Topic: Newsmax
In his July 10 column, Newsmax's James Hirsen does his best to put a positive spin on an anti-abortion film whose shooting is beset with chaos -- and, like a good right-winger, blames it all on a Hollywood conspiracy:
When it comes to subject matter that is outside the leftist box, Hollywood just can’t endure any factual information coming to light, as witnessed by the massive overreaction by the entertainment elite to a pro-life project that is currently in production.
But Hirsen proves no "overreaction." He claims that producer and director Nick Loeb "initially attempted to be low key about the project, cast and crew so as to forestall the backlash that would inevitably come." But as the Daily Beast reported, Loeb also hid the nature of the film from the crew and from the owners of real-life locations where he tried to film.
Hirsen asserted that "The Beast is apoplectic that the narrator of the story is Dr. Bernard Nathanson (portrayed by Loeb)," a onetime abortion doctor who became an anti-abortion activist. But the Beast article shows no apoplexy over the film's use of Nathanson; it is apoplectic, however about the screenplay's obvious falsehoods (which Hirsen didn't acknowledge other than to complain that the Daily Beast noted the lies in its headline). For instance:
The year is 1966, and elderly Margaret Sanger, the world’s preeminent birth-control activist, is speaking to Larry Lader on her deathbed. Just before she passes, her dying words to Lader are as follows: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she says. “Larry, they can’t see this coming.” The reproductive rights movement is thus framed by the film as a racist plot on a par with Hitler’s Final Solution.
This oft-repeated conservative falsehood, shared by everyone from Herman Cain to Ben Carson, stems from the willful misinterpretation of a 1939 letter Sanger wrote wherein she outlined her plan to connect with prominent leaders in the African-American community and allay their possible fears concerning family-planning clinics.
[...]
Rather, “Sanger’s correspondence shows this sentence advocates for black doctors and ministers to play leadership roles in the Negro Project to avoid misunderstandings. Lynchings and Jim Crow laws gave blacks good reason to be wary of attempts to limit the number of children they bore. In Harlem, [Sanger] hired a black doctor and social worker to quell those fears,” explained PolitiFact. “She attracted an impressive roster of supporters, including Du Bois; Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of National Council of Negro Women; and the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Eleanor Roosevelt also backed the effort. For Sanger to launch a genocidal plot behind their backs and leave no true evidence in her numerous writings would require powers just shy of witchcraft.”
“After reading the script, you realize no, this isn’t opinion, this is lies and propaganda that they’re trying pass off within some historical context,” a crew member on the film, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Daily Beast. “With the Margaret Sanger quote, they twisted it and used it to discredit everything that she possibly did. It’s similar to what the right-wing media is doing now: they take one thing that someone said—or even half-said—and then they turn it into something that isn’t true in order to discredit everything they’ve ever done.”
Hirsen also claims: "The untold story includes Planned Parenthood’s scheme to recruit a pregnant girl to file a lawsuit that would create a right to an abortion. According to the film’s description, Nathanson, Betty Friedan and Planned Parenthood searched "the country to find a pregnant girl" that they could "use to sue the government for her right to have an abortion."
But as attorney Hirsen surely knows, finding a plaintiff for the purpose of testing the legality of a law is common, even on the conservatide side. For instance, Dick Heller, the plaintiff in a case that overturned a District of Columbia law restricting gun ownership, plotted for years to mount a legal challenge to the law and eventually hooked up with a libertarian lawyer who "needed plaintiffs" in the form of "media-friendly, law-abiding D.C. residents to serve as the public face of the case."
So desperate is Hirsen to suck up to Loeb and others involved in the film that he touts its executive producer as "Dr. Alveda C. King" even though King's doctorate is honorary, and claimed a cameo by Milo Yiannopoulos merely offers "left-wing discomfort" while not mentioning the fact that he has been shunned by most conservatives (but apparently not Hirsen) for effectively defending pedophilia.
