‘Stop watching the news” is the savvy advice Morrissey sings on his politically oriented, recently released album. He then explains: “Because the news contrives to frighten you / To make you feel small and alone / To make you feel that your mind isn’t your own.” This provocative assessment of contemporary journalism felt positively restorative after watching the deceitful glorification of “the news” in Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Morrissey’s complaint cuts through to the truth about modern journalism — as Spielberg does not — by exposing how what we consider “the news” has become the illusory practice of a primarily Left-centered, conspiratorial institution that operates to manipulate a susceptible public. In other words, Morrissey knows that journalism has become corrupt, whereas Spielberg’s movie normalizes that corruption. The Post is a fawning account of Washington Post publisher Katharine “Kay” Graham (Meryl Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) crying “Me, too” when the New York Times scoops them with the precedent-setting publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Spielberg looks to that turning-point event because the past is the source from which today’s leftist sanctimony — and particularly the media’s maddening “resistance” posture — claims its validity. All of today’s social-justice movements — Black Lives Matter, fourth-wave feminism, the transgender-equality brigades — derive their sentimental impetus from the memories of halcyon protest and counterculture dissent that transformed America.
The Post is the Mount Rushmore of the Hollywood–Beltway liberal alliance
The Post is a snootily white-collar movie faking common-man virtues. Spielberg directs it as an addendum to All the President’s Men (1976), the most narcissistic of all newspaper films. Not only did it alter popular consciousness about the media — fabricating a holy war, between journalism and government, that ceased only for deference toward the Obama administration — but it had an overall destructive effect on American civic ambition. That film’s false modesty (enacted by former culture heroes Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) romanticized the hubris, of taking down a presidency, that infected subsequent generations of communications students and ambitious reporters. Through that film’s convoluted, pretend-mystery plot, journalism wannabes regarded their own political partisanship as qualifications for the job; white-knight vanity replaced the self-effacing detective work of the old-time crime beat. Ever since that tedious movie, the news media have magnified their own mythology and sense of power.
Now, using his own dark-tinted “realism” (as in Lincoln and Bridge of Spies), Spielberg counters the lavishness — of the dichotomy between justice and corruption, and of the contrast between the glowing and the chiaroscuro — that cinematographer Gordon Willis gave to All the President’s Men. Black-and-white photography might have implied documentary investigation, but media mogul Spielberg wants dramatic persuasion; he, too, has fallen for the media’s sanctimony and so makes a 21st-century version of John Ford’s maxim on history: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Yet, The Post is irony-free.
The legend offered here is motivated by the resolve of the national media industry to countermand the 2016 election, first by going back to establish the Washington Post’s bona fides when it followed the New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers. This is where Spielberg and screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer automatically accept that publishing the Defense Department’s classified government documents was a journalistic prerogative. To question that decision is now considered anathema. The Post validates the slippery slope that brought us to today’s shameless media partisanship.
Daniel Ellsberg, the Rand Corporation wonk who appropriated the documents and released them to the Times, is portrayed (by Matthew Rhys) as a minor character whose trendy anti-establishment crime (47 classified volumes sneaked out over two months) is merely the film’s pretext. Ellsberg’s backstory, like Spielberg’s cleverest gambit (a blue-shaded montage of presidential prevaricating on Vietnam through four administrations), leads up to the film’s real subject: the gallantry of the media class.
Kay Graham and Ben Bradlee are aristos. They spend little screen time discussing the ethics of “whistle-blowing” or connecting it to their own homes or corporation (where disloyalty would hardly be tolerated). But they do compete and collude with the Times, and, being media lords, their opposition to the Vietnam war is not just journalism but noblesse oblige. Because the purloined documents proved that the government had lost confidence about the war, publishing them, against pressure from Nixon’s White House, becomes justification for any unethical, self-serving action. (“What will happen to the reputation of this paper if we sit on this?”)
The way Spielberg films Hanks and Streep in heroic profiles, their faces full of virtuous strain — tough-guy pride and rich-lady timorousness — isn’t really about freedom of the press; it’s a Mount Rushmore of Hollywood and Beltway liberal alliance. (Film-history note: The clash between Streep and Tom Cruise as Iraq War–era journalist and politician in Lions for Lambs offered deeper philosophical debate than anything here.) No underlings contradict Graham and Bradlee; the film depicts a media class united with D.C. social elites, power brokers who all think alike (thereby implying that the public should think as media instruct them).
