Saturday, June 14, 2014

Well, I Wish Somebody'd Make A Big Deal

American Aristocracy
(Photo: Smiley N. Pool, AP)
A both-sides-do-it hack working in the exciting medium of newspaper web-pages starts weak but eventually gets in a few on ever sorrier CNN, the newsertainfoment web that provides curbside service if you know what I mean but you probably don't & also applies a few licks to shitheel George Herbert Walker Bush, current capo di tutti capi of the Bush Crime Family & his pathetic band of toadies & lickspittles. Then, apparently because someone's sex life is just everyone else's business & also precisely like running the C.I.A., negotiating w/ terrorists in Iran-Contra, & taking oil money (Guessing the elder Mr. Bush wasn't flat broke when he left the White House.) Z on TV delves into the sex life of William Jefferson Clinton. Liberal media bias, obvs.
I am not looking to make a big deal out of this, but I thought at least one mainstream media critic ought to point out that CNN plans to air what it's calling a "documentary" about George H.W. Bush Sunday night in prime time, starting at 9.

Except it's not a documentary as the word is used to describe the work of a filmmaker like Ken Burns or Frederick Wiseman. It's not even a documentary as the word might be used to describe an extended report of 30 minutes or so about a historic building airing on your hometown TV news station.

This is two hours of hagiography paid for by the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation. One of its two producers, Mary Kate Cary, is a former speechwriter for Bush when he was in the White House.

The film is called "41ON41" and it's filled with family members, friends and colleagues of Bush saying things like, "You can't be around George Bush and not come away a better person." (Bush was the 41st president and there are apparently 41 people saying such things about him. I stopped counting after I was told that a verse about being "true" and "pure" shaped Bush's life.)

Among the 41 are: James A. Baker III, Marlin Fitzwater, Roger Ailes, Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush Jr., George W. Bush, Dan Quayle and John Sununu.

CNN has become so confused and compromised under President Jeff Zucker that it seems to have no problem with presenting this 41-voice tribute as history.

“CNN is extremely pleased to present the first television broadcast of '41ON41,' which offers extraordinary insights to the man behind the powerful office, and his consequential presidency,” Amy Entelis, senior vice president of talent and content development for CNN Worldwide, says in a press release.

“Viewers will learn the backstory to key historic moments in our history -- and will be surprised by insights from family and friends who reveal sides of their husband, grandfather, father, and friend that only people within the inner Bush family circle ever knew," her quote continues.

“The goal of this film is for the world to see President Bush through the stories of his life -- one of the most significant in our modern history,” Fred McClure, chief executive officer for the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation, which funded the film, says in the same release. “It is more than a recounting of history -- it is an engaging and uplifting profile of one of our greatest citizens that no American will want to miss.”
In the immortal if not apocryphal words of Sam Goldwyn, miss it if you can.

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