The National Geographic Channel is planning to run an in-kind donation a movie about the US military mission that killed Osama bin Laden, on November 4. Two days before election day. Don’t question the timing, though, as the name once more known for baring tribal skin in the Serengeti is now diving into its hard-core fall television line-up. That’s all this is about. There are no politics or spiked footballs to see here, even though the film was financed by Obama mega-supporter Harvey Weinstein. The bin Laden raid movie just could not wait until Nov 7 to air. It must launch on Nov 4.
In any case, it’s a film about infidels killing a figure who is still revered across the Muslim world. Some people revere him so much that they chanted “Obama! Obama! We are all Osama!” while they were storming our embassy in Cairo last month. So threats of violence have followed the announcement to air the movie about his violent death.
According to a New York Post source, the channel has been bombarded with phone calls and blogs posts from “Muslim extremist groups” warning that anyone airing a film like this is asking for trouble.
Hm. Discovery Channel aired an hour-long movie about killing bin Laden earlier tonight. I watched most of it, and it was pretty good. It definitely has a happy ending for all but a couple of the figures on screen. One gets lead poisoning at high speed, through the eye, and the narrator allows that the last thing the tall porn-obsessed fellow saw before meeting his virgins was a SEAL-shaped shadow aiming a rifle at him. That’s a visual that sticks in the mind, unless it blows your brains out.
The football was duly spiked in that hour-long film, but I don’t recall Discovery coming under any jihadist threat for airing it. Maybe Discovery needs a better marketing team.
Curious thing, though. Discovery’s huge network airing a professionally produced bin Laden film doesn’t cause riots, but an obscure YouTube movie with barely any views did. The darndest things go viral these days.
“Enough threats have come in that the network is on higher security alert,” the source said. “They have a huge public building with a museum and 1,600 people working.”
The movie, which focuses on one of President Obama’s most successful moments in office, will premiere just two days before the November 6 election, drawing fire from critics on the right who have accused National Geographic of being partisan.
That moment was pretty much the only successful moment of Obama’s presidency. Everything else he has touched has turned to crap. Even that moment of triumph was quickly followed by a cluster of conflicting stories about the raid, and then a burial at sea of the body of the world’s most hunted terrorist, in full Islamic rites out of respect. We wouldn’t want to cause riots by killing or improperly burying a bearded Hitler or anything. That’s what we were told at the time, and it’s supposedly the reason we have never been shown the photos of Osama’s ventilated corpse. We don’t want to offend anyone or cause riots.
Well, the offending part isn’t all that important, or Obama would not have pushed his abortifacient mandate on Catholics. He would not use our taxpayer dollars to push abortion overseas. It’s the riots he seems to care about. Sometimes.
Clearly, National Geographic’s marketing has been a little too good and, following the lead of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton and Ambassador Rice, the channel should not show the bin Laden snuff film. It may offend people and cause riots. Jihadists are already posting online about it.
It’s all very confusing, isn’t it? Do we only care about movies causing riots when there’s a terrorist attack to cover up less than two months before an election? Do we not care about causing riots when there’s a chance to air a long Oba-mercial two days before an election?
Next question for the president and his peanut gallery: Why don’t you have Eric Holder jail the NatGeo filmmakers? They’re making a film that offends people and threats of violence are in the air. Surely Weinstein has some traffic ticket or something on his record that’s worth a peek. Why don’t y’all haul him in for a midnight chat, eh?
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