These white-collar folk are shocked at what the Papers reveal (“This has never happened before! Not in the history of the Republic!”). But their shock never leads to self-reflection about their duty as citizens. The turn from being professionals to being activists relieves them of patriotic responsibility. Compare them to the characters in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, living out the difficult moral quandaries facing conscientious objectors. The Post’s mash-up of conscience and egotism simply idolizes Graham and Bradlee as they incorporate sedition into the function of journalism. It’s possible to think that the profession, and American optimism, died at that moment.
Alert viewers should see through Spielberg’s admiring perspective and recognize it for what it is: a class crisis. He unwittingly shows the haughtiness of bourgeois journalists who feel superior to their readership and to the subjects they cover. Spielberg valorizes this arrogance but without examining the privilege so apparent in the recent move toward editorializing commentary in news stories that should be strictly factual.
The Post presents journalists as our saviors whose authority is guaranteed solely by their social position: Kay Graham’s money and Ben Bradlee’s editorial fiat. Neither icon’s judgment is challenged. Spielberg simply looks back in awe. (Interestingly, they have the same spiritual lack as Spielberg’s Lincoln does.) Their naïve disillusionment about dishonest politicos (Bruce Greenwood plays a contrite Robert McNamara) is Spielberg’s ruse, attempting to domesticate D.C.’s elite — Bradlee’s daughter’s lemonade stand and his speechifying wife’s (Sarah Paulson) turkey sandwiches nourish the journos as they work overtime. This casual class snobbery is the film’s worst defect — an object lesson in the ever-widening divide between the ideological dictates of mainstream media (which Morrissey sings as “mean-stream”) and the actual lives and best interests of the popular audience. Spielberg, once our great suburban auteur, squanders the potential of such a narrative. Have his private dinners with Obama corrupted his vision?
Here is some of the most dishonest filmmaking of Spielberg’s career: There are strategically placed blacks and women in nearly every scene (though not on the Post’s editorial board — shades of Spotlight). The storyline seems slapdash, TV-movieish but without the urgency of a revelation that needed to be rushed to the screen in order to capture an important political moment. Spielberg never had Larry Cohen’s B-movie, tabloid genius, and he’s lost the feel for the zeitgeist that Morrissey has rediscovered. Instead, the film swings into feminist groveling. Streep is at her most obnoxiously “unassuming” when the Supreme Court sanctions the Post’s defiance of President Nixon’s effort to obstruct the paper’s publication. It’s cringe-inducing to watch Streep maneuver down the steps of the Supreme Court into radiant sunlight while throngs of women beam at her as if she were Hillary Clinton incarnate.
The Post then shifts from hagiographic mode to pandering. A Post reporter reads Justice Hugo Black’s own fawning opinion on the Court’s decision: “The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.” Black’s hoary, big–little binary has occasioned Spielberg’s least credible fantasy, which brings us back to Morrissey’s great warning: This film’s salute to the foundations of “mean-stream” journalism is designed to make you worship Hollywood, the Beltway, and media elites; to make you think they care about you. Spielberg ignores that journalism works in a totally opposite way now in its constant, brazen, unscrupulous efforts to govern people’s thoughts and votes.
Spielberg’s wishful craft can’t disguise this hoax. Ending the movie with trite suspense, modeled after a Marvel Comics post-credit sequence cliffhanger, he fixates on a leftist fantasy that the Watergate scandal — and the self-righteous vigilantism it unleashed — symbolizes America’s political destiny. The Post’s cynicism is unworthy — and worthless.
Preddy gud but I knew all this since the moment i saw the poster and the names of the people making it.
And it will win EVERY Oscar, even if no one sees it.
Can someone red pill me on the Pentagon papers?
I don't actually know what they are
ah-bloo-bloo
Basically during the Vietnam war the military and government coverage was always "We're making great strides/victories", "We'll definitely win this". But then the papers were confidential behind-closed-doors discussions between the politicians and generals and commanders going "This might be unwinnable" and even the one general saying "We'll have to nuke them"
okay but why was publishing them bad?
What a fucking boss. An absolutely refreshing joy to read
They were classified
>In other words, Morrissey knows that journalism has become corrupt, whereas Spielberg’s movie normalizes that corruption.
How can you be so retarded as to vilify the press who factually reported against Nixon and his corruption? White is writer, too. What does he think of his own ideological bias (which is pretty fucking prevalent in this "review")?
Because it was going against the official narrative and would create a lot more resistance from the public towards the war effort. Which was making the MIC billions
>Liking Almond White
He's literally the embodiment of Sup Forums's patented reactionary-contrarianism.
