Free Market Project (FMP) Director Dan Gainor has a piece online at the FMP website detailing how mainstream movie critics and entertainment reporters have uncritically heralded George Clooney's silver screen outing, Syriana, as a true or near-true-to-life account of how American oil companies operate in the Middle East.

Among them, A.O. Scott of the New York Times in his November 23 review: "Someone is sure to complain that the world doesn’t really work the way it does in ‘Syriana’; that oil companies, law firms and Middle Eastern regimes are not really engaged in semiclandestine collusion, to control the global oil supply and thus influence the destinies of millions of people. OK, maybe."

"Call me naïve – or paranoid, or liberal, or whatever the favored epithet is this week – but I’m inclined to give Mr. Gaghan the benefit of the doubt," added Scott, referring to the the writing talent behind Syriana and 1999's Traffic.

Movie reviewers approving the liberal politics of message movies disguised as thrillers is nothing new, but the movie's nationwide release came the weekend before Iraqi elections and as President Bush's approval ratings are climbing out of a second-term slump as the public becomes more confident about the economy, which is seeing 4.3 percent growth in GDP, low inflation, steady employment figures, and surging productivity.