By Gary P Jackson
In 2010 Stephen Bannon and Citizens United Productions released a great movie about Conservative women. While the film certainly mentions Michele Bachmann, and obviously Sarah Palin, the film also features Ann Coulter, Michelle Easton, Michelle Malkin, Deneen Borelli, Janine Turner, Dana Loesch, S.E Cupp, Jenny Beth Martin, Jamie Radtke, Sonnie Johnson and Michelle Moore. And even though more time is spent on Sarah Palin than Michele Bachmann, it would be just as erroneous to call Sarah the "star" of the movie as it is to call Bachmann the "star."
Still, this isn't stopping Citizens United from repackaging the doccumentary and promoting it in Iowa as a film "starring" Bachmann. In fact, they are spending $100,000 dollars promoting this thing.
From Jennifer Jackobs at the Des Moines Register:
A special-interest group is putting up television, billboard and Internet advertisements in Iowa promoting a film about Republican Michele Bachmann.
The ads will give the conservative presidential candidate’s campaign some free exposure during the three weeks before the Iowa straw poll on Aug. 13.
Citizens United – the group that was behind the U.S. Supreme Court case that opened the door for unlimited spending on election ads by corporations, unions and other interest groups – will spend nearly $100,000 on the ad campaign in Iowa, according to a news release.
The ads promote its documentary film "Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman."
The movie was written and directed by Stephen Bannon, who wrote and directed the Sarah Palin documentary "The Undefeated."
Starting Monday, the Citizens United TV ads will run on Fox News and other cable channels in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
"The ad campaign will culminate with a booth at the Ames straw poll on August 13th," the news release says.
Read more here.
Now to be fair, we don't see Bachmann promoting this DVD, or claiming to be the star on her website, or Twitter, however, this is obviously a ploy to pump her up after her record has come under increasing scrutiny. It's also a cheep stunt by Citizens United to sell some DVDs.
Here is Stephen Kruiser's original write on the movie from premier night, September, 2010:
Filmmaker Steve Bannon and Citizens United Productions are following up "Generation Zero," their film about the financial meltdown, with a powerful movie about the ascendancy of women in the conservative movement. "Fire From The Heartland" features the distinct and diverse voices of fifteen women who have had an ever-growing impact in government, social media and the Tea Party movement since the 2008 election.
[ .... ]
I saw the movie with a large group of people at last week’s Red State Gathering in Austin, TX. The screening took place only a few hours after I’d gotten to meet and interview Nikki Haley, the mercurial candidate for governor from South Carolina. As we settled in to watch the movie, I looked around to see how many women were in the room. Let’s just say that under-representation wasn’t a problem.
Female voters have long been a demographic that’s been treated like a group-think voting bloc by the Left, with any woman who doesn’t fit the mold (see: Sarah Palin) getting roundly excoriated. As the movie begins with the women describing their backgrounds, a rich variety of experiences and influences emerges immediately.
What unites the distinct voices and personalities becomes apparent when they all begin talking about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and their views on the role of the federal government in the lives of everyday Americans. The hallmarks of identity politics melt away and it’s clear that these women are all fiercely individual but share a common vision of what this country was intended, and no longer seems, to be.
Having grown up in the supposed age of feminism, I couldn’t help but think that this is probably what it was supposed to look like: strong, independent and successful women who have no interest in hand-wringing victimhood. The Left has Hillary Clinton, a woman who rode her husband’s coattails for a couple of decades before trading her Aggrieved Wife Victim Card for elective office. The Right has Phyllis Schlafly, who still commands attention in the way few men can.
It also has Reps. Michele Bachmann, Jean Schmidt, and Cynthia Lummis working hard within the system. Bachmann’s famous grilling of Timothy Geithner is one of the highlights of the film (and featured in the trailer on the website). The film also features Ann Coulter, Michelle Easton, Michelle Malkin, Deneen Borelli, Janine Turner, Dana Loesch, S.E Cupp, Jenny Beth Martin, Jamie Radtke, Sonnie Johnson and Michelle Moore. These women represent old and new media and a cross-section of the Tea Party movement. In short, they’re everywhere.
I experienced a quiet mix of embarrassment and gratitude during the screening. It occurred to me that one of the reasons these women have taken such a prominent role in recent years is that so many of the men who were left in charge of the conservative movement failed it and us miserably. Many readers will no doubt say "Conservative men didn’t fail us, Republicans failed us." The simple fact is that many elected Republican conservatives have been screwing things up since the late 1990s. Now we’re faced with the prospect of having a great November but keeping the good ol’ boy network intact and basically suffering through the same congressional leadership that drove Barack Obama and this Democratic congress into power.
My gratitude is due to the fact that I know so many of these women who are out there having the guts to change the GOP from within and remake it into a conservative party once again. They don’t have the time for third party nonsense and aren’t interested in just sitting around and complaining about the Republicans, like so many men I know on the Right these days. They just want to get something done.
Read more here.
Here's the original movie trailer:
It's a real insult to all of the strong women celebrated in this movie for Citizens United to use them and their legacy to promote the candidacy of one of them over any of the others. Especially when it's the one candidate who is so magnificently not qualified to be president.
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