The official box-office figures are in for the first general-release weekend for “2016: Obama’s America”, Dinesh D’Souza’s conservative film purporting to tell us all about the roots of Obama’s anti-colonial, anti-American views. The film has done very well, as Fox Nation made sure we knew. According to its post, the film finished the weekend at #8 with sales of $6.5 million – extremely good for a documentary - and the highest per-screen theater average ($5,717), thanks no doubt to all those advance sales and pre-organized trips mentioned in an earlier post.
Megyn Kelly and Trace Gallagher were jubilant. The film is the #1 conservative documentary of all time, Gallagher noted. It comes well short of “Fahrenheit 9/11” in sales but, Gallagher reminded us, Moore's film had the backing of Lionsgate whereas “2016” “had the backing of one guy” (and Fox News, the right-wing talk show circuit, the right-wing web-site circuit, and a huge chunk of key Republicans no doubt…)
That wasn't the only post about the movie on Fox Nation today. There was another one entitled "Why is the Press Ignoring the Success of '2016'?" It linked to an editorial from Investors Business Daily wondering why the mainstream media was ignoring its success. “Aside from a few grudging news stories about the weekend box office take and a smattering of predictably critical reviews, the media are largely turning a studied blind eye to the film,” whined the editorial. (To be fair, it was written yesterday. Just now your humble servant did a Google News search of “2016” and turned up more than 900 hits. I’d love to be ignored like that.)
Investors Business Daily explained its theory about the media’s silence, which is basically a rehash of every cliché you ever heard from Hannity or breitbart.com. Exposes our dereliction of duty in not thoroughly vetting Obama four years ago blah blah blah Bill Ayers blah Jeremiah Wright blah blah “kept his ideology, and his intellectual roots, largely hidden behind a smoke screen of clichés” blah. Some Fox Nation readers obviously agreed:
By the way, the film is not getting very good reviews. (see this one, which includes fact checks). Even the very conservative New York Daily News doesn’t like the movie much. (Quote from that review: "['2016' is] not about his record. It’s not about what he’s done. It’s about what D’Souza thinks Obama might think. It’s about guilt by association — and what’s conservative about that?") Today's Rotten Tomatoes rating is 45% (based on 11 reviews) which puts it squarely in Putrid Green Splat territory. All part of the vast left-wing media conspiracy, of course.
