The Professional Idiot hasn't actually seen W., the Oliver Stone biopic of the man who started and couldn't end two extremely deadly wars, didn't catch the terrorist leader he promised he would bring to justice "dead or alive", failed to stop the 9/11 terror attacks and bankrupted the United States. At least The Professional Idiot doesn't give any indication he has seen the movie in this dim bulb example of his ongoing, losing battle with his own post-conservative era hysteria.
But that doesn't stop The Professional Idiot from raging against the new movie about George W. Bush, that mostly disappoints because it goes so easy on one of the greatest calamities to ever befall the United States.
Does The Professional Idiot actually review the movie in this column? What? Do you think he's some kind of journalist or something? Hell, no. How can you serve up bizarre Oliver Stone-ish conspiracy theories about Evil Pagan Lefty Arts Community/Film Reviewers Anti-Bush Group Think if you'd seen actually the movie?
Instead The Professional Idiot reviews the reviewers :
Our arts community can’t tell a kiss from a kick - or not when the person being kicked is its pet target of group-hate.
......Here, for instance, is Philippa Hawker of The Age: “If you were expecting director Oliver Stone to skewer George Bush, you’ll be sorely disappointed ...”
West Australian’s Mark Naglazas also claimed W was a “surprisingly understated and even-handed account”, yet, totally oblivious to the contradiction, continued: “the 1960s veteran Stone ... cannot resist depicting Bush as he has been for much of his presidency—a shallow buffoon who, in a just world, would struggle to get a job cleaning toilets in the White House.”
Pardon? That’s an “even-handed account” of a man who gained an MBA? Ran a successful baseball franchise? Served as a popular governor of Texas? Won two terms as president? Liberated two countries from fascism? Prevented another terrorism attack on US soil since 9/11?
Good God. That's the kind of glowing summary of a blindingly obvious failed double presidency that even Karl Rove wouldn't dare attempt to pass off under his own name. He'd have to use the Murdoch media to try and get that stupendous fluff into the media.
So what's behind this hilarious love letter to the former president who can now only get a bigger book deal than Condoleezza Rice if he promises to admit he really kinda sucked during his time behind Lincoln's old desk?
Is The Professional Idiot joining George W. Bush on a speaking tour double-bill when the former president tours Australia later this year?
Yet again and again this country’s leading reviewers repeat this patently absurd argument—that Stone has been even-handed by describing Bush as an incompetent, alcoholic, idiotic party-boy, haunted by his father....
Bush, by own admission, was an incompetent, alcoholic party-boy. He was still joking about those days when hundreds of corpses of Americans were rotting away in the flooded streets and submerged basements of New Orleans. And Bush's rivalry and clashes with his father are not exactly a big secret, nor that unusual, or even unexpected, in any father-son relationship when high levels of work-related stress and pressure are involved.
But forget all that. The Professional Idiot has uncovered a brimming latte barrel of anti-Bush Crazed Lefty Group Think conspiracy. A big conspiracy it must be, across dozens of Australian newspapers, following the opinion of more than 7 out of 10 Americans.
Here's Evan Williams of The Australian: “On the whole, Stone plays fair ... The portrait of (Bush) that emerges is rounded and humane ...”
But what is most remarkable about The Professional Idiot's run through of Australian film reviewers who he believes Group Think Hate Bush, with psychotic zeal, is that he managed to totally avoid mentioning one of the most pummeling and stinging Australian film reviewer's write up of the alcohol-abuse brain damaged former president. This review, from The Professional Idiot's own newspaper, The Herald Sun :Yet Williams then gloats: “Dubya comes across as inadequate and impressionable, driven by half-baked notions of revenge, troubled by his early experience of business failure, academic mediocrity and alcoholism.”
The Sydney Morning Herald also praised Stone’s “fair-mindedness” and “restraint”. The ABC’s Margaret Pomeranz called W a “not unsympathetic depiction”, while David Stratton agreed it was “not a strongly anti-Bush film”.
The group-think is the most unmissable thing about this baaing of reviewers who see the crudest monstering as the least Bush deserves.
No dissent from this party line is even considered or uttered. None of this tribe defend Bush as some will defend even Saddam Hussein, the psychopathic killer he toppled.
...what is most remarkable of all is that not one of these reviewers can detect their own blind bias, witlessly praising as “fair” and “understated” a sliming as juvenile and angry as graffiti.
Demonised and declared a dunce, Dubya formally vacated the White House last month.How did The Professional Idiot manage to miss that biased, tribal group-thinking and utterly scathing review of his hero George W. Bush in the pages of his own newspaper?
During his two terms in office, Bush generated both the highest and lowest approval ratings of any US President since the advent of public polling.
......
(Actor Josh) Brolin’s depiction of Dubya works well enough as a straight physical impersonation. However, what he really gets right is the unique mix of idiocy and innocence that planted this plonker on the world stage.
Maybe, like most Victorians, The Professional Idiot only reads The Herald Sun for its sports pages.
