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Slate.com: How Vanity Fair Nipped A Budding Right-Wing Poster Boy

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Hissyspit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 10:47 PM
Original message
Slate.com: How Vanity Fair Nipped A Budding Right-Wing Poster Boy
http://www.slate.com/id/2164832

The Anti-Michael Moore:
How Vanity Fair nipped a budding right-wing poster boy.

By Kim Masters
Posted Monday, April 23, 2007, at 4:34 PM ET

- snip -

In 2004, Dollard suddenly ditched his show-business life in Los Angeles and went to Iraq. Not long after he arrived, he e-mailed a photo of himself to friends and family. It depicted him in combat gear, surrounded by Marines, with his hair cut into a mohawk and the word die shaved into his chest hair. Experiencing "vivid clarity," he later said, feeling as though he'd had "a message from God," Dollard discovered that he was a "warrior" whose mission was to make a documentary that would spark support for President Bush and the war.

He began shooting many hours of footage of the Marines, some of whom came to see him as a hero in the mold of Hunter S. Thompson. "My goal is to de-sensitize young people to violence," he told Vanity Fair. "I want kids to watch my film and understand that brutality is the fucking appropriate response to a brutal enemy."

Dollard's message had considerable appeal to a number of Bush supporters, who began grooming him as a poster boy for their cause—the guy who ditched the Hollywood life to spread the word. Ann Coulter was a fan, and Dollard was a guest on Tony Snow's Fox radio show before Snow moved to his job at the White House.

These people could hardly have been pleased by the Vanity Fair piece. As author Evan Wright abundantly illustrates, Dollard's mission has been frequently interrupted by drug binges and other detours into depravity. Wright reports that while in Iraq, Dollard stole liquid Valium from a pharmacy and got some of the troops high, and that he may have provoked an attack on U.S. troops when he stole a banner from a mosque. (The article about Dollard isn't just extraordinary for its content but its size: If the typical Vanity Fair piece is a Mini Cooper, this one is equivalent to a block-long caravan of Humvees.)

MORE

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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 10:54 PM
Response to Original message
1. And let us not forget...
"It is the only story you're likely to read this week that has Ann Coulter taking a field trip with television personality Orson Bean." :rofl: :spray:
I couldn't get past that! but this looks really good!
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Phredicles Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:03 PM
Response to Original message
2. Posting to facilitate re-finding later...
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rusty charly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:03 PM
Response to Original message
3. it's quite an issue in general:
Rush to Judgment

Attacking environmentalists as hippie-dip "wackos" who care more about spotted owls than people and use polar bears for propaganda, Rush Limbaugh has blinded millions of Americans to the climate crisis.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/wolcott200705

Eco-Justice

The Supreme Court sided with environmentalists in two recent cases. Was this a preview of more good legal news to come?

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/04/supremecourt200704

A Convenient Untruth

For the obligatory "opposing view" on climate change, the media often turn to Myron Ebell, policy analyst, sound-bite artist, and oil-industry mouthpiece. While mainstream experts see global warming as a major crisis, the hotter it gets, the better Ebell likes it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/skeptic200705

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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:14 PM
Response to Original message
4. Wright, Dollard, and Breitbart all sound like they're out there.
I didn't read the VF interview, but they all seem like a pack of poseurs who are grasping for notoriety.
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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:32 PM
Response to Original message
5. THE VF piece is gonna be a movie, apparently
What a fucking asshole this guy is:

Somehow he got embedded with a group of Marines, who gave him an affectionate nickname, unprintable here. One day while the Marines were on patrol in a town called Musayyib, Dollard encountered an Iraqi selling whiskey. He bought three bottles, got crazy drunk and ripped a sign off a mosque, which angered the locals and sparked a gunfight. On another occasion, according to Dollard and several Marines, he walked into a pharmacy, showed the owner his gun and stole a cache of drugs, including liquid Valium, which he shared with some of the Marines.

In March 2005, Dollard returned to Los Angeles and began editing his 243 hours of videotape into a movie called "Young Americans." He also announced that he was starting his own anti-jihadi movement.

"I'm a warrior, dude," he told Wright. "My role is to fight the battle against Islamic fundamentalist Fascism."

Alas, his progress as both warrior and filmmaker stalled when he went on another epic booze-and-dope binge. When he got out of rehab, he hired an ex-con to keep him sober but the two of them ended up smoking meth and making a porn movie starring Dollard and the ex-con's girlfriend.

Meanwhile, he showed parts of his still-unfinished film to conservative activists and soon he was hanging out with Ann Coulter and appearing on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes," jabbering about Iraq and evil Hollywood liberals.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/05/AR2007030501395.html


Film Planned on H'wood Rebel Turned War Hawk
April 13, 2007
By Borys Kit and Tatiana Siegel
Filmmaker Tony Scott plans to bring the story of Hollywood agent-turned-pro-war documentarian Pat Dollard to the big screen.

Scott has optioned the recent Vanity Fair article "Pat Dollard's War on Hollywood" as well as Dollard's life rights. Dollard and the article's author, Evan Wright, will write the screenplay.

The project could become a directing vehicle for Scott, though sources cautioned that negotiations are not yet complete. Scott most recently directed the Denzel Washington time-travel thriller "Deja Vu."

The article portrayed Dollard, who nurtured the career of a then-unknown Steven Soderbergh, as the stereotypical Hollywood agent with a drug-fueled lifestyle and a collection of ex-wives. Dollard chucked the "Entourage"-esque world, embedding himself with Marines in Iraq, where he joined patrols and survived several bombings. Dollard went from wearing Armani suits to combat gear, hair styled in a Mohawk and the word "die" shaved into his chest hair.

The article described his attempt to sell the documentary, titled "Young Americans," as well as his making a concurrent documentary, an incoherent porn filmed by a rehab sidekick, which echoed "Auto Focus," the 2002 Bob Crane biopic that Dollard produced....
http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003571461


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Cha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:51 PM
Response to Original message
6. Forget "anti Michael Moore" this
dullard is the budding anti Christ...sounds like hasbeen.

What fucking role models they have.
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zalinda Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-24-07 12:24 AM
Response to Original message
7. Isn't it amazing
that a magazine like Vanity Fair, which any one would think is a glamour magazine, is really taking the place of Time or Newsweek, for hard hitting news worthy articles?

zalinda
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