Saturday, August 18, 2012

Dinesh D'Souza: The 'Sheriff Joe' of the Conservative Media Movement?

So I'm reading film reviews in the New York Times last Friday August 10th when I came upon a full-page ad for a film called "Obama's America: 2016". The cryptic subtitle read: "Love him, hate him, you don't know him - He is downsizing America."

Uh oh, I thought. I scroll down to check the credits and sure enough this cinematic masterpiece was co-written and co-directed by none other than right-wing writer Dinesh D'Souza (pictured above). For those of you who've been kind enough to follow my blog, you may recall that I wrote about D'Souza back on September 20, 2010 in the lead-up to the 2010 Presidential elections. [Read the blog to get the full story.] Disclaimer: it may be a bit self-serving to link to my own blog, but hey, you do what you gotta do.

Those of you who might not be familiar with D'Souza, don't let that bookish appearance fool you.
Ideologically, this guy is as far right as Ann Coulter and just as nutty as Michelle Bachmann. Two months before the 2010 Presidential election D'Souza penned a widely-panned Forbes Magazine article in which he tried to make the case that Obama, was somehow trying to radically re-shape US foreign policy in an effort to mirror the political views of his estranged Kenyan father.

Well, we've seen how that turned out. Bin Laden is dead, the war in Iraq is over, America has played a quiet but definitive role in the collapse of regimes in Egypt, Libya and soon, Syria; and US troops will soon wind down the war in Afghanistan.

D'Souza, born in India but raised in Arizona, has had nothing but contempt for African-Americans, Jews and homosexuals since he was offending people with his not-so cleverly disguised hate speech in college. Now it seems he's moved on to film.

It would take a psychiatrist to explain how a dark-skinned immigrant would allow himself to be used by American conservatives to bash minorities with pseudo-intellectual theories and baseless assumptions. It's almost like he's the 'Sheriff Joe Arpaio' of right-wing conservative media.

Speaking of media spotlight-loving unapologetic racists, the August 16th Rolling Stone article 'The Long Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe' offers a really penetrating look into the life of notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Like D'Souza, Arpaio has a long history of hating racial minorities in America, RS contributing editor Joe Hagan peels back the layers of this poster boy for intolerance with a must-read profile. Check it out.

No comments: