Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
My money is on Bourne because, even as a fictional character, he's more tuned in to reality than Bill O'Reilly, who gives a breathtakingly idiotic review of the latest Bourne movie. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've seen the first two, enough to know that O'Reilly doesn't even get the most basic facts right about the movie. To wit:
For those of you not familiar with the Bourne series, Matt Damon plays a CIA agent who becomes involved in the "Program" (as in, "get with the"). This sinister plan results in Damon being brainwashed, making him a lean, mean killing machine with no personal memories. Thus, he can murder without conscience, kind of like what Hollywood producers often do to scripts.Anyway, Damon runs around beating up four guys at a time and eluding authorities all over the world. However, he turns on the CIA, so they must kill him. But they can't, since Matt is Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery times ten. Plus, he has Julia Stiles helping him. No way the CIA has a chance.
No, Bill, almost all of this is wrong. The CIA operation is not called the "program", it's called Operation Treadstone. And it was not the training that left him without memories, it was amnesia resulting from a botched job that ended with him seriously injured and adrift at sea. It was only after he lost his memory that he developed a conscience about killing people. And he didn't turn on the CIA, the CIA turned on him and tried to kill him, several times. Other than that, O'Reilly has a perfect grasp of the plot.
But here's where his review gets truly loopy:
I knew this movie was trouble when I read the reviews. Almost all the critics liked it. The only way American movie critics would like a violent car chase film like this was if it bashed the USA, which, of course, it does.The CIA guys are bad, bad, bad. And just to make sure Indonesian and Pakistani audiences get the picture, the CIA chief issues his evil orders with the American flag clearly seen on his desk.
Funny, Bill, but most of the criticism of the CIA these days - criticism that you call "bash[ing] the USA" - comes from the right, not the left. It's the right that has been savaging the CIA as full of "Clinton loyalists" who "invented" the Valerie Plame affair to undermine the Bush administration and the war on terror (see here for an example). Gee, Bill, I don't think I've heard a peep out of you calling those folks anti-American for bashing the USA by criticizing the CIA.
O'Reilly's real problem with the movie is that the movie stars someone whose political views he doesn't like. Check out this non-sequitur:
Actually, both Mr. Damon and Ms. Stiles don't have to do much acting. Damon does work for the far-left MoveOn organization and is on record as having requested the Bush daughters serve in Iraq. The actor also told the Idaho Statesman that the CIA's use of waterboarding is an erosion of our American values.Guess what? There's a waterboarding scene in the flick. What a coincidence!
What on earth is the connection between the first sentence and what follows? They don't to do much acting because they're liberals? Really? Is that an argument, Bill? And what is so bad about requesting that the Bush daughters serve in Iraq? It's hardly unreasonable to argue that if our leaders really believed that the war in Iraq was of such vital importance to the war on terror and was so crucial to making the world safer, they might encourage their own children who are the right age to join the military to join the fight and take up the cause. O'Reilly seems to think that merely mentioning this idea is so absurd that it discredits someone entirely; I can't for the life of me figure out why.
And if being against waterboarding makes one an America basher, then add a long list of generals and other high-ranking military leaders to the list of America bashers, including all these folks:
Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Rear Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA)
General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF)
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USAF Nat. Guard)
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA)
These damn Hollywood liberal jew-loving commie bastards actually wrote a letter to Congress objecting to the appointment of Alberto Gonzales because of his role as a White House counsel in providing legal cover for torture because, by undermining the Geneva Conventions, he helped put our own soldiers at more risk and undermined American values. Why do they hate America so much? For that matter, why does Gen. Petraeus, the current commander of American forces in Iraq, hate America too?
Oops, there I go again, trying to throw pesky facts into the gears of the propaganda machine that is intent on creating a fictional world where the only people who object to torture are tie-dye wearing, hackey sack playing hippies who've smoked too much ganja and listened to too much Grateful Dead music - you know, liberals, those people, part of the "cultural elite" that those who rule the media love to rave about so incoherently.
Oh, it gets better:
Now, all of this is harmless nonsense to those of us who understand the hero and villain business, and realize the simplistic bias that permeates Hollywood. But to impressionable audiences, the anti-American theme could resonate.
