Right now, if you go to Google and search for “America,” you will see the results above. That’s right: Dinesh D’Souza’s newest agitprop film is the first thing that comes up on Google. I think it is funny that the normal top result is for the washed-up 70s pop-rock band and not, you know, one of the continents. But apparently, a few weeks ago, D’Souza’s stupidly titled film America was not coming up first. He even had his lawyers send a letter to Google and Republicans are considering looking into Google’s clear efforts to stifle free speech. What’s amazing is that anyone would think that if they named a film with such a generic title that Google would automatically think that someone searching for the word would be looking for the movie. This is why studios name their films thinks like The Fluffy Movie and not Fluffy, although even that is better than America.
But as you see, it does show up as number one now, so Google apparently folded. The company released a statement:
Whatever.
What really bugs me about this is that it is typical of conservatives to go whining about how unfair everyone is to them when they create their own problems. The truth is that everyone who was going to see this film, saw this film. The reviews on it are terrible. It was made for the kind of people who are still interested in anything said by a man who became engaged while still married and who recently pleaded guilt to a felony involving illegal campaign contributions. America wasn’t going to be the surprise hit of 2014.
But in 2012, D’Souza put out 2016: Obama’s America where he made an incredibly tired argument (mostly, although not entirely, used by conservatives) that after winning re-election, Obama would show who he really was turning America into the Soviet Union. Of course, it is two years later and there is no sign of the anti-colonialist who wants to destroy America. You would think that even if this didn’t cause D’Souza to rethink things, it might make some of the people who saw his last film to think that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The new film supposedly takes on five arguments that people like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have made against the United States. But as David Ehrlich at A V Club noted, America “is astonishingly facile, a film comprised entirely of straw man arguments.” But that’s just a pretext. The real purpose of it is to say, that while Obama may not have turned out to be quite the America destroy president that D’Souza claimed, Hillary Clinton surely will be.
How long can Dinesh D’Souza go on making money with the same tired and quickly refuted arguments? Probably a long time. The conservative publishing industry has gone on for decades with the same arguments made again and again. The truth is that there is a big group of mostly old white men who are certain that America is just going down the drain. About a year ago, I wrote, Don’t Let Merle Haggard Deceive You. And just yesterday, I got the following comment from “Len,” who perfectly reflects the kind of person who makes uncreative frauds like D’Souza rich:
There is no talking to such people. They are angry and they will do anything and pay any price to fuel their anger. And fifteen bucks to watch Dinesh D’Souza talk about how it’s not Obama but really Clinton who is going to destroy America is a small price to pay.
