Last night I decided to go catch the timely bio-documentary on Obama called "2016: Obama's America". Before settling into my seat in the theater, I resolved to view it with a critical eye, since I could be reasonably considered a member of the choir prepared to receive Dinesh D'Sousa's anti-Obama sermon.
Expecting a partisan hatchet job against the president, I was a bit surprised to find the film had nothing close to a partisan tone. It treated the president respectfully and approached the narrative more as an attempt to understand who he is and where his policy priorities come from, rather than Michael Moore-style disdain a la Farenheit 911.
The film was compellingly shot and paced, and very well done. It wasn't too long, and avoided preaching about why Obama's policies have been so destructive to our country. D'Souza instead introduced the film by explaining that he found himself puzzled by Obama's policy priorities after he achieved office on such a positive platform of unity, "Hope and Change".
D'Souza travels to Hawaii, Kenya, and Indonesia in a quest to understand the roots of Obama's personal philosophy, following the president's own autobiography as a guidebook. The host concludes through his studies of Obama's history and interviews with his family members that the president is driven by a desire to prove himself worthy of the father that abandoned him by achieving the United States presidency and rolling back the American legacy of colonial exploitation of the third world.
Angry critics from the Left have of course used vicious attacks on D'Souza's motives, some of which were excerpted near the end of the film. I read an AP review that trashed the film today by picking apart minor theories from D'Souza that tied Obama's attitudes on some specific issues to his father's. The AP reporter's approach was to try to invalidate the entire documentary by suggesting he made some of those up ("There is no evidence that Obama believes ...."). The story also tries to argue against some of the assertions among the litany of problems that have been created by Obama's administration, such as arguing that his suggestion that Obamacare will cost a trillion dollars over the next decade (a right-wing lie). It fails to even address the basic message of the film, which is that Obama was raised in a radical family, attracted to radical leftists who became his mentors and supporters, and truly believes he can and must transform America into a less wealthy, unthreatening member of the family of nations.
Personally, I found the brief scene of D'Souza interviewing a psychologist about the effect of parental abandonment on the psyche of children pretty much useless and unnecessary. Although some of his conclusions about Obama policies based on "Dreams from my Father" are not evident, I tend to believe they are consistent with what we've seen in his first term and the attitudes he has projected throughout the past 3 years.
Ultimately, I don't believe it's accurate to describe this film as "Anti-Obama". D'Souza never engages in gratuitous partisanship and is never disrespectful to the president. He actually shows what I took to be sincere empathy for Obama's life experience and understanding about how he reached his adult attitudes and political beliefs. In the end, he simply suggests that he doesn't believe Obama's attitudes qualify him to serve as the President of the United States.
Of course, I agree.
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