President Barack Obama visits Texas later this week. As will also be the case when he visits Colorado this week, local Democrats will run from being photographed with him. Wendy Davis avoided being seen with the president the last time he visited the state.
The president is taking some heat for his decision not to visit the Texas-Mexico border while he is in Texas. That border is in chaos, thanks in no small part to Obama’s lax policies. A leaked DHS memo makes it clear that the Obama administration has slowed down deportations, and that policy is driving much of the surge in illegal crossings. More than 50,000 unaccompanied children have reportedly crossed into Texas over the past few months, and are currently being held in camps around the state and increasingly around the country. One Border Patrol agent has reportedly come down with scabies as a direct result of the illegal influx.
Rather than visit the border, the president is attending fundraisers with his wealthy backers, and one of those who will attend is raising eyebrows. The president is set to raise money for the Democratic Party with film director Robert Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is probably best known for the Spy Kids film series, but he has also directed a number of hyper-violent “grindhouse” exploitation films. President Obama routinely uses mass shootings to criticize Americans’ Second Amendment rights, but does not take on Hollywood for its violent movies that show guns and, in Rodriguez’s case, showcase violence as a means to exact revenge.
Robert Rodriguez directed one of 2010’s most controversial films, Machete. Here’s IMDB’s synopsis of its plot.
After being set-up and betrayed by the man who hired him to assassinate a Texas Senator, an ex-Federale launches a brutal rampage of revenge against his former boss.
The cartoonish Texas senator, played by Robert DeNiro, was targeted because he delivered speeches calling for more border security. In the same film, a Border Patrol agent played by Jessica Alba switches sides and becomes a violent immigration radical who screams “We didn’t cross the border! The border crossed us!”
Sure, if you lived in the American southwest and you’ve been alive for about 150 years, you could make the case that the border crossed you.
Machete’s 2010 Cinco de Mayo trailer generated massive controversy. In one line, a character says,”As you know, illegal Americans are being forced out of our country at an alarming rate.”
President Obama is eschewing a trip to the border to hold a fundraiser with the director of that film. Several of the actors who appeared in Machete are also supporting the fundraiser.
Award-winning Latino filmmaker Robert Rodriguez will host President Barack Obama at his home in Austin, Texas, on July 9 to raise money for the Democratic National Committee’s midterm election efforts, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
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Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Demi Lovato and Danny Trejo are among those who have signed on to support the event. Tickets for the Austin fundraiser range from $5,000 to $32,400.
Those are one-percenter prices.
Rodriguez’s 2010 revenge fantasy film was intended to be over-the-top. It was so controversial that the Texas Film Commission revoked Machete’s financial incentives that it offers for film productions that operate in the state, citing Rodriguez’s unflattering portrayal of Texans.
A financier connected with the film is now suing Texas to get those incentives re-instated.
In the suit, Machete Productions says that the commission denied the films tax credits based on its right to judge applications on “general standards of decency” and “the diverse beliefs and values of the citizens of Texas.” But, as the suit alleges, the real reason the commission denied the production refunds was “concern with the political fallout from providing public money to a film perceived as glorifying the role of a Mexican Federal and sympathizing with immigrants.”
Rodgriguez followed up Machete with the sequel revenge fantasy Machete Kills in 2013.
Obama is following up both revenge fantasies by fundraising with Robert Rodriguez.
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