General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAP Fact Check: Anti-Obama Film Short On Evidence
WASHINGTON
"2016: Obama's America," a new conservative film exploring the roots of President Barack Obama's political views, took in $6.2 million to make it one of the highest-grossing movies of last weekend. The film, written and narrated by conservative scholar Dinesh D'Souza, argues that Obama was heavily influenced by what D'Souza calls the "anti-colonial" beliefs of his father, Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan academic who was largely absent from the president's life.
To document that claim, D'Souza travels to Kenya to interview members of Obama's extended family as well as to Hawaii and Indonesia, where Obama grew up. He also cites several actions and policy positions Obama has taken to support the thesis that Obama is ideologically rooted in the Third World and harbors contempt for the country that elected him its first black president.
The assertion that Obama's presidency is an expression of his father's political beliefs, which D'Souza first made in 2010 in his book "The Roots of Obama's Rage," is almost entirely subjective and a logical stretch at best.
It's true that Obama's father lived most of his life in Kenya, an African nation once colonized by the British, and that Obama's reverence for his absent father frames his best-selling memoir. D'Souza even sees clues in the book's title: "Notice it says `Dreams From My Father,' not `of' my father," D'Souza says.
But it's difficult to see how Obama's political leanings could have been so directly shaped by his father, as D'Souza claims. The elder Obama left his wife and young son, the future president, when Obama was 2 and visited his son only once, when Obama was 10. But D'Souza frames that loss as an event that reinforced rather than weakened the president's ties to his father, who died in a car crash when Obama was in college.
read more: http://seattletimes.com/html/entertainment/2019005779_apuscvn2016obamasamericafactcheck.html?prmid=head_main
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)The people who want to believe this stuff are so full of shit that a stay at a mental hospital and a frontal lobotomy wouldn't help them.
bigtree
(86,008 posts)they're willing to accept anything negative or lurid about the president.
Politics and stuff . . . I guess.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)bigtree
(86,008 posts)Bill Nye slams creationism
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/27/bill-nye-slams-creationism/comment-page-104/
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,445 posts)water is wet. I can't stand listening to the parade of stories talking about how much money this "documentary" is making and all of the publicity this is getting. I don't even know how people can consider this a legitimate documentary given that it is speculative about what things will be like in 4 years based on assertions and theories that are questionable if not outright laughable. Whatever people can legitimately say negative about Michael Moore's films, they are at least based on real events and facts rather than fantasy and speculation.
RockaFowler
(7,429 posts)A friend said I should see about the real Obama. I knew who our President is. I don't need a wacko to force feed me bs that isn't true
Johonny
(20,900 posts)but the * so nutty it speaks for itself.