In the alternate Althouse reality, Maureen Dowd is concerned about the health and future of the Democratic Party. Therefore, the only reason she would care about the historical accuracy of Selma is because she (and other liberals) “would like to be using the 50-year anniversary of LBJ’s inauguration to celebrate LBJ as a great hero.”
The rest of Althouse’s piece is impenetrable to me, probably because I do not speak wingnut and can’t suss out the numerous delusional unstated predicates that I am supposed to accept.
To see what I mean, try figuring out what the following is supposed to mean:
The GOP got its “Lincoln” (though Spielberg deliberately withheld it from pre-election release in 2012). Where is the great movie-hero President for the Democrats? It could have been LBJ, and with “Selma,” Democrats are stuck with the opposite extreme, the would-be hero appropriated as a villain to boost the heroism of MLK.
I think she is suggesting that the liberal Steven Spielberg withheld the release of Lincoln until after the polls closed in November 2012 in order to avoid giving the Republican Party a boost. After all, if millions of voters saw a Republican president acting heroically and compassionately toward our African-American citizens, they might have concluded that Mitt Romney was going to do likewise. Right? Is that what we’re supposed to believe that Spielberg was thinking?
This next bit really challenged my reading comprehension skills.
Dowd saw “Selma” in “a theater full of black teenagers,” who’d received free tickets, “[t]hanks to donations” — from whom, Dowd never says. She expresses dismay that “a generation of young moviegoers would now see L.B.J.’s role in civil rights through DuVernay’s lens.” So I wonder whether historical accuracy is Dowd’s real concern or whether it’s got more to do with the political interests of the Democratic Party.
And who did make those donations? If you look at who benefits, you might guess: Republicans.
She then quotes a Washington Post article that says that the free tickets to Selma were provided by “more than two dozen black business leaders.” Is Althouse suggesting that these black business leaders are Republicans? Is she being sarcastic? Would I know if I read her columns on a more regular basis? Does anyone have a wingnut decoder ring?
Here’s another question that applies equally to Down and Althouse: is the way to watch Selma to spend the entire two hours and eight minutes that the picture runs trying to figure out which political party or historical figure benefits the most from the fact that the other people in the theater are watching it?
I’ll tell you another thing. When I watch footage from the Civil Rights Era, whether real or fictionalized, I don’t see “white villains.” I see my political enemies. And they’re still here with us.
If you’re white and you find yourself feeling defensive about the white villains in Selma, there is something wrong with you already. You’re not supposed to belong to that tribe. Didn’t you learn anything in school?
