The Manchurian Canard
By Don Feder
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 2, 2004
What?s the greatest danger to America ? maniac Moslems longing to resurrect the Caliphate, Stalinist states with nuclear arsenals, terrorist sugar-daddies stockpiling doomsday weapons?
Not according to Hollywood. Once again, the entertainment community has brilliantly discerned the real threat to our nation?s security in multinational corporations ? military contractors doling out campaign cash and exercising shadowy influence over government.
Or, as Denzel Washington?s character explains in Paramount?s anti-capitalist remake of The Manchurian Candidate ? Michael Moore meets Ralph Nader ? the clear and present danger is "rich people funding bad science to put a sleeper agent in the White House." Oooh!
In the original (1962), the villains were communist operatives. In this DNC remake, the bad guys practically have GOP stamped on their foreheads.
The original opens with a flashback to the capture of a U.S. Army patrol during the Korean War. The GIs are brainwashed by Chinese and Soviet scientists in Manchuria and turned into robotic killers? hence, The Manchurian Candidate.
In director Jonathan Demme?s version, the patrol is captured during the 1991 Gulf War. The soldiers, led by the dedicated Capt. Marco (Denzel), are taken to a secret laboratory somewhere in the region, where they?re subjected to high-tech mind manipulation ? brain implants that control memories and, with the right stimulation, actions.
Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) comes back a Medal of Honor winner, thanks to false memories of his heroism. Shaw is elected to Congress and winds up his party?s vice presidential nominee, due to his turbo-charged Machiavellian mother ? a United States Senator with the personality of Hillary Clinton, who spouts what the scriptwriter assumes are conservative theories.
At the center of the conspiracy to create "the first privately owned president" is Manchurian Global, "a supremely powerful, well-connected, private equity fund," whose directors include Saudi royals, deposed communist dictators, ayatollahs ? in short, everyone except Hannibal Lecter in a dinner jacket.
But why Manchurian Global? Is the company incorporated in the Chinese province? Does it trade yak dung in the commodities futures markets? The name, which seems to bear no relation to the company?s operations, is an awkward attempt to tie the plot to the title.
While the remake lacks the taut action or superb acting of the original (it may have been Sinatra?s best performance), it weaves together all of the favorite paranoid fantasies of the fever-swamp Left ? corporate campaign contributions, Halliburton, Dick Cheney, the Bush family?s Saudi connections, political assassinations engineered in board rooms and, of course, brainwashing.
Says Demme, "This is a movie about political brainwashing, and we?re right back there again now." Which party do you suppose he?s talking about? Hollywood can only conceive of Republican popularity in terms of mind control.
Adds loony New Ager Jon Voight, who plays the standard-issue noble liberal Senator in the film, "It raises lots of questions and gets us thinking about assassinations and other things we went through and were traumatized by in the '60s."
This is Hollywood?s stock excuse for propaganda in the guise of entertainment: It gets us thinking ? in ways Hollywood wants us to think. Some would call that brainwashing.
The Manchurian Candidate could easily be mistaken for a 2 hour-and-15-minute Kerry campaign ad.
Even Frank Rich, the dogmatically liberal columnist for The New York Times, admits: "I cannot recall when Hollywood last released a big-budget mainstream feature as partisan as this one at the height of a presidential campaign. That it has slipped into action under the media?s radar, as discreetly as the sleeper agents in its plot, is an achievement in itself. Freed from any obligations to fact, The Manchurian Candidate can play far dirtier than Fahrenheit 9/11." Assuming that?s possible.
Rich also notes that almost everyone connected with the film is a die-hard Democrat, including Meryl Streep (who plays Shaw?s mother and performed at a recent Kerry fundraiser) and Paramount chairwoman Sherry Lansing (a major Democratic donor, as is Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount?s parent company, Viacom). Even un-funny man Al Franken, whose anti-conservative diatribes rival Moore?s "documentaries" for sheer shrillness, has a cameo as a cable TV reporter.
The plot aside, The Manchurian Candidate is a showcase for liberal idiocy on a variety of issues ? from civil liberties to the War on Terrorism. Voight?s wise/compassionate Senator tells us, "We have helped to engender (terrorists) with 20 years of failed foreign policies." (In the movie, the War on Terrorism has spun out of control, with U.S., forces engaged everywhere from Indonesia to Africa.)
