Obama Movie, 'The Road We've Traveled,' is Political Propaganda

COMMENTARY | A group of Hollywood movers and shakers have created a 17-minute campaign ad for President Barack Obama. It is produced by Davis Guggenheim, whose credits include "An Inconvenient Truth," and is narrated by Tom Hanks.

The short subject is entitled "The Road We've Traveled," and the trailer is out. Hanks starts the narrative rolling by saying, "How do we understand this president and his time in office? Do we look at the day's headlines or do we remember what we as a country have been through?"

The takeaways are that Obama inherited a bad economy, that he has given everyone free health care and that he killed Osama bin Laden. There is a lot that is not mentioned, of course, such as the persistent bad economy, chaos in the Middle East, the massive federal debt and the attempt to destroy the civil space program, among many others.

The only negatives that Guggenheim could find, according to Hot Air, that there were too many great accomplishments to fit in a 17-minute running time. Oh, and that there were those wicked Republicans standing in the way of the great man's efforts. Even Piers Morgan, not exactly part of the vast right wing conspiracy, could buy that howler. Mitt Romney found it easy to mock the film, for its exclusion of the many negative aspects of the Obama presidency, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Besides, if Obama has done so much for the country that is so blessed to have him as its leader, why not increase the running time? "The Undefeated," the Sarah Palin biop, took 113 minutes to describe the Mama Grizzly's very real accomplishments. "Game Change," the HBO movie about Palin that has a lot of made up stuff, runs just shy of a couple of hours.

If "Game Change" can be compared to "The Secret History," Procopius's take down of the Byzantine Empress Theodora with imaginative crudity, "The Road We've Taken" most resembles, at least from what the trailer looks like, Mallory's accounts of the deeds of King Arthur. The former was a libel against an accomplished woman and the latter was a hero worship of a semi-mythical Romano-Celtic King whose reign ended with the Saxon conquest of Britain.

It is a pity that Hanks, who has contributed much to the popularization of American history on film and on TV, had lent his talents to this project. The movie will not enhance the aura of President Obama. But it will taint the reputations of everyone who is involved in its making.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-movie-road-weve-traveled-political-propaganda-000600131.html

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