Hollywood? Inaccurate? You Don’t Say!

Cue up a Category 5 Schadenfreude Alert! The media is complaining that a forthcoming Hollywood movie might be less than accurate to the true story! The movie is Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell, which tells the story of the rush to judgment in the bombing of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

The bombing turned out to be the handiwork of Eric Rudolph (now serving a life sentence), who would otherwise be a poster child for the left’s favorite bogeyman—a white supremacist—except that he isn’t overweight and didn’t speak with a drawl like Olympic park security guard Richard Jewell, whom the FBI locked in on as their prime suspect. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (which I am told local critics have long called the “Urinal-Constipation,” which sounds about right in this sorry case) ran with the story and accelerated the rush to judgment. Jewell was eventually exonerated, and received settlements from several media organizations, including CNN, the Journal-Constitution, and NBC News, who had more or less declared him guilty in their news pages. Jewell died in 2007, at the age of 44.

The current editor of the Journal-Constitution is complaining that Eastwood’s film isn’t accurate:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is questioning the accuracy of Clint Eastwood’s film “Richard Jewell” ahead of its premiere on Wednesday.

In a letter obtained by TheWrap, AJC editor-in-chief Kevin G. Riley challenged the portrayal of the newspaper in the film, according to an unnamed colleague Riley said had seen it. Riley said Eastwood depicted Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs trading sex with an FBI agent in exchange for a tip on a story, but he stated that there is no evidence this ever happened and that Scruggs herself is deceased.

The New York Times reports:

“It is highly ironic that a film purporting to tell a tragic story of how the reputation of an F.B.I. suspect was grievously tarnished appears bent on a path to severely tarnish the reputation of The A.J.C.,” the letter said.

The Daily Beast piled on:

Even before its official premiere, scheduled for Tuesday in Atlanta, the film has been widely condemned by journalists and others for its nasty, misogynistic portrayal of the late reporter who broke the accurate story that Jewell was under investigation, Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde as an unethical journalist who trades sexual favors for information.

“Widely condemned by journalists”! “Tarnish the reputation of the AJC”! Knock me over with a feather! A news media outlet that got everything wrong on this story and helped ruin a man’s life is complaining about accuracy in a Hollywood movie?!? Welcome to our world, AJC! It would be easier to list the few Hollywood historical movies that are accurate than to begin listing all of the films that twist the facts and story lines, almost always in the direction of a leftist narrative. How many corporate and individual reputations have been tarnished by ideological Hollywood films? From fake news to fake films is a familiar Hollywood pipeline. Only now that it bites a media organ does the media complain about it.

It is delicious that Eastwood’s film takes after two rotten institutions that are in Trump’s crosshairs on a daily basis—the media and the FBI. The villain of the film is the AJC reporter played by the fetching Olivia Wilde, who obtains her scoop by sleeping with an FBI agent. First of all, Olivia Wilde better fricking sleep with somebody if she’s in a film like this, and sleeping with an FBI agent does sound like the Strozk-Page liaison of Russiagate, doesn’t it? It’s almost as if Eastwood is trying to make an in-kind contribution to the Trump 2020 campaign, and perhaps we’ll yet see some unhinged leftist attempt a complaint to the Federal Election Commission. That would be fun to watch, as it would amount to tacit admission that Hollywood’s normal mode is as an adjunct to the Democratic Party.

The AJC has now hired a noted libel lawyer to rattle Eastwood’s cage by threatening litigation. Bring it on. Pass the popcorn.

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