Which is preferable to the unqualified shill pseudo-journalists that inhabit every other corporate hugbox. It is refreshing to see somebody criticize the industry instead of blinding shilling everything that comes out in an industry downturn because their livelihood is connected to the success of the industry and so they are inherently bias. Have what amounts to a Sup Forums poster in an official journalistic environment is refreshing
t. buttblasted mouseketeer
Based
KING of Sup Forums
>the pleb-shill exposes himself for his only response is to call anyone who disagrees with him a contrarian
>He values Sup Forumss opinion
Interesting
I actually do admire him. While I don't agree with him on quite a lot, every now and then he actually pumps out some thoughtful and honest criticism that many of his contemporaries fail to do.
He's the hero film criticism needs because he's actually attempting to inspire conversation and debate rather than turn everything into an echo chamber.
If anything he deserves acclaim for being one of the few people to actually call Nolan out on his shit. And I'll side with him over Aronofsky's bs any day of the week.
>tfw all you knew about this movie was the poster you saw on the side of a bus and you thought "The Post" was a Romantic Drama about a pair of constipated looking old fogeys reconnecting through the mail and were hating the right movie for the wrong reasons.
Wew I was WAY off!
Armond isn't dumb, he knows it's all about Trump and the Fake News brigade. It's obvious to anyone with a triple digit IQ (aka not you).
>How can you be so retarded as to vilify the press who factually reported against Nixon and his corruption?
Nixon did nothing wrong.
>Trump and the Fake News brigade
>Trump is literally going to be impeached and is the worst president of all time after only a year
>Nixon was caught doing criminal acts and was brought down by factual reporting
???
Blindly championing the president is a profoundly lukewarm take. This isn't an interesting response for Armond, usually he finds a more savvy way to be contrarian.
>Trump is literally going to be impeached and is the worst president of all time after only a year
Turn off CNN user.
>Trump is literally going to be impeached and is the worst president of all time after only a year
Oops!!
TLJ is a piece of shit and one of the worst movies of the year, shill
>Nixon was caught doing criminal acts and was brought down by factual reporting
(Not true, by the way)
>Muh share market
>More steel workers laid off this week
I assume you're in the billionaire elite though and Trump's fiscal policies are really benefiting you. Excited to have them trickle down.
>factual reporting
Oops!!
>It’s possible to think that the profession, and American optimism, died at that moment.
Bitch please, it was probably the one of the last grand acts of investigative journalism
>Trump is literally going to be impeached and is the worst president of all time after only a year
I love the smell of commerce in the morning.
>the worst president of all time
I see liberal's memories only go back a few months, because there were presidents who had done some really really fucked and horrible things and Trump has basically been all bluster with very little action
Hell even sacred-cow Obama is responsible for the murders of thousands of civilians with his policy of less troop intervention and increased drone strikes.
>you're in the billionaire elite though and Trump's fiscal policies are really benefiting you
Zoinks!
But it's factual because Trump's influence is negative. Lol. Nice image.
>>Trump is literally going to be impeached
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wew lad, I can't believe you leftists STILL believe Trump is going to be impeached. The media have been trying to destroy him for nearly two years now and they STILL haven't found any concrete proof of Russian collusion. You need to accept Trump isn't leaving the white house anytime soon.
>what is bias by omission
>Based Armond is a Moz fan
>AT&T and Comcast
user, I have some bad news for you
>liberal reading history
History is racist whitewashed lies user you can’t trust anything those white devils wrote (even though they have by far the least biased and most diverse collection of sources in human history).
Didn’t you know that Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, and the Egyptians were all black? Real black history would have taught you that if they actually had writing systems or a comparable understanding of civilization and abstract concepts but unfortunately white devils blew up all the black history books during slavery
>Trump calls black guy a nigger
>Headline: "Trump calls black guy a nigger"
>user: But muh DOW Jones!
How is it even possible for a gay nigger to even be this based holy shit
>Strawman
MSM is infamous for misconstruing everything Trump does just to make him look bad.
Go back to /r/politics you fuck.
Yeah I know very little about Watergate, something about 8 minutes missing from a tape that was unknowingly recording in Nixon's office.
I am 99% everything I know about it is bullshit. Almost like if the trump Russia thing happened in the 70's before Internet
How can it even be possible for a white straight man to be triggered so much by a black gay man?
>He doesn't know what a strawman is
Anyone obsessed with logical fallacies typically doesn't understand them at all. Go back to nu/pol/ friendo.
>black celebrities who've been in sports and entertainment for decades coming out and saying they'd never heard of Trump being racist and he's never been called a racist until he showed interest in becoming president
>they get either omitted or called uncle tom race-traitor liars
Nice ignoring the point that you eat up everything the media tells you to believe
>something about 8 minutes missing from a tape that was unknowingly recording in Nixon's office.
