Larisa Alexandrovna At Huffington Post: Right-Wing Goes After John Cusack

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/right-wing-goes-after-joh_b_105761.html

Right-wing Goes After John Cusack

Posted June 6, 2008 | 05:43 PM (EST)

The extreme right is not happy about John Cusack's new film, War Inc.. With the helpful panning of the corporate press as proof - the same corporate press that sold us the Iraq war to begin with - the right-wing is trying make the film seem to be a total flop, despite the grassroots success that it actually is.

Take this fine example of right-wing propaganda, titled idiotically "Cusack: Laugh While Bush Ideology Destroys America:"

Leftist actor John Cusack explained his new anti-war comedy (read: the next box office flop) this way: "The ideology behind this war is so radical and it's so destroying the country that I think a somber serious take on it would just add to the sense of depression and inevitable doom that this administration has unleashed on the country."

Cusack added War Inc. was Bush-inspired: "And the argument of the Bush administration is that there's nothing, no function of state, there's no national interest that is not a corporate interest. Everything is to be privatized, everything is to be -- the core function of government is to create the optimal conditions for a feeding frenzy."

Leave it to Tim Graham, the Director of Media Analysis for the Media Research Center, to misrepresent political satire as slap-stick-comedy and Cusack's accurate criticism of privatized war as somehow inaccurate because of the comedy-routine meme.

Satire, my dear Mr. Graham, is ridicule, not comedy. It is the examination of difficult topics through a more comfortable lens, that of irony. Satire unnerves, it does not simply entertain. In short, satire is condemnation, not a barrel of laughs.

But really, the most important thing you need to know about the Media Research Center, for whom Graham works, is that it is entirely a right-wing propaganda group, funded by corporatists - the very people War Inc. satirizes.

Consider the MRC's rather interesting mission, something they are proud of too:

"(to) provide immediate exposure of liberal media bias, insightful analysis, constructive criticism and timely corrections to news media reporting."

Does that not entirely prove everything I have just stated? No? Well maybe I should add a bit more about who throws money at the MRC.

Did you know that the MRC is founded and funded by Brent Bozell, the wealthy NeoCon who helped bankroll the 2004 smears on John Kerry, painting a war veteran as a traitor? Nice, eh? No wonder Tim Graham is praying with this pen that War Inc., does flop, he gets paid to echo George W. Bush.

Onwards Corporate Soldiers

Wait, but the best is yet to come. Unhinged right-wing extremist David Horowitz and his FrontPage rag claim that Cusack's war profiteers are imaginary and that he is insulting heroes, real and fluffy ones too:

From the safety of his stateside home, actor John Cusack has produced, co-written and stars in a movie, "War, Inc.," deriding firms like Blackwater, whose employees, at great personal risk, provide a service to their country in time of war. Since they make money, he brands them "war profiteers" who deserve to be treated as criminals.

--snip--

The film -- which Cusack wrote after the brutal murders of military contractors in Fallujah inspired him to insult them -- is about a corporation that destroys a fictional country in a privately-run war, then rebuilds it, even gluing back limbs on people after it has blown them off.

The whole point is supposed to be that war is nothing but a corrupt profit-making scheme. Forget al Qaeda's numerous promises -- and efforts -- to kill millions of Americans. Forget 9/11. And while you're at it, forget World War II, during which numerous companies -- including arch-villains like Hershey's chocolates -- provided wartime goods and got paid for same. For Cusack, military conflict is but "a protectionist racket for the government's favorite corporations to make money off the war."

Wow, you mean Blackwater's crimes are all imaginary and their profits too? I will get to that glue-sniffing induced hallucination in a moment. Let's first get something straight: the only people forced into a war zone at "great personal risk" are our soldiers, who are paid ten times less than Blackwater and other mercenary groups.

Now, as for what happened in Fallujah, FrontPage rag needs to get its facts straight. The Blackwater employees who lost their lives in Fellujah, died because of Blackwater's interest in profit over safety, in contracts over security, in everything but the actual mission. In other words Blackwater was responsible for the deaths of their employees. Here are just two snips from the Congressional report on the matter:

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