“Rosewater” Jon Stewart’s Argo

Another film with Iran in the crosshairs: An effing bad idea

by Patrice Greanville

The New York Times headline made me wince:

Jon Stewart to Direct Serious Film, Will Take Hiatus From ‘Daily Show’ 

The news—when read in more detail— was not reassuring. It would seem like one of the most colossal egos in the entertainment world is about to pull an ARGO on us.  No I’m not referring to Affleck, whose Oscar for that perniciously-timed film is the official certification for Hollywood’s willing concubinage with imperial America. I’m talking about Jon Stewart, by far one of the most insufferable and self-impressed personalities in the modern pantheon of cheap idolatry for which American culture will surely be remembered—should the world survive its runaway ignorance and misdirected violence.

The reason for my disgust is that Stewart is about to take a 12-week hiatus from his duties at the uber-adulated The Daily Show to direct a movie whose plot—oh my— he penned.  The movie —”Rosewater”, is reported to be an adaptation of the 2011 book “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival,” by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy. Hmm. Hold that a cotton-pickin’  minute.  Captivity? A guy named Bahari? Knowing as I guess you do, that the US and its usual accomplices are desperately looking for a way to provoke a fight with Iran, what country do you think will be cast as the humorless heavy in this picture? Yes, that country. The same country already exploited by liberaloid Affleck to excellent “artistic” returns.

“One of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves,” Mr. Stewart said [fatuously], “and I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.”  Mr. Bahari’s ordeal is familiar to “The Daily Show” fans — in fact, the comedy program played a role in it. ⁽¹⁾

The blooming of this execrable notion took place in a rather serendipitous manner. According to the Times,

A Canadian-Iranian journalist and documentarian, Mr. Bahari was jailed in Tehran in 2009 for four months, accused of plotting a revolution against the government. Shortly before his arrest, Mr. Bahari had participated in a “Daily Show” sketch, conducted by one of the show’s correspondents, Jason Jones, who was pretending to be a spy. Mr. Bahari’s captors used the footage against him. “You can imagine how upset we were,” Mr. Stewart said, “and I struck up a friendship with him afterward.”

Since ARGO was premised on something like a ruse to fool the Iranians, Stewart’s  premise, also packing identity errors, sounds to me derivative, at best. Not so bloody funny. Let alone that original. How many times are we gonna take credit for rooking the Iranians?

One more requiem for liberalism

With this recklessly ill-timed film, Jon Stewart is now clearly joining not only the lot of imperial apologists (which as Abby Martin suggests—see below—was well prefigured by his fawning over Obama and other Democratic politicos), but also proving for the umpteenth time that liberals are either egotistical assholes with the political acumen of a hedgehog or… thinly-veiled groupies for the imperial status quo. So first Affleck, now Stewart, where will it end, this noxious parade of (shall we say charitably) unwittingly self-indulgent “cinematic art”?

Since Stewart  is a comedian, very much the frat-sort, smart-ass, middlebrow American comedian, the kind that the politically illiterate and almost permanently infantilized Generation X finds so damn amusing, albeit one now afflicted with acute auteur pretensions, we can’t tell at this point where this expensive bauble will end, hopefully in the trash, but we can bet that the Iranians will be once again characterized as fanatical ciphers  or dunces—not exactly the image needed at this point to inject some warmth and respect in the American mind toward that tortured nation.

Well. What else could we expect? This is the rotten Zeitgeist we inhabit, friends. For ill or for ill.

In the final analysis, however, as even a bright 6-year old could tell, war is too dreadful a matter to be left to mere politicians…or  megalomanic buffoons.  Man, where is George Carlin when we need him!

Patrice Greanville is the editor in chief of The Greanville Post. 

•••••

ADDENDUM

Abby Martin of RT calls out court jester Stewart and his accommodation of Obama.  Hard questions are never asked on Stewart’s Daily Show, particularly when Democrat politicians need votes.  I’ve said previously how Stewart parades a constant stream of establishment war criminals and monsters on his program so they can peddle their books.

SOURCE: 

Jon Stewart to Direct Serious Film, Will Take Hiatus From ‘Daily Show’

⁽¹⁾ http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/jon-stewart-to-direct-serious-film-will-take-hiatus-from-daily-show/

•••••

PS: While you’re on the NYTImes page, be sure to read some of the comments. They’re a hoot, horrifying. I think you’ll probably be alarmed at how  pathetic, needy and undignified Stewart’s following seems to be. Proof conclusive that far too many people these days are simply functional social morons and that the world is doomed.  I read like 20 comments and then stopped with a mild feeling of nausea.  Condensed, in-your-face stupidity does that to me. At any rate I verified that none of the commenters mentioned the possibility that this new film is just another ludicrous concept likely to increase the tensions and gross misperceptions about Iran and that it should not be celebrated.  And that someone would see the obvious and call Stewart on it, that to pick—of all possible subjects, many much more urgent—this particular plot to sink a pile of greenbacks in it, is simply obscene. Well, about that I suppose I was being way too optimistic.

Argo in Context

There are films that simply should not be made, and this is clearly one of them. The historical context in which a work of mass communication is created and distributed should be taken into account by morally responsible artists. It rarely is.

 

Bryan Cranston. and Affleck (as Mendez).

by Patrice Greanville

Ben Affleck’s latest actioner using the Iran hostage crisis as a backdrop may hit the mark as a thriller but misses the target big time by serving as a propaganda vehicle for US war in that region.

Synopsis

Already hailed as one of the year’s best, Argo is a 2012 American political thriller film directed by Ben Affleck (and co-produced by George Clooney, whose fascination with shady intel ops and Middle East intrigue is rather notable). The film is loosely based on a true story, CIA “exfiltration expert” Tony Mendez’s account of the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran at the height of the 1979 “Iran hostage crisis”. The film stars Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman. The film is scheduled for release in the United States on October 12, 2012.

What’s so bloody wrong with this film

TIMING

Appearing in late 2012, prior to the US presidential election, and in the midst of an all-out propaganda campaign to demonize Iran and take America to war against that long-victimized country (a stealthy dirty war of sabotage and assassination has been waged against Iran for quite some time now by NATO assets and the Mossad, with probably ample support from the Gulf royal mafia), the film can only add fuel–what else–to the flames. This film, under the guise of a thriller, can only exacerbate anti-Iranian feeling in America and elsewhere, and, in passing, perhaps as an unwitting bonus, give the sinister CIA a cuddly wink of approval. Which is exactly what you’d expect from nincompoop liberals like Affleck and Clooney.