Earlier this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released a list of 15 documentaries that will be considered for Oscar nominations. And in a surprise to no one outside the conservative bubble, Dinesh D'Souza's ridiculous Obama-bashing "documentary" 2016: Obama's America was not included. And in typical fashion, Distort D'Newsa is not taking it very well and blaming his snub on, what else, Hollywood liberal bias.
I want to thank the Academy for not nominating our film," D'Souza joked. "By ignoring 2016, the top performing box-office hit of 2012, and pretending that films like Searching for Sugar Man and This Is Not a Film are more deserving of an Oscar, our friends in Hollywood have removed any doubt average Americans may have had that liberal political ideology, not excellence, is the true standard of what receives awards."
Um, "top-performing box-office hit of 2012?" Really? It's grossed $33.5 million. Hardly the top-performing hit of the year. Now, for a documentary and on a $2.5 million budget, that is a very nice return for your money, but in comparison, Michael Moore's
Farenheight 9/11 grossed over $222 million on a $6 million budget - no to mention his previous film
Bowling for Columbine ($58 million on a $4 million budget) actually
wonan Oscar. So calm down the bragging, Distort.
But it's not just him. Gerald Molen, the film's producer (who is also, hard as it is to believe, the Oscar-winning producer of Schindler's List) is also claiming bias.
"Dinesh warned me this might happen," Molen said with a laugh Tuesday. "The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood circles. The film's outstanding success means that America went to see the documentary in spite of how Hollywood feels about it."
A $33.5 million gross means "America" went to see it? Uh, no. That's a good return for a documentary true, but the way Molen's bragging, you'd think it did numbers to rival
Avatar. No, it did well because the conservative base and Fox News droids ran out to see it because it fed their paranoid fantasies about Obama being this sinister Kenyan socialist Muslim sleeper agent out to destroy America.
Now, this isn't the first time D'Nouza and his fellow filmmakers have shown paranoia about the reaction to the film (previously they'd smelled conspiracy aimed at driving down box office returns), but this is getting ridiculous even by their standards. There are several perfectly viable reasons why 2016 was not considered for an Oscar nomination and none of them have anything to do with "liberal bias."
1. The film is full of lies.
The whole premise of the film (Obama being an "anti-colonist" because of his absent father's influence) is a crock of shit, but to pinpoint one specific and very blatant lie, D'Souza claims Obama signed TARP into law, when it was actually Bush who did it in 2008.
2. It doesn't qualify as a documentary.
When the L.A. Times calls your film one long attack ad and the Washington Post calls it a "slick infomercial", it's pretty clear that the term "documentary" doesn't apply to your film.
3. The man behind it is a proven liar prone to offensive and disgraceful acts and comments.
Just to pick one of D'Souza's worst examples was his 2007 book The Enemy at Home, which, as the NY Times said:
...is filled with willfully incendiary - and preposterous - assertions that "the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11"; that the left is "secretly allied" with the moment that Osama bin Laden and Islamic radicals represent "to undermine the Bush administration and American foreign policy"; and that "the left wants America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill."
Oh and D'Souza's been doing this type of garbage his whole life. Need I remind you he and Laura Ingraham were the founders of
this while in college?
And probably the best reason why it's not getting considered for an Oscar nod:
4. It's not a good movie.
Take a look at Rotten Tomatoes and you see that 2016 has a putrid 27% rating and has been universally savaged by the top critics (EW's Owen Gleiberman, to just show one example, called it a "nonsensical, unsubstantiated act of character assassination."). By contrast, Searching For the Sugar Man and This Is Not a Film, the two documentaries D'Souza mocked as unworthy compared to his film, garner ratings of 95% and 100% respectively.
Newsflash to D'Souza and his backers; box-office success does not make a movie good. I only need point to the Twilight franchise and the films of Michael Bay for proof of that.
Face it, Distort. Your movie was nothing but a film-length hatchet job, a shameless pack of lies intended to cause damage to Obama's reelection and further fuel the conservative conspiracy theories that Obama is the Other and not one of us. You failed utterly on all counts and now you expect to be rewarded with critical acclaim and accolades for your filth? Get real.
The proper treatment for D'Souza? I think Bill Maher had the best approach. Feel free to emulate him.