Wow ... that literally isn't what Watergate is about... Just wow
>I don't know anything about X yet I will have an opinion on it
When you say "the media" what is it you mean, user? I think you need to go back to school.
Moz and Mel. Collaboration when?
You have not even proven your claims yet you are accusing others of logical fallacies
>drone strikes
But his appearances on Funny or Die make up for any of that. He was so cool and relatable.
...
He used his stand ability「Cult of Personality」
youtube.com
movies about journalism are even worse than movies about Hollywood, jerk-off material
>Journalists do something good and alter the course of history
>Wahhhh you can't make a moobie about dat! Muh Trump is immune to cwiticism!
REDDIT
E
D
D
I
T
>do dumb cult of personality "political" movie
>"WAAAH WHY DID HE NOT LIKE IT"
>tfw Armond used to love Spielberg
>tfw ever since Lincoln all of his Spielberg reviews have been negative
One of the biggest reasons is his aesthetic transition to being another dull gray filmmaker
>These white-collar folk are shocked at what the Papers reveal (“This has never happened before! Not in the history of the Republic!”). But their shock never leads to self-reflection about their duty as citizens. The turn from being professionals to being activists relieves them of patriotic responsibility.
Might be the dumbest thing I've ever read. Why do they need patriotic responsibility?
>pretend-mystery plot
How exactly was all the president's men "pretend-mystery?" Is he just throwing words without caring what they mean?
Armond loves it when Spielberg makes films about exalting everyday Americans, a subject he hasn't been interested in for a while now.
He's right, though.
Spielberg's last great films were War Horse and Tin Tin.
No, Armond actually gave a positive review to the BFG.
Nutty almond is a meme
>ctrl+f "obama"
>three hits
ah yes classic armond
he was mixed on it
truly /our mond/
He gave the BFG a middling review saying it contained a lot of good elements but wasn't good enough as a whole
I think it's moreso that Spielberg's films used to be very imaginative, obsessed with movement and kinetic action, filled with great images and were spiritually rich. Ever since Lincoln, Spieberg has become very cynical and his films are basically the same tone as the journalist warriors
this is an unreadable word salad with a wrong conclusion
t. brainlet
hes wrong and he cant write. he needs to take english composition again.
>FUGG DRUMPF #RESIST
Armond convinced me to watch Nashville so it is no longer possible for him to do wrong in my eyes
I CAND UNDRSTOOD WORDS TO BIG SO I JUS SAY IT WRONG EVEN THO DUN READ WELL
Watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
I own McCabe and Miller
It's very good
MAEG WORD SMALL LIKE BRAIN
im sorry i insulted your dad. hes gay though
...
big words? you mean english. damn son. im conversing with baboons.
still gay. his premise? wrong. he couldnt be more wrong about everything he wrote.
You just claimed his “conclusion” was wrong without even stating what that conclusion was, let alone how it was wrong. I suspect you realize that even attempting to elaborate would just reveal how little insight or depth you actually have, in criticism or in basic reading comprehension, as your suggestion that it is incomprehensible is evidence of this deficiency.
See, that’s how you structure an argument: state the position I am confronting, reason the incoherency, and then draw conclusions based on the evidence available. Just breaking it down in case you ever wanted to make an argument that someone would take seriously
The war horse was fucking gay though.....
He wrote a glowing review of his new album.
nationalreview.com
Leaking classified documents is illegal.
no you
>tfw the media always circle jerk about movies that shows them as the real heroes.
Why are fake news so egocentric?.
Thats a mediocre review.
Armond doesnt really care for Spielberg now
Like with Scorsese he thinks both are in their "hack years"
To be fair Scorsese hasn't made a good movie since Bringing Out the Dead
i didnt say it was incomprehensible, just that it was an unreadable word salad. his premise is that journalism is a manipulative business and that stories about the great feats of journalism do not accurately reflect that, or rather obfuscate that fact by shifting focus, but that in reality the business is elitist and dirty. but thats not what the movie is about. he injects his own bullshit, which is evident, saying that what they did was basically introduce sedition into journalism. the conclusion is that speilberg doesnt show what journalism has become, a false-god worship, which is not what the movie is about. i guess this retard considers anything put on paper in a checkout lane magazine journalism. thats what happens when you cant think coherently.
>Trump throws fish food box into the pool without elegance
>Headline: Trump embarrasses US, insults Japanese
>Hillaryfag: IMPEACHMENT SOON! TWO SCOOPS
>News leaves out the "little" part where Trump was just copying the Japanese PM and was being respectful
>Fake news pretends it never happened, only to do the same thing next week
Here's the actual turn of events.