WaPo Critic Pans Pelosi Documentary Smearing Conservatives

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Alexandra Pelosi in MRC file screencap from Jan. 22, 2007One need look no further than the NewsBusters archives on fashion critic Robin Givhan and TV critic Tom Shales to see that the Style section for the Washington Post is hardly immune from the liberal bias that plagues much of the paper's A-section.

But for a change we're happy to note when a Postie in the Style section casts a critical glance at something in the popular arts that unfairly skewers conservatives. Such is the case today with reporter Michael Leahy's withering critique of Alexandra Pelosi's [file photo at right] newest documentary, "Right America: Feeling Wronged -- Some Voices From the Campaign Trail":

It's drive-by journalism, to put it charitably, a string of stupefyingly brief hit-and-run interviews with a bunch of unidentified people who we know are going to say nothing that will surprise us. By then, we've already figured out they're going to be fried by Pelosi's camera. We know they're going to sound like yahoos, often goaded, always reduced to sound bites and caricatures.

Leahy, recalling his impressions of conservative voters from his own campaign reporting, continued by dismissing Pelosi's documentary as a cheap excuse "for a snarky laugh track" at the expense of center-right Americans (emphasis mine):

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As a reporter who spent much of 2008 writing about McCain and talking with many of his most ardent supporters, I certainly met angry conservatives along the way. A few times I was accosted by people who excoriated the media they loathed while expressing assorted fears of Obama -- their conviction that he would bring ruin to the country; that he was a rogue Middle Eastern agent; that he would seize their guns; that he would make a point of keeping the white man down.

But such opinions were a decided minority. I best remember a February day when, along with the rest of the traveling press, I watched the candidate attend rallies in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. By then, McCain was a prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination, and many of the conversations among his admirers at the Southern events were about whether Obama or Hillary Clinton would face him in the general election.

While passionate in their opposition to Democrats, most of the conservatives I met at the rallies that day expressed fascination and respect for Obama. They wouldn't be voting for him, but they felt pride in a country that at last was giving serious consideration to electing an African American. Many viewed his climb as a symbol of American social progress.

This is all to say I met very few yahoos. But that wouldn't be an adequate premise for a documentary so bent on finding subjects to put under a hot magnifying glass. They've been fried here for our amusement.

The daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Alexandra Pelosi's initial claim to filmmaking fame was her 2002 documentary "Journeys with George", in which she chronicled then-Gov. George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign travel.

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters


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Flying pig moment. Take a

Flying pig moment. Take a moment of silence as well.

Predictable

Let's all laugh at Them, whoever They may be. The rules of the schoolyard have never been changed, even when the students grow up. If you can demean or ridicule others to make yourself feel superior, go for it. Speaking as a student who eventually grew up, I was hoping for better in the adult world.

I have always found it not

I have always found it not a little amusing that the political party that owes its power to the stupid, the illiterate, lottery players and people who get their news from Entertainment Tonight, have the audacity to point their fingers atthose who do not agree with them and accuse them of being less than inteligent.

People who continue to blindly support Marxism, which has been nothing but a reapeated failure, are the trulyintellectually challenged among us.

-Dave

Our clueless political leaders are about to drive us all over a cliff. The time to HITM is now-before we go over.

Palm Beach County, Florida 2000

agree. I wish Gore would have said, "Hey, the stupid voters wanted to vote for me for President." (ironically, those voters could not figure out a ballot designed by Democrats)

Documentaries don't really

Double post.. sorry

 

 

Having a Pelosi document

Having a Pelosi document Republican campaigns is rather like how it would have been if Stalin had commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to direct Alexander Nevsky or Battleship Potemkin.

One of the 24% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 89% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory.

I don't mid this Pelosi

While I loathe her mother, I have a soft spot for Alexandra Pelosi. She actually seems like a pretty nice woman. She doesn't give off the same kind of mean spirited vibe that Nancy and Co. do. I thought her docs on Bush and Ted Haggard were pretty interesting.

Please God dont let there be two

but she does have her moms stretched open eyes with that familiar blank stare of, I havent got a clue as to what I'm talking about can you please help me here.

Pelosi is a typical lib, but I have always found her bias

 to be just inbred, not a symptom of evilness. Hannity had her on the other night, that clip would be a good one to watch, to get an idea about her. She said she met a lot of nice people on the trail, went to their homes, ate at their tables, etc. She gave Hannity a little bit of a hard time about Mama, but you almost sense she thinks that SF Nan is a dolt and a witch, too. I don't think it would be impossible for her to even apologise for her mother, if the situation was right. The movie will probably be like most, soundbites of Southerners that the rest of the country can laugh at, because you know we all sound so ignorant. Unlike those Northern accents, no one sounds dumb saying "Jeez, Youse Guys," and the "Fuggedaboudits," only people in the South, are ignorant and racist, don't you know.

 

All a Democrat needs is the upper-story window of public attention and the chamber pot of rhetoric. How else to explain the rise of Joe Biden?  P.J. O' Rourke

tbdi... I saw that

tbdi...

I saw that segment too...she was laughing about being booed when Hannity was talking about her doing the documentary at the conservative rallies.

..she does have a sense of humor and knows what foot to keep in the door on both sides of the aisle to continue on with her work in the upcoming years.

Alexandra Pelosi

I'll say this for the younger Pelosi, -she seems to have a fully functioning brain, unlike her mother. I wonder if, like Chris Wallace and his father Mike, the younger one is pushing their parent to retire and avoid further embarrassment.

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