Since Mr. D'Souza spends much of his time interviewing talking heads who either provide little data or misleading data...I'll go ahead and give my summary opinion on his movie. Then I'll follow with detailed comments, with references.
Do you remember movies aimed at Evangelical Christians; remember the doomsday/second coming time films such as The Late, Great Planet Earth? The formula: take a smattering of facts out of context, build a "hey, it could be this way, you know" framework that is designed to appeal to an anti-intellectual evangelical Christian audience ("see, just like the Bible says!...It fits! Oh, I NOW UNDERSTAND things so much better!").
Well, that is the formula for Dinesh D'Souza's film 2016: Obama's America. It has very little fact in it; it is mostly a stream of baseless conjectures and mangled factoids which seek to, well, not so much to critique what President Obama has actually done (the way that Fahrenheit 9-11 did with President Bush) nor to report what Obama aides said (the way that Game Change did for Sarah Palin). The idea is to "prove" that Obama is, well, unAmerican.....well, let me correct that: to reinforce the prejudices that the Fox News watchers already have of Obama. Note: right wing delusions of Obama's policies are taken as "facts" throughout; the rest is a collection of people giving their opinions followed by D'Souza proudly waving his prize overhead.
Ultimately, it reminds me a bit of this:
When you try to play chess with a pigeon, it gets on the board, knocks over the pieces, poops all over the board and then struts around with its chest out.
That is pretty much what D'Souza does here.
Detailed comments and rebuttals of "statements of fact" are below the fold.
Read More