Lately I have been collecting examples of the liberal love affair with misery (especially in the media) for a future project of mine. They are, as most things about modern American leftists are, generally absurd and laughable but worth sharing just to remind ourselves that we don’t want the world run by cranky grade school principals.
This morning, I happened upon this review of the new Kevin Costner movie Draft Day by the New York Times veteran reviewer A.O. Scott. Now, I don’t know for sure what Scott’s politics are, but given the fact that he has risen to the top of the heap at the Times, it is pretty easy to make a guess.
Scott has a lot of nice things to say about Costner, director Ivan Reitman and the movie, ultimately offering that “it sells itself beautifully.”
As if all of the casual enjoyment of what is obviously meant to be a fluff sports movie, Scott has to offer this in the middle of the review:
“Draft Day,” made with what appears to be the very enthusiastic — not to say domineering — cooperation of the N.F.L., is less a football movie than a promotional film. You will see sweeping aerial shots of skylines and stadiums in franchise cities. You will see the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, and a bunch of players and executives, past and present, gamely portraying themselves. You will not hear anything about concussions or sexual assault or the exploitation of college athletes, though you may notice that this is a story of (mostly) white men buying and selling the labor of (mostly) African-Americans.
I guess suspension of disbelief is only a thing for leftists when they listen to their political heroes speaking about policy.
This paragraph is so out of place with the rest of the review that it almost appears as if an editor scribbled it in at the last minute. A veteran movie critic knows the difference between mindless entertainment and gritty documentary movies. Why would he lament that the former isn’t the latter in a review?
Because it’s the New York Times, and it just wouldn’t be right to celebrate an easygoing flick about an American institution that is beloved in flyover country without getting in a dig about racism.
They have rules there, you know.
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