By Don Feder
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 2, 2004
What?s the greatest danger to America ? maniac Moslems longing to resurrect the Caliphate, Stalinist states with nuclear arsenals, terrorist sugar-daddies stockpiling doomsday weapons?
Not according to Hollywood. Once again, the entertainment community has brilliantly discerned the real threat to our nation?s security in multinational corporations ? military contractors doling out campaign cash and exercising shadowy influence over government.
Or, as Denzel Washington?s character explains in Paramount?s anti-capitalist remake of The Manchurian Candidate ? Michael Moore meets Ralph Nader ? the clear and present danger is "rich people funding bad science to put a sleeper agent in the White House." Oooh!
In the original (1962), the villains were communist operatives. In this DNC remake, the bad guys practically have GOP stamped on their foreheads.
The original opens with a flashback to the capture of a U.S. Army patrol during the Korean War. The GIs are brainwashed by Chinese and Soviet scientists in Manchuria and turned into robotic killers? hence, The Manchurian Candidate.
In director Jonathan Demme?s version, the patrol is captured during the 1991 Gulf War. The soldiers, led by the dedicated Capt. Marco (Denzel), are taken to a secret laboratory somewhere in the region, where they?re subjected to high-tech mind manipulation ? brain implants that control memories and, with the right stimulation, actions.
Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) comes back a Medal of Honor winner, thanks to false memories of his heroism. Shaw is elected to Congress and winds up his party?s vice presidential nominee, due to his turbo-charged Machiavellian mother ? a United States Senator with the personality of Hillary Clinton, who spouts what the scriptwriter assumes are conservative theories.
At the center of the conspiracy to create "the first privately owned president" is Manchurian Global, "a supremely powerful, well-connected, private equity fund," whose directors include Saudi royals, deposed communist dictators, ayatollahs ? in short, everyone except Hannibal Lecter in a dinner jacket.
But why Manchurian Global? Is the company incorporated in the Chinese province? Does it trade yak dung in the commodities futures markets? The name, which seems to bear no relation to the company?s operations, is an awkward attempt to tie the plot to the title.
While the remake lacks the taut action or superb acting of the original (it may have been Sinatra?s best performance), it weaves together all of the favorite paranoid fantasies of the fever-swamp Left ? corporate campaign contributions, Halliburton, Dick Cheney, the Bush family?s Saudi connections, political assassinations engineered in board rooms and, of course, brainwashing.
Says Demme, "This is a movie about political brainwashing, and we?re right back there again now." Which party do you suppose he?s talking about? Hollywood can only conceive of Republican popularity in terms of mind control.
Adds loony New Ager Jon Voight, who plays the standard-issue noble liberal Senator in the film, "It raises lots of questions and gets us thinking about assassinations and other things we went through and were traumatized by in the '60s."
This is Hollywood?s stock excuse for propaganda in the guise of entertainment: It gets us thinking ? in ways Hollywood wants us to think. Some would call that brainwashing.
The Manchurian Candidate could easily be mistaken for a 2 hour-and-15-minute Kerry campaign ad.
Even Frank Rich, the dogmatically liberal columnist for The New York Times, admits: "I cannot recall when Hollywood last released a big-budget mainstream feature as partisan as this one at the height of a presidential campaign. That it has slipped into action under the media?s radar, as discreetly as the sleeper agents in its plot, is an achievement in itself. Freed from any obligations to fact, The Manchurian Candidate can play far dirtier than Fahrenheit 9/11." Assuming that?s possible.
Rich also notes that almost everyone connected with the film is a die-hard Democrat, including Meryl Streep (who plays Shaw?s mother and performed at a recent Kerry fundraiser) and Paramount chairwoman Sherry Lansing (a major Democratic donor, as is Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount?s parent company, Viacom). Even un-funny man Al Franken, whose anti-conservative diatribes rival Moore?s "documentaries" for sheer shrillness, has a cameo as a cable TV reporter.
The plot aside, The Manchurian Candidate is a showcase for liberal idiocy on a variety of issues ? from civil liberties to the War on Terrorism. Voight?s wise/compassionate Senator tells us, "We have helped to engender (terrorists) with 20 years of failed foreign policies." (In the movie, the War on Terrorism has spun out of control, with U.S., forces engaged everywhere from Indonesia to Africa.)
