Remember how Team Clinton always disparaged their enemies as peddlers of "trash for cash," selling their stories to book publishers and movie studios? The liberal media played along then, but not now. The March 5-11 edition of Variety notes that Warner Bros. moved quickly to secure the screen rights to "Fair Game," Valerie Plame’s upcoming memoir of her life at the CIA. Michael Fleming sells it: "It’s a delicious political thriller of secret government power, covert identity and White House manipulation tht would make for a great movie." Fleming doesn’t note the tale is much more "delicious" if you hate Team Bush.

With the story arriving before the verdict, Fleming warned "the path to release is strewn with land mines" with movies based on real life. Plame’s memoir has yet to be approved by the CIA, and sometimes real-life stories take "unpredictable turns." It turns out that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the D.C. jury that convicted Scooter Libby enhanced the bankability of Valerie Plame, The Movie.

In an earlier story, Fleming wrote "Plame made a reported publishing deal in the $2.5 million range last year, and Simon & Schuster is expected to publish late this year. While it would be ironic for Plame's story to be illegally leaked by the White House, only to have another government branch deny her the right to tell it herself, the CIA has the latitude to silence Plame." He did not reveal how much money Warner Bros. offered the Wilsons. 

The film is a co-production between Weed Road's Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker of Zucker Productions. (Jerry’s the brother of David Zucker, the new darling of the right for those hilarious Democrat-mocking Albright and tax-hike ads last year.) Fleming noted the Wilsons got to know Jerry and Janet Zucker "because all four are involved in stem cell politics." They don’t think the CIA’s approval of the book will make or break the movie.

"Almost everything that we need for the movie is available from print outlets, and obviously we haven't read the book yet because it hasn't been approved by the CIA," Jerry Zucker said. "Valerie has been incredibly careful with what she tells us, it's almost like she is still working for the CIA. The biggest element of the movie to us is the story of two people who spent their lives in service of their government, and were then betrayed by that government."

What a crock. It's a tale of two conniving civil servants with an anti-war worldview who wanted to defeat those dastardly neocons in a government turf battle. The happy ending is all the money they're making by playing the victim as they pose glamorously at People for the American Way events (see the Variety pic) and Vanity Fair magazine.

In fact, Plame will be speaking at a People for the American Way event on St. Patrick's Day, interviewed by a loony-left media favorite.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center