What happens when you refer to the audience of America’s most popular movie — a movie about a Navy SEAL, no less — as “very angry” and as card-carrying members of the Tea Party?
You piss off Lieutenant Dan. And nobody wants to piss off Lieutenant Dan.
That’s exactly what former governor Howard Dean did Friday night when the discussion on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” turned to American Sniper, the Clint Eastwood action flick that brought in more than $200 million in its first 10 days in theaters. After Maher referred to the film’s hero, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, as a “psychopathic patriot,” Dean said the host made “a very interesting point.”
“There’s a lot of anger in this country, and the people who go see this movie are people who are very angry. And this guy basically says ‘I’m going to fight on your side,'” Dean said, referring to Kyle. “I bet you if you looked at a cross-section of the Tea Party and people who go to see this movie, there’s a lot of intersection.”
The reaction from Fox News was predictable. Hosts Gretchen Carlson and Neil Cavuto blasted Dean and brought on other SEALs, who referred to the former gov — along with fellow American Sniper detractors Maher, actor Seth Rogen and director Michael Moore — as “pompous egomaniacs.”
But then, something unimaginable happened: Gary Sinise, who played perhaps the most iconic veteran in modern film history — Lieutenant Dan Taylor in the 1994 classic Forrest Gump — piled on. In a post on the website whosay, Sinise asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”
To Howard Dean,
I saw American Sniper and would not consider myself to be an angry person. You certainly have a right to make stupid blanket statements, suggesting that all people who see this film are angry, but how is that helpful sir? Do you also suggest that everyone at Warner Brothers is angry because they released the film? That Clint Eastwood, Jason Hall, Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller and the rest of the cast and crew are angry because they made the film? Chris Kyle’s story deserved to be told. It tells a story of the stress that multiple deployments have on one military family, a family representative of thousands of military families. It helps to communicate the toll that the war on terror has taken on our defenders. Defenders and families who need our support. I will admit that perhaps somewhere among the masses of people who are going to see the film there may be a few that might have some anger or have been angry at some point in their lives, but, with all due respect, what the hell are you talking about?
No word on whether Lieutenant Dan has found Jesus yet.
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How is it that we liberals can be so tone deaf, so oblivious the way average Americans think, and so perpetually willing to make ourselves look like arrogant elitists? In politics perception is everything.
It’s more than just perception. It’s reality.
Pompous doesn’t begin to cover it. Maher is judgmental, arrogant, presumptuous, dismissive. His ignorant statement that we have basically the same movie in American Sniper and The Hurt Locker takes disrespectful to a new low. I hope people have enough sense to see movies for themselves rather than base their opinions or conclusions on Maher’s drivel.
I know, Leonard, RIGHT? You must have been so happy when a certain, tone deaf, arrogant elitist wasn’t elected President. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dec…
A broad, overreaching generalization calling the entire audience angry… Sure, but no more broad & overreaching than most thoughtless rhetoric today, just stepping on the ever so holy toes of the self proclaimed immaculate patriots. For the record, I didn’t and won’t see the film. I’d say most, most of the people who flock to this stuff are probably decent people inside, but just haven’t put much thought into the desire to be so easily duped into yet another serving of america’s war machine indoctrination, where we should all give up our children as canon fodder so that the giant conglomerate corporations can go anywhere in the world, & do anything they want, to get at other peoples commodities and make themselves even more super rich.
If “Lieutenant Dan” really believes that Clint Eastwood, Warner Brothers, Bradley Cooper & friends made this film because they were so eager to tell the veteran’s story and propagate world wide freedom & that it wasn’t in fact to make boat loads of cash & propagate ego & fame, my blanket statement is that he is a simpleton. If I’m wrong, where is the film about how America was duped into the war in Vietnam on a lie of a staged attack.
Humans are predators by nature and history. Certain things activate that hunting instinct right along side our pleasure/reward centers & it is very powerful for some. I think humanity demonstrates it’s advancement over lower animals by using our intellect to override that predatory instinct. I have to wonder if anyone else out there ever looks forward to a time when we have grown to an extent where we don’t need a military anymore. Seems like an unimaginable concept at this point.