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The perennial Obama List tells the world what movies, books, and movies it should revere. Yet this year’s list, despite coming from the Kalorama White House shadow government on high, was promoted with quasi skepticism by the trade publication Variety, which curiously averred, “Whether or not you believe Obama’s insatiable consumption of the culture . . . ”
If left-wing Variety expresses doubt about the origins of Obama’s “favorite movies” list, we can easily suspect that it was actually compiled by his team, the same way staff speechwriters produce a politician’s statements. Consultants may produce “official” Obama dictates, but this year the list challenged the credulity of even die-hard idolators.
Beginning with uncharacteristic candor: Obama stated, “I’m biased, since these movies were produced by Higher Ground.” That’s the Netflix-funded production company founded with his wife Michelle. “But these are in fact three of the best films I saw this year.”
Our grandparents cautioned us that “self-praise stinks.” But Obama usurped ancestors’ authority a long time ago. He flagrantly equates his own productions with the work of more skilled and practiced filmmakers.
Who can believe that between kite-surfing with Richard Branson and yachting on the Mediterranean with Spielberg, Springsteen, and Tom Hanks, Obama actually had time to keep up with the film, music, and book industries? The list is a product of social domination, as if Obama was still the gentlemanly leader of the free world despite apparent angry, demented POTUS puppetry.
Leading off with Rustin, American Symphony, and Leave the World Behind — all lousy and formulaic — Obama the Mogul manufactured the “fundamental change” that Candidate Obama promised to bring to the United States.
These productions continue the Obama doctrine into the Netflix era when viewers aren’t autonomous enough to resist. A loyal, unquestioning peasantry is Team Obama’s ideal constituency.
This list wasn’t purely cultural. Obama made sure to mention the strikes by Hollywood’s Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. He praised their socialist intent, saying, “Writers and actors went on strike to advocate for better working conditions and protections. It led to important changes that will transform the industry for the better.” Obama’s basic communist revolutionary rhetoric fits alongside the inanity of SAG president Fran Drescher’s stubborn refusal of compromise — the “change” that had hobbled the filmmaking industry nationwide.
All of Obama’s 13 “favorite movies of 2023” are as middling artistically as they are politically obvious. He is more politician than impresario. The Holdovers, Blackberry, Oppenheimer, American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Monster, Past Lives, Air, Polite Society, and A Thousand and One all fail as pop entertainments. Each one ladles out race, gender, and political instruction — social engineering. Except for Oppenheimer, they’re all box-office flops that fail to please the commonweal.
Obama’s list isn’t a mere press release. Now Obama has joined the media industry, furthering his agenda through fake culture.
NEWSFLASH: The day after Obama released his list, he posted on X: “I just saw The Color Purple and loved it. I’m adding it to one of my favorite movies of the year.” Everyone knows Oprah’s The Color Purple remake is rotten. It’s unlikely that Obama just saw it. Attempting to walk back his initial dismissal, he showed the world how Democrat Party millionaires stick together. Obama’s guise of “insatiable consumption” is actually an act of cultural destruction, more proof of a Kalorama fraud.