Topic: CNSNews.com
How much is the production company for the new independent film "For Greater Glory" paying the Media Research Center to promote it? However much it is, the MRC is producing.
Last week's interview between CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey and a actor from the film, Eduardo Verastegui -- in which he parrots Jeffrey's own derogatory attack of President Obama, likening him to Henry VIII (never mind the fact that Verastegui isn't even an American citizen) -- was just one part of it. A May 11 article by Jeffrey lionized the film as "an epic story of freedom that Hollywood would not make" and interviewed a star of the film, Andy Garcia.
May 30 saw an unusual MRC convergence -- both Jeffrey and MRC chief Brent Bozell devoted their columns to the film.
Bozell's column hints that he got an advance screening of the film -- presumably a perk for all the advance work the MRC is doing. He disingenously portrays a single negative review of the film on an obscure website as representative of the entire "secularist press." Bozell went on to slobber over the film: "it's a full-fledged major motion picture with grade-A talent. And it's wonderful."
Jeffrey did his own slobbering in his column: "Long after the politicians in power in Washington today have gone the way of Plutarco Elias Calles, Americans will still be watching this movie. Unlike most movies made today, it tells a story built to last."
Jeffrey also used the film as a excuse to further his anti-Obama agenda:
Nor could the makers of "For Greater Glory" have anticipated that less than two weeks before their movie was set to be released, 43 American Catholic dioceses and institutions — including the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and the University of Notre Dame — would file 12 different lawsuits alleging that the Obama administration was attempting to force Catholics to act against their faith by commanding them to purchase and/or provide health care plans that cover sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
As we've repeatedly detailed, morning-after pills and contraception covered under health care reform are not abortifacients under the medical definition.
UPDATE: Craig Bannister joins in the shilling in a CNS blog post, playing the Obama card -- headlining his post "Catholics Die Fighting President's Mandate in New Movie" and falsely suggesting that Obama "mandate[d] that all churches be closed" like the government officials in the movie -- and calling it "a humbling call to self-reflection and inspirational, the stuff of which legends are made."
