Tuesday, February 2, 2016

The Missing Box Office Receipts of Benghazi!

I was cleaning out the spam folder today when I came upon an email from my old friend, FedUp PAC, demanding to know if I'd done my patriotic duty and gone to see 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Now, I usually ignore FedUp PAC's communiques, partly because they insist my name is "Tommy S" for some reason, partly because their appeals are invariably composed of equal parts grift and spleen, but mostly because consorting with someone who addresses you by an assumed name and just wants to screw you out of money is exactly what I imagine it feels like to spend time in a shabby motel room with a hooker (note to self: call David Vitter to confirm).

But as it happens, I did see 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (at a pre-release screening), and wondered what F-Up thought of it; and since it bombed at the box office and is presently being pushed out of theaters by Kung Fu Panda 3, there's nobody else I can talk to about it.
The murder of four Americans that should have never happened
Well, sure, but I kind of feel like no murders should happen. Or all murders should not happen.
Tommy S, 
Can you hear me? Can you feel me near you?
As the new movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi opened nationwide this past weekend, Hillary Clinton's enablers in the media attacked it relentlessly.
While moviegoers ignored it assiduously.
Who would you rather believe concerning the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that took the lives of four Americans - Hillary Clinton or the heroes on the scene that horrible night who prevented even greater loss of life?
Or to put it another way, would you rather believe the U.S. Secretary of State, or a bunch of mercenaries who were trying to gin up book sales and a movie deal by writing about what badasses they are? I'm gonna go with None of the Above, because Hillary is a politician and the mercs seem like the kind of guys who would have beaten me up in high school.

But wait! Don't choose yet! What if you had a choice between believing seven congressional investigations that found no wrongdoing on the part of the Administration, or FedUp PAC, a "political action committee" that has made no donations or expenditures, but still somehow run up debts of $282,853, probably by overpaying the guy who spams my email and calls me "Tommy." Now who would you rather believe?

But don't answer yet! Suppose the choice of who to believe is telling the truth about what really happened that night in Benghazi was between Thor and the Hulk, and whoever wins gets to punch Trey Gowdy?
Please go immediately to the National Opinion Survey on the Benghazi Attack to answer that question and others related to events during and after the strike.
Nobody told me there'd be a quiz today.
With the release of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi as the backdrop, this is the perfect opportunity for you to sound out on responsibility for the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens - a story that Republicans in Congress have failed to reveal.
So we should elect Michael Bay to Congress? I gotta admit, he'd probably do less damage that way.  But it's interesting that FedUp PAC is frothing over the demise of Chris Stevens, because in the film the ambassador is portrayed as a smug, ineffectual Beta Male whose failure to defer to men who outrank him in the Greek alphabet practically invited his own death.
FedUp PAC will rush results of the National Opinion Survey on the Benghazi Attack to conservative websites within 48 hours.
Apparently that didn't go quite as planned, because when I googled "National Opinion Survey on the Benghazi Attack" I got one result -- the "National Opinion Survey on the Benghazi Attack" on FedUp PAC's website. So either F-Up forgot to mark the results "RUSH", or they did, and the conservative websites just tossed it, assuming it was a CD of Snakes and Arrows or Vapor Trails.
That way, Survey results will have a wide audience at the same time Americans are turning out to watch the Benghazi movie.
Excellent! Of course, if the Survey has the same wide audience as the Benghazi movie, the respondents will consist of me and an elderly gentleman in a Red Sox cap who fell asleep playing Texas Hold 'Em on his iPhone.
If Hillary Clinton had her way, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi would have never seen the light of day. 
As it was, the audience had their way, and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi not only saw the light of day, it glimpsed its shadow, which means six more weeks of conspiracy theories.
After all, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time of the Benghazi attack.

She was responsible for the security of Americans at U.S. embassies and consulates on foreign soil.
I never knew the position Secretary of State is basically just a glorified security guard, but now I realize Obama should have appointed Paul Blart, Mall Cop, because he works for $7.25 an hour, plus whatever day-old sticky buns he can scrounge from the Cinnabon.
But when Ambassador Stevens pleaded for better protection of the U.S. diplomatic compound at Benghazi, his urgent requests fell on deaf ears.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi shows what happened next.
But in order to show what happens next, the movie would have to show what you just said it shows first. And it doesn't. In fact, the film makes a point of Stevens rejecting the need for more security, because he wants to appear approachable to the locals. I'm beginning to think F'dUp didn't bother to actually watch 13H:TSSoB, and are just repeating the same old right wing taking points about Benghazi because they assume those mothballs are the plot.

Having sat through the entire 144 minute running time, I can tell you that what happened next is that everyone involved wrote a book blaming everyone else, then one of them won the lottery and it got made into a dull movie by a guy who previously filled the silver screen with giant robot testicles.
Seeing the compound engulfed in flames, the team got ready at once to go to the rescue.

All of a sudden, they got a different order.

It was the CIA base chief for the Benghazi area ordering the commandoes to "stand down."
According to the CIA base chief, he never said "stand down." According to the movie, he did, so who you gonna believe? (Before you answer, I should point out that all the mercenaries had full, manly beards, while the CIA chief could barely manage a weedy Van Dyke, so the movie's thesis appears to be that the bushier a man's facial hair, the more credible he is a witness to History [who would you rather trust -- Grizzly Adams or Snidely Whiplash?], and is also the origin of the phrase "bald-faced liar" I just decided. Remember, as the old saying goes, "Men may twiddle the twinks, but they marry the bears.")
What's more, Hillary Clinton quickly joined in blaming the attack on local Muslims angry about an anti-Muslim video posted to the Internet.
Are we still pretending to talk about what happens in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi?  Because Hillary Clinton is not in the movie.
That bald-faced lie was finally exposed when a private Hillary Clinton e-mail to her daughter Chelsea the very same night came to light admitting she knew that an Islamic terrorist group had carried out the Benghazi attack.
Hillary Clinton does have a bald face, or at most one of those sparse white Grandma Mustaches that you only really notice when she comes in close for a smooch on Thanksgiving.  
Now with the release of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, public attention is refocused on the Benghazi cover up in a way that only big Hollywood movies can do.
Similarly, since the release of the docudrama Fantastic Four, not a single American has been recklessly exposed to cosmic rays and transformed into a hideous orange rock monster that talks like Max from Hart to Hart.

Anyway, this goes on for awhile, with every other paragraph pushing a link to the National Opinion Survey on the Benghazi Attack, so I finally broke down and took it. I only got a C+, but in my defense I hadn't studied and I was nude, so if anyone tells you that dream can't happen, they're bald-faced liars!

7 comments:

StringOnAStick said...

Why do these guys keep trying to make this movie into a hit? The sainted Invisible Hand of the Marketplace has spoken!

Kathy said...

Star Wars 7 was very heavily promoted, and broke records in profits. So all the '13 Hours' people need to do is promote it, and Vola! It'll make billions in China.

grouchomarxist said...

Another stocking-stuffer, free with your subscription to the National Review!

Jono said...

i filled out the survey and made it from Tush Limberger.

Scott said...

And right now poor Tush's email address is being bought, bartered, and sold all over the wingnut web like a catamite on Athenian Caucus night.

Anonymous said...

ANNTI sez...

The whole thing is brilliant, Scott, but all clusterfucks present being considered, I had to especially thank you for this:

"...but mostly because consorting with someone who addresses you by an assumed name and just wants to screw you out of money is exactly what I imagine it feels like to spend time in a shabby motel room with a hooker (note to self: call David Vitter to confirm)."

First smile in AGES. THANK YOU. Too bad that this fucking lisping-bitch rich-boy diaper-wearing fucktard pervert (yes, kids, pervert in a BAD WAY) will never be prosecuted for pandering OR for helping have the "D.C. Madam" MURDERED to cover his bony, flaccid, lily-white ass & a "career" that's going NOWHERE.

OT, but if it matters, the F.U. is doing better. I was evicted from the hospital for calling those lazy Medicare-thieving, fat-assed nurses on NOT DOING THEIR DAMNED JOBS (I had to, for five straight, sleepless, broken-back-taxing days & nights, DO IT ALL!!!), and b/c the so-called "doctor" assigned to the F.U. had not TREATED HER AT THE FUCK ***ALL***, so I haven't heard her voice in about 20 hours or how she's feeling FROM HER, but legal works are in the works. If things continue as they have, I'm going to own a hospital and then sell it to the state, to replace Charity & Earl K. Long, et al., murdered cold-bloodedly by that lower-caste-murdering Piyush Jindal sociopath.

Anonymous said...

Fucking bass-ackwards HTML shit. De-bolded the most important phrase in Scott's quote, fucking idiots.

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