Lefty Meryl Streep to Play Margaret Thatcher “Leftly” or “Rightly?”

It has been reported that Meryl Streep has been pegged to play one of the greatest female leaders of the last two centuries, Margaret Thatcher.  The article below was posted by Kim Morgan at MSN’s movie blog, the Hitlist.   Needless to add that the writer writes somewhere between left and far left, if we were to grade using those terms.  How can we tell?

“According to reports, there are many who are pleased and honored with Streep stepping in for the former prime minister, even Conservatives, but her children, not so much. Or, to be proper, they shan’t be pleased. Oh, bollocks! To them, this is certainly not ducky.

From the Telegraph UK:

“Mandrake hears that the screenplay of ‘The Iron Lady’ depicts Baroness Thatcher as an elderly dementia-sufferer looking back on her career with sadness. She is shown talking to herself and unaware that her husband, Sir Denis Thatcher, has died.

“‘Sir Mark and Carol are appalled at what they have learnt about the film,’ says a friend of the family. ‘They think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy. They feel strongly about it, but will not speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity.’”

Well, it certainly has gained publicity now, which means…greenlight and go! Expect this picture wrapped faster than an Ed Wood picture.

Seriously, however, this drama will be interesting to observe — how Streep will handle Mrs. Thatcher, and if the children will ever utter a word. Since the movie is about their mother, I’m not surprised how protective they would feel, and if they fear a left wing agenda, I understand. Agendas often do not make for good movies either.

Further in the article, Cameron McCracken, the managing director of the film-maker [production company] Pathé confirmed some of their fears:

“‘It is true that the film is set in the recent past and that Baroness Thatcher does look back on both the triumphs and the lows of her extraordinary career.”

But, he continued:

“‘It is a film about power and the price that is paid for power. In that sense, it is the story of every person who has ever had to balance their private life with their public career.’

He says Lady Thatcher’s health will be featured, but insists that it will be ‘treated with appropriate sensitivity.’ He adds of the film: ‘Although fictional, it will be fair and accurate.’”

I’m not sure this will allay any family fear, but now, of course, I want to see this movie — and Meryl in it. And all respect to Sir Mark and Carol, but my goodness. At least Nancy Meyer isn’t writing and directing it. Thatcher talking orgasms with her gal pals after a long day of shopping at the Pottery Barn? Or whatever she does before indulging the advances of Alec Baldwin.

Or, perhaps, snogging Sandra Bullock at the Critics Choice Awards. Yes, I went there. But in  Thatcher’s case, it would be the award for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she’d be kissing Barbara Bush. Well, that could be interesting too…

Mrs. Thatcher did have a sense of humor — and was quick with a quip. As she said herself: “When I’m out of politics I’m going to run a business, it’ll be called rent-a-spine.”  “

Comment:  Thank God for Thatcher power.  What a great reprieve for  the UK and USA (if  for only a decade or two)  to check the rising flood waters of Marxist drivel already drowning democratic thoughts and traditions at their  university leftwing  indoctrination centers called “higher education”.  

Exit Soviet Communist dictatorship, about 70 years of terror from Marxism. 

Enter Barack Obama’s Marxism from the White House and the insanity of the Jihadists from violent Islam and nuclear weapons from the mental disordered ruling Iran.

The western world desperately needs a Margaret Thatcher, male or female in this 21st century asap.

I do not go to Meryl Streep’s movies.  Actually I don’t go to American movies anymore anyway….and for the same reasons  I turn down an evening with Meryl Streep.  I do not want to support in any way the vile American entertainment industry.

I understand Meryl Streep is an exceptionally able actress.  Which of the Hollywood loonies will be funding the film and writing the script….Michael Moore?  Barbra Streisand?  Robert Redford?

Perhaps Michael Moore will play Ronald Reagan. 

If there is an honest and sincere rendering of Mrs. Thatcher’s remarkable leadership, moving  Britain from the dark ages of its decades of union imprisonment and resulting  economic sterility into the modern western world, Meryl Streep might be the one and only true Margaret Thatcher for filmdom…..if  western filmdom were free of its Marxist gods and godesses.

She is a common emptyheaded lefty provocateur, true, but she has professional pride which may trump her political follies. 

Besides, she may learn something from the great lady she may be so privileged to represent.

I think she’ll do it……and if the script is well done, the movie will be a big hit and big moneymaker.

I might even decide to see it.  The question remains as to which Meryl Streep will show up….the accomplished actress or the accomplished loony.    The accomplished actress might demand an accomplished script.  There is always hope.

Another Word or Two on Black Panther Racism Case

Paul Mirengoff wrote the following article at today’s PowerLine.  I happen not to trust the Eric Holder run Justice Department when it comes to racial matters.  Holder’s positions on issues, and what he says and does not say or will not answer suggest the depth of slyness in  this guy.  He is furtive.

Nevertheless, the charge of racism, whether black racism or white, is grave.  Prager readers should be fully aware the Paul Mirengoff is a reliable  and honorable conservative from all that is known.  I trust the research he has done on this matter is accurate.  He writes:

“I spent part of this past weekend reading documents and cases related to the Justice Department’s voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and the party itself. My conclusion is that the decision to drop the case against all defendants except the one who carried a weapon at the polling station is defensible. Whether the decision was made for defensible reasons or instead was motivated by bias against whites, I cannot say. However, I don’t assume bad faith.

Before summarizing my analysis, I’ll post two documents that should assist readers in making up their own minds. The first is the memorandum by the DOJ lawyers, including Christopher Coates and J. Christian Adams, recommending that the case by brought. The second is the testimony of Thomas Perez, the Obama administration’s assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division. I’m no fan of Perez; in fact, I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times opposing his nomination. However, his testimony deserves the attention of anyone interested in making a fair judgment about this matter.

The DOJ memo is a good one, but its recommendation to bring the case receives most of its force from the fact that one of the two NBPP “poll watchers” — Samir Shabazz — was “brandishing a deadly weapon at the entrance to a polling place.” This is apparent from the heading of the two sections of the memo’s “Legal & Factual Analysis” section:

A. Brandishing a deadly weapon at the entrance to a polling place and related actions and statements by the uniformed members of the NBPP constituted acts designed to intimidate, threaten, or coerce those voting or attempting to vote.

B. Brandishing a deadly weapon at the entrance to a polling place and related actions and statements by the uniformed members of the NBPP constituted acts designed to intimidate, threaten, or coerce those aiding voters.

Without the deadly weapon (a long club), the memo fails to establish a strong case. That’s due in part to the fact, which the DOJ lawyers acknowledge, that voter intimidation cases have been “uniformly unsuccessful,” given the standards courts apply. In one case, United States v. Brown from 2007, the court found no violation where the black defendant confronted a white voter, ordered him away from the building, and summoned law enforcement officials (one of whom appeared) when the white voter refused to leave. In addition, the defendant published a list of voters who would be challenged if they attempted to vote. A witness testified that she stayed home for fear of being arrested if she voted. Yet, the government’s case failed.

Years earlier, in United States v. Harvey, the defendants terminated sharecropping and tenant-farming relationships with blacks who had registered to vote, evicted such persons from rental homes, and discharged them from salaried jobs. The court rejected the voter intimidation claim. I doubt that Harvey would be considered very persuasive today, but Brown shows that these cases remain difficult to win.

Under all of these circumstances, it was reasonable for the Obama/Holder Justice Department to conclude that the case against the second NBPP member, Jerry Jackson, lacked sufficient evidentiary support. Jackson did not have a weapon. In addition, he was a certified poll watcher. The local police officer who arrived at the scene and investigated the matter concluded that, unlike Shabazz, his actions did not warrant removal from the polling station.

Jackson is no “innocent,” of course. He stood together, in uniform, with Shabazz, and appears to have joined Shabazz in making racial remarks to certain voters. The case against him was not frivolous. However, it strikes me as weaker than the Brown case described above, which was unsuccessful.

There are a number of other issues (such as the case against the NBPP itself), but for now I’ll discuss only one of them — the fact that, at the time DOJ dropped the case against all defendants except Samir Shabazz, the defendants had failed to respond to the complaint, thus entitling DOJ to a default judgment.

Even when the government stands to win a default judgment, it still has an obligation to ensure that its case is consistent with the law and supported by the evidence. In my view, the government should never pursue a case where it has concluded that the best view of the facts and law point in favor of the party it is litigating against. The government should not merely abstain from taking frivolous positions, it should abstain from taking any position it has come to consider incorrect.