Well, he's got a point. Who knows more about oversimplifying and demonizing one's opponents in order to make them into a villain than Bill O'Reilly? He's the Obi Wan Kenobi of that particular genre of sensationalism. The problem is that every one of those "simplistic bias[es]" that he mentions are shared by many conservatives and libertarians too. But that doesn't fit his own simplistic biases, so he just edits that bit of reality out of the story. He's ready for his close up now, Mr. Ailes.
Comments
O'Reilly always pretends to uphold the very values he consistently undermines. That's his modus operandi.
Posted by: Paul Sunstone | August 12, 2007 9:56 AM
Bill>This sinister plan results in Damon being brainwashed, making him a lean, mean killing machine with no personal memories.
Ed>And it was not the training that left him without memories, it was amnesia resulting from a botched job that ended with him seriously injured and adrift at sea.
They kind of rewrite history a little in the third movie and imply CIA was largely responsible for a lot of his memory loss.
Posted by: Martin Grant | August 12, 2007 10:30 AM
SPOILERS
Martin and Ed - The source of Jason/David's various memory losses is about as clear as mud. It seems that David volunteered for the conditioning knowing that it would cause a fundamental change in his personality, possibly including some memory loss of his past as Webb. The loss of his memory as Bourne seems to have been caused by some combination of the psychological effects of the conditioning, his decision not to kill a guy in front of his kids, and the physical effects of being shot and floating around in the water for a few hours. The latest garbled version of his origin story is one of the reasons the Ultimatum is the weakest of the three movies.
But O'Reilly is really reaching for an uncomplicated anti-American message here. The most morally compelling character in all three movies is arguably Pamela Landy, a high ranking CIA official who is both tough (she'll order Bourne's execution if she has to) and consistently righteous (she blows the whistle on the out-of-control assassinations and is the only person to protest as her colleague blythely orders assassination after assassination). She puts her life on the line for the greater good of the country and the agency. By contrast, Jason's interests are essentially selfish - personal redemption for his (apparently freely chosen) past life and discovering his past. You can just as easily say that this movie is about the importance of holding to sound moral principles, even when it's difficult. Hardly an objectionable message.
Of course, all of this complicates things too much. It's a damn action movie and a spy thriller. Distrust of authority and corrupt government officials are ubiquitous themes of BOTH genres. I challenge you or O'Reilly to find a similar movie, television show, or book that DOESN'T feature corrupt CIA/MI5/MI6/pick-your-acronym officials as major plot points.
Posted by: AnneS | August 12, 2007 11:02 AM
"The loss of his memory as Bourne seems to have been caused by some combination of the psychological effects of the conditioning, his decision not to kill a guy in front of his kids, and the physical effects of being shot and floating around in the water for a few hours."
And just to clarify a bit further--the problem wasn't 'killing the guy in front of his kids'. As the Treadstone director explains in the closing scenes of the first movie, if they just wanted the guy dead, they could have a sniper take him out quite easily. They wanted him killed in a way where the only suspects were his own bodyguard--in this case, fifty miles out at sea in a boat that had been swept & cleared of hostiles before it left port.
Which means that, for the mission to be successful, any witnesses had to be killed, too, lest they describe the killer as a white man to investigators. And when those witnesses included four-year-old children, Bourne had finally found a line he wouldn't cross ...
Posted by: Scott Simmons | August 12, 2007 11:47 AM
...not to mention, it's emphasized over and goddamn over again that it's not the entire CIA who supports and runs Treadstone and the like. It's made utterly clear that only a tiny (and perhaps even renegade) cadre of officials. IMO, the CIA as an organization comes out looking pretty good... with pretty heroic and smart people on the whole.
Posted by: k | August 12, 2007 11:56 AM
Just another note, Jason Bourne wasn't waterboarded either. They dunk his head in a tank and hold him underwater with a bag over his head, but there's no board, and there is no pouring water over his mouth to simulate drowning.
Posted by: Halcyon | August 12, 2007 12:09 PM
O'Reilly is so predictable. Before I clicked on the extended post I guessed that O'Reilly's unfavorable review would stem from his disagreement with Damon's politics, although I also guessed incorrectly that Bill would make mention of the CIA flick Damon was in last year.
This seems to be a habit of Bill and his regular guest host Malkin.
http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2006/05/moonbat-from-hollyweird-george-clooney.html
It's a sign of their intellectual bankruptcy.
Posted by: Hume's Ghost | August 12, 2007 1:01 PM
O'Reilly is a professional actor himself, but he's so lame as an actor he couldn't find work in Hollywood, so he pretends to be a telejournalist. As long as they pay him, he'll keep at it. Would you rather have him collecting unemployment?
Posted by: Rose Colored Glasses | August 12, 2007 1:16 PM
Ed wrote:
How dare you point out the hypocrisy of your betters? Or Authoritarian ~= Closet Aristocrat.
Posted by: This one is actually easy | August 12, 2007 1:41 PM
AnneS and k are right--it's the rogues in the CIA who are the problem, and Pamela Landy is the moral hero of the film. More interesting than the movie, though, was the flick in the previews: Rendition, which really makes the CIA look bad--because it's based actual events.
Posted by: Jim Anderson | August 12, 2007 1:47 PM
Oh, for...whatevers...sake. It's a spy action movie not War and Peace. It has lots of highly-improbable fights, car chases, gadgets and makes a couple of hours pass quickly. What more could you ask for mindless entertainment?
The only thing that really bugged me was that damn jittery camera-work which I thought NYPD Blue would've cured people of using. I say that when you notice self-consciously 'realistic' (ie, imitation bad hand-held) camera-work intruding itself between the audience and the story that is actually bad work.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | August 12, 2007 1:58 PM
Slightly OT, but I recently read this classic short story and I've been recommending it to everyone: "The Leather Funnel." It's a non-Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he gives us the Victorian view on waterboarding.
Posted by: HP | August 12, 2007 2:44 PM
And what is so bad about requesting that the Bush daughters serve in Iraq?
In the First World War, the sons of leaders did serve at the front, and in many cases (e.g. Prime Minister Asquith's son IIRC), died there.
Posted by: Justin Moretti | August 12, 2007 7:25 PM
Tough shit.
Posted by: Amerika Lover | August 12, 2007 8:15 PM
The only way American movie critics would like a violent car chase film like this was if it bashed the USA...
Anyone with ANY familiarity with American media would know that we've ALWAYS loved violent car-chase movies. And TV shows. And books. That's why Hollywood's made so many of them over so long a period.
Bill O'Reilly is a fucking idiot. Is this how he spends his time between Wars on Christmas?
And besides, the critics I've read didn't like the Bourne movies all that much.
MAybe O'Reilly's pissed because Jason Bourne can kick Chuck Norris' ass with his left pinkie.
Posted by: Raging Bee | August 12, 2007 9:43 PM
I'm honestly waiting for Bill O'Reilly to implode under the ever-increasing weight of absurdity that he's spewing. He's becoming so ridiculous that he's starting to make Ann Coulter look like a rational human being.
Posted by: Brian F | August 12, 2007 11:48 PM
"And besides, the critics I've read didn't like the Bourne movies all that much."
Ultimatum is at 93% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Identity and Supremacy were at 83% and 82%, respectively.
Posted by: nedlum | August 13, 2007 12:19 AM
Would you rather have him collecting unemployment?
Yes.
Posted by: Graculus | August 13, 2007 12:21 AM
I don't see anything wrong with the Bush daughters serving in Iraq. don't give them hand grenades, though, they would be more dangerous to our side.
Posted by: Max von Schuler-Kobayashi | August 13, 2007 12:31 AM
k is exactly right - the guys who come out looking bad are a group of rogue muky-mucks in the upper eschalons of the CIA. The CIA as a whole, and Landy in particular, come across as hardworking people trying their damndest to shut down something terrible done by someone else. If anything the movies have a message of "absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Which, come to think of it, is a message that most rightwingers don't want to hear or comprehend these days. So maybe that's what's god BillO's goat.
Posted by: NonyNony | August 13, 2007 9:21 AM
Waterboarding isn't an erosion of American values? What the hell is it, then?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | August 13, 2007 9:31 AM
Bