and fear among revolutionary groups. Sound like anyone we know?

Now, Qutb has been dead and gone for over four decades, but people have long memories in that part of the world, and have little else to do but nurse their grievances and avoid the secret police in whatever "democratic" ally they happen to fester in. Perhaps if Nasser hadn't tortured and executed Qutb to make an example of him, he would not be considered such an example by the people who still remember him.

You know what else they remember, what else motivates a lot of these nutjobs, including most notably Osama bin Laden? The Balfour Declaration. Paraphrasing Davi, I don't see how anyone can have an intellectual discussion about the war we're in without knowing about the Balfour Declaration and its long-term effects. Do you know who Gertrude Bell was, pally, huh, huh, do ya, do ya? Jeez. Is it remotely possible that if you don't swoop in like the hand of God and redraw an entire region of ancient cultures, deliberately bordering them in with hated rivals so you can loot their only valuable resource, they won't hate you as much?

Zucker himself strikes a rather somber chord, after an all-over-the-map profile, culminating in him becoming a rented video thug for the sort of creeps who smeared Max Cleland just to get a waste of oxygen like Saxby Chambliss into the Senate.

"Obama is not qualified to be president, and it'll be a disaster," says Zucker, who then pauses as if he's said something he should have kept to himself. "Shouldn't I be allowed to say that?"

Oh my. The poor dear's risking so much, coming out of his conservatard tearoom with his closeted friends to bravely stand up and say, "Yes! We will ridicule Barack Obama not with empirical "facts" and "debate" and "accurate portrayal", but with fucking Gary Coleman tossing a car-wash sponge to an off-camera Obama." See? It's not only informative, it's entertaining. It's infotainment, as they say. The only way it could have been even more infotaining is if Coleman had pointedly asked his imaginary off-camera sidekick what, precisely, he was talkin' 'bout.

The possibilities are as endless as they are pointless, which is really the actual goal of these buffoons -- to obfuscate any true discussion of the issues they keep braying on about. They would rather invent stupidity on the "left" than have any sort of serious discussion about actual stupid people doing actual stupid things, and ruining the country and principles these oafs claim to revere.

One final (and poignant, to say the least) nugget:

Zucker and Sokoloff met Farley in April 2007. Zucker described his new film with words he had chosen carefully. "I figured he was like everyone else in Hollywood--a Democrat," Zucker recalls. "And we knew that this was not a Democrat movie." It would be a satirical look at the war on terror, he told Farley, and explained that he and Sokoloff were political "moderates."

Farley hadn't seen any of Zucker's ads and assumed he was like everyone else in Hollywood--a Democrat. So he answered with some strategic ambiguity of his own. "I consider myself a centrist," he said, worried that they might press him more about his political views.

Now, I can maybe see where a newcomer like Farley might be just wary enough of his new surroundings and lack of heavy connections to downplay his opinions and remain apolitical at a casting call. Pretty much everybody does that at a job interview, regardless of the job. I know, I know, it's a fucking shock to all, I'm sure. You thought you could just waltz in to your next interview with your Sharpton-Tancredo button pinned to your earlobe, and your Ché t-shirt, and The Man would just have to sit there and take your guff. Not so fast, Huey Newton!

But please -- the idea that Zucker, in casting an unknown for his circle-jerk, was worried about Farley possibly being a heathen Dummycrat? Come on. There are plenty of people out there who just want to work regardless of politics, and if they don't, fuck 'em. Maybe Zucker was just afraid that such a creature couldn't possibly grok the brilliant subtleties and rigorous intellectualism powering this momentous comedic achievement.

Feh. These paranoid assholes still do not get that the problem is not their politics, it's that they're just not funny. They have no sense of humor about themselves, and they have no reasonable way to lampoon their ideological foes, so they just make shit up. It's all very MAD magazine, which was fine when we were in sixth grade. But to see a group of adults so determined to live so far up their own asses may actually end up being the funniest part of the whole project. Semper fi, morons!

[Update: Sweet. A former Bush aide is suing Grammer for stealing his spec script for Swing Vote. Because if you're going to poach a script, you don't want it to be something that will make a shitload of money, like the next Batman movie. Good to see that Sideshow Bob's values end at the wallet, like any good Republican.]

[Update #2: Good lord, The Falafel Factor has blessed us with a trailer, since loofah artiste Orally himself is in this turkey. Usually you figure that the trailer is supposed to have some of the highlights of the movie; Zucker appears to be channeling whatever talent-sucking demon he conjured in producing the black rite that was Superhero Movie, while Farley will probably wither in his brother's voluminous shadow, in the niche that the more talented sibling carved in, say, Tommy Boy.