In other words, the government isn’t in the business of winning cases; it is in the business of upholding justice, defined as the conclusion stemming from the best view of the facts and the law.

Few government lawyers with whom I’ve dealt share this view when push comes to shove, and it’s far from clear that Thomas Perez and the Civil Rights Division are among them. However, if they concluded (as I have) that the case against the defendants other than Samir Shabazz was weak, then I believe they did the right thing, and certainly nothing scandalous, by pursuing the case only against Samir Shabazz.

Having said all of this, the NBPP case was a legitimate story, and one that the MSM should have covered from the start. The decision of the Obama/Holder Justice Department to drop parts of a case that had basically been won deserved scrutiny, particularly in light of the doubts of many (including me) as to whether, as a general matter, its enforcement of voting rights and other civil rights statutes is racially even-handed.

I’m glad that this scrutiny has occurred. It leaves the public free to reach its own conclusions, and I hope leaves Thomas Perez and others in his shop with the understanding that the scrutiny is ongoing.

SCOTT adds: I don’t think any one of us who has commented on the treatment of the case assumed bad faith on the part of the Obama administration. Among other things, we have taken into account the testimony and columns of Christian Adams as well as the exile of former Civil Rights Division Voting Rights Section head Christopher Coates to South Carolina.

It should be noted that the injunction secured by the Department of Justice against Shabazz prohibits Shabazz from wielding a weapon outside of a polling place in Philadelphia…until the district court loses jurisdicition over enforcement of the injunction in 2012. While he discourses at length on the geographical limitations of the injunction, Perez doesn’t address the temporal limitation. This among other reasons makes it hard for me to take Perez’s statement at face value.

PAUL adds: I don’t know what the standard practice is for the length of injunctions in voting cases. It is my understanding that the Bush administration Justice Department, in a voting rights case against the infamous Ike Brown (of the Brown case discussed above), obtained an injunction that covered two election cycles, just as the Shabazz injunction does. The injunction was entered in 2007 and was to run through 2011. Brown, the black chairman of the Noxubee (Mississippi) County Democratic Executive Committee, was accused of engaging in systematic discrimination against white voters.

This was not an intimidation case; these cases, in the rare instances when they are brought, haven’t been successful (or at least haven’t generated published opinions demonstrating success). But the offenses that brought Brown the two-cycle injunction seem quite egregrious. In fact, Christian Adams describes Brown as “one of the most lawless purveyors of racial discrimination the nation has seen in decades.”

The Obama/Holder Justice Department’s treatment of Brown, who is still “in business,” will provide another window into whether it takes violations of the Voting Rights Act by blacks seriously. However, the treatment of Brown by this administration is beyond the scope of this post.”

Comment:  Every American, black, latino and latina,  and white, should listen carefully to the racist diatribe attributed to Mr. Shabazz.  If there ever was “hate speech” this leads the list. 

I agree with Dennis that vast numbers of Liberals in America believe it okay when blacks speak hatefully,  even threatningly to or about whites…..So many have done it publicly for years.  For decades they have been given a pass on the racist part. 

I happen to believe that a citizen has a right to speak “racist”  as long as it does not include threats……or anything that verbally encourages violent action.  If anyone has racist “upset” in their thinking (or emotional disorders, thinking or not thinking), I believe it is better for society  that such feelings be made public rather than those disturbed be made to remain silent about them.  If the hates  are made public, they can be examined, and refuted  and  proved without merit.    If their “hate” turns out to be a factual condition or conditions, then the public becomes aware of the truth.  Racism festering  within the mind of a silenced person or group, can often become a lot hotter because it is forbidden speech than if such talk is allowed to become public.

To repeat: when ”hates” are made public, folks have an opportunity to challenge the “speech” and expose  the facts.   Speech must remain free, hateful though it may be, in a free society.  Those interested should follow the hate crimes episodes the Canadian Human Rights Commissions pursued is top Soviet Communist form defending gay and muslim”rights” against so-called “hate” speech. 

Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn have been made “hate speech” criminals by certain smug and confident Liberal bureaucrats north of the border.   “Kafkaesque”  we liberals used to say when we were young and callow……but far less callow than the Liberals of today of any country.  At least we recognized the danger of things, “Kafkaesque”.

“Kafkaesque” roughly means “Orwellian”.