Kadner: ‘2016: Obama’s America’ a scary, stupid movie for Halloween
By Phil Kadner pkadner@southtownstar.com September 27, 2012 5:16PM
Director Dinesh D'Souza interviewes George Obama in "2016: Obama's America." Despite an unconventional release, the movie is among the most successful political documentaries of all time. (AP Photo/Rocky Mountain Pictures)
Updated: October 29, 2012 6:55AM
“You have to see this movie!” a woman shouted at me over the phone.
Why?
“It’s all about Barack Obama’s secret plans for this country when he’s re-elected.”
Like what?
“All sorts of things.”
For example?
“There’s so many things, I can’t remember them all.”
Name one.
“You have to see the movie.”
You called me. You said I have to go see it. Now tell me just one thing that you found out that made you feel you had to pick up the phone.
“Health care,” the woman said. “He’s going to do national health care.”
He already has. And it wasn’t a secret. He promised to do that when he originally campaigned for office in 2008.
“But it’s different than he promised. I thought he was just talking about controlling costs. This is socialism.”
Obama and his Republican presidential opponent, John McCain, debated the issue of national health insurance extensively during the campaign.
“I never heard that,” the woman said.
What else did you learn from the movie?
“Obama was influenced by his father, who was a communist.”
His father abandoned Obama when he was about 2. He didn’t see his dad again until he was 10. And that was the last time they saw each other.
“But he’s doing everything his father wanted him to do.”
It seems more likely he would be influenced by his mother, but what exactly is Obama doing?
“He associates with communists and socialists and they’ve influenced his thinking.”
You mean Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and the Daley family of Chicago?
“What are you talking about?”
I’m talking about the Chicago politicians Obama hung around with. You know, all those Chicago machine politicians.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
It was mentioned repeatedly during the Republican National Convention this year. Republicans said Obama’s a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine.
“I didn’t hear that.”
Is he a communist or just an old-fashioned American political crook? He can’t be both.
“You have to see the movie to understand what’s really happening to this country.”
I am baffled about what’s happening to this country.
Five or six readers called me insisting that I see this movie. All of them seemed to think it contained some really important, previously undisclosed information about the president of the United States.
So on Thursday afternoon, I went to the Marcus Cinemas in Orland Park to see “2016: Obama’s America.”
There were about 10 other people in the theater.
I watched. I listened.
And in my opinion it’s a lot of hogwash, bunk and baloney mixed in with some amateurish psychobabble.
It pretends to be a documentary that predicts the terrible things that will happen to this country if Obama gets elected to a second term.
I guess he’s so confident of getting re-elected that he didn’t even bother doing all of the terrible stuff during his first four years.
Dinesh D’Souza is the author of the film and also wrote a best-selling book titled “Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
He attended Dartmouth, went to work for the Reagan administration and is now a member of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.
He tells viewers that he grew up amid poverty in India. Obama grew up amid poverty in Indonesia.
Both were born in the same year.
Both graduated from Ivy League universities at the same time.
And D’Souza had a secretary named Kennedy and Lincoln ... sorry, I got my stupid meaningless analogies screwed up.
But D’Souza really believes he has some insight into Obama because of their backgrounds, which actually are not that similar.
He interviews a couple of people who knew Obama’s father, a half-brother of the president’s who lives in poverty in Kenya (and insists that the president has more important things to do than worry about him) and talks to a person who knew an alleged communist whom Obama once befriended.
He doesn’t interview anyone who actually knows Obama. But he does talk to a psychiatrist who read Obama’s book and offers up some theories about how the president may indeed be trying to impress the father who abandoned him.
D’Souza claims Obama, unlike any Democrat or Republican before him, is opposed to colonialism and imperialism.
I suppose this impresses people who don’t know that our Founding Fathers opposed foreign entanglements, as did most of our country’s presidents.
In fact, I would venture a guess that most Americans are opposed to empire building, but this movie makes such a world view sound sinister.
He also suggests Obama is out to destroy Israel but doesn’t address why a guy with such motives would surround himself with Jews (Axelrod and Emanuel) in key positions. And why appoint Hillary Clinton secretary of state? Is she out to destroy Israel too?
Near the end of the film, a map of the entire Middle East turns green and the words “United States of Islam” appear over it.
This is what 2016 will look like under Obama, according to the movie.
At the heart of the movie is the theory that some evil conspiracy resulted in Obama’s election as president.
He may be right. Why else would Republicans have run Alan Keyes, a guy who actually lived in Maryland, against Obama during the Illinois Senate contest?
Had to be a conspiracy.
