Fair Game: Wash Post Blasts Film as 'lies'

[the G-man]

Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy

• WE'RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film "Fair Game" - which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq - deserves some editorial page comment....
  
  "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post's Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.
  
  
  
  The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson's reporting did not affect the intelligence community's view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush's statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.
  
  
  
  "Fair Game" also resells the couple's story that Ms. Plame's exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy - but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.
  
  Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; "Fair Game" is just one more example. But the film's reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored....

Wow. When the reliably center to slightly left Washington Post feels the need to publish an editorial blasting a movie as inaccurate and deceitful that really says something.

 

[Gaith]

When the reliably center to slightly left Washington Post feels the need to publish an editorial blasting a movie as inaccurate and deceitful that really says something.

I'm no expert on the Plame Affair, but even novice followers of politics know that the Post's editorial page slants rightward.

"Fair Game" also resells the couple's story that Ms. Plame's exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy - but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

Okay, kids, time to play Reading Comprehension 101. The above paragraph heavily implies, but is too cowardly to outright say, that the fact that Fitzgerald couldn't prove the existence of a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury unequivocally means that there was no such conspiracy.

Which is bullshit.

Dick Cheney almost certainly intentionally orchestrated the leak.

 

[the G-man]

I'm no expert on the Plame Affair, but even novice followers of politics know that the Post's editorial page slants rightward.

From your own source:

• In a November 19, 2008 column, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell stated: "I'll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don't even want to be quoted by name in a memo". Responding to criticism of the newspaper's coverage during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Howell wrote: "The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama. It's not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected"

In other words, the editorial page is pretty much right in the center. Liberal partisans claim it's rightwing. Conservative partisans call it left wing.

Okay, kids, time to play Reading Comprehension 101. The above paragraph heavily implies, but is too cowardly to outright say, that the fact that Fitzgerald couldn't prove the existence of a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury unequivocally means that there was no such conspiracy.

Which is bullshit.

But Fitzgerald didn't even CHARGE anyone with the leaks, let a alone a conspiracy. A charge doesn't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, just probable cause. So, really, there's not even probable cause to believe your theory.

Dick Cheney almost certainly intentionally orchestrated the leak.

I realize that it's comforting, if not outright fun, for idealogues to make declarations like this without proof. After all, that's how the movie got made in the first place. So we'll just have to agree to disagree on that last point. I'm just amazed that one of, if not the, most respected news organization in the nation, despite having so many liberals working there (see your own wiki source) had the courage to call out the movie for wholesale fabrications.

 

[Gaith]

Sigh. Do I really need to explain to you that newspaper journalists don't write the unsigned editorials? Those are different roles, so Howell's assertion that "most Post journalists voted for Obama" is totally irrelevant to the issue of the right-leaning editorial page.

Also, let's not confuse "support for Obama during the '08 election" as being a liberal bias so much as a "let's-not-be-batshit-crazy" bias. One of my good friends from college is a staunch Republican who voted for Bush in '04, but even he couldn't stomach the prospect of a President Palin.

I realize that it's comforting, if not outright fun, for idealogues to make declarations like this without proof.

Well, excuse me for not providing audiotaped recordings from the former Vice President's office - I'd do my best to get them from you, but my time machine's on the fritz. One doesn't always need proof to make reasonable inferences, even if those inferences wouldn't necessarily be held up in a court of law.

Note, however, that by assuming Cheney didn't orchestrate the leak, you and/or anyone else is just as guilty of coming to conclusions based on incomplete evidence. Historical fact is almost always unknowable in the fine particulars of who privately said what to whom and when.

Finally, listen to the jurors in Fitzgerald's trial. They thought the matter went deeper than the prosecution was able to go. But when the defense obstructs and lies, it isn't always possible to get the whole story.

 

[IndyJones]

This whold thread is veering off into TNZ territory, but it probably always destined to (and here I am falling for it).

But Fitzgerald didn't even CHARGE anyone with the leaks, let a alone a conspiracy. A charge doesn't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, just probable cause. So, really, there's not even probable cause to believe your theory.

No reason to believe it, except for what Fitzgerald has said publicly and in Court.

Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions."
It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."
The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." (My italics.)
Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." (My italics.)

We can pretend that b/c the Veep wasn't charged there was never any problem, but we can't pretend that Fitzgerald never thought that there was a problem.

 

[cultcross]

Let's keep this thread on a TV/Media topic, or it'll be leaving this forum behind.

 

[the G-man]

Do I really need to explain to you that newspaper journalists don't write the unsigned editorials?

I will limit myself to this issue since it involves a media type (newspapers) and this is the "TV & Media" forum.

Using your own source (wikipedia, again) your assertion is incorrect.

The editorial board of any newspaper is comprised of, of course, editors. Editors are one type of journalists.

 

[IndyJones]

Let's keep this thread on a TV/Media topic, or it'll be leaving this forum behind.

I don't really understand how that can be done.

It's about "lies" in a movie, and to address any of the lies is to talk politics.

 

[cultcross]

Let's keep this thread on a TV/Media topic, or it'll be leaving this forum behind.

I don't really understand how that can be done.

It's about "lies" in a movie, and to address any of the lies is to talk politics.

Politics are not forbidden in TV/Media, I was just reminding people to keep to the politics that actually relate to the topic of the film, and not veer off into bickering.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Hollywood makes a film base on actual events that contain inaccuracies, falsehoods and fabrications. People like it.

In other news water is wet.

 

[the G-man]

Hollywood makes a film base on actual events that contain inaccuracies, falsehoods and fabrications. People like it.

Interesting enough, I'm not sure that, other than partisans looking to confirm their own biases, people do like it.

The movie's considered something of a box office bomb.

 

[Gaith]

Eh, modest adult dramas underperform all the time, nothing to get excited about, though whoever wrote that article you linked to certainly seems to have creamed himself in delight.

In consolation to liberals, though, Extraordinary Measures, which painted a rather sunny picture of the American health care system (which right-wingers insist is teh awesome) - you know, the movie that was so conservative it changed a real-life Asian-American doctor to a good ol' heartland boy played by Harrison Ford - was a much bigger bomb.

 

[the G-man]

Eh, modest adult dramas underperform all the time, nothing to get excited about...

I'm not particuarly excited (nor apparently was the movie going public), simply noting a fact in response to another poster.

As for the "modest adult dramas underperform" thing I think there's a difference between underperforming and outright bombing. The film hasn't even recouped a third of its budget, kind of surprising given the star power attached to the thing.

 

[Gaith]

What, do foreign grosses not count? And adult dramas do bomb all the time; it's not surprising at all. Fact-based political dramas are a notoriously hard sell, especially when the story is as minor as this, and now that the Bush years are finally over, why would liberals want to further depress themselves by going to a movie that basically ends in failure and Bush's re-election? There's a reason this movie's been sitting on a shelf for at least a year. The real mystery is why they budgeted $22m for a movie that's pretty much talk. The director and stars were probably considerably overpaid for a risk of this magnitude.

Hell, as a liberal who loves fact-based dramas, even I'm not interested in this. It should probably have been an HBO-TV movie, if anything.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Hollywood makes a film base on actual events that contain inaccuracies, falsehoods and fabrications. People like it.

Interesting enough, I'm not sure that, other than partisans looking to confirm their own biases, people do like it.

The movie's considered something of a box office bomb.

NO idea if it was a bomb or not. I was just responding to the statement "But the film's reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored", which implied that they thought it was popular ( or at least being reviewed in a postive manner)

I know my mother saw it and liked it.

Not sure why they are so up in arms about this. As with all historical films a lot of people will accepts its version as the "truth" until the next version comes along. I dont think the folks in Washington are anymore immune to this than Joe on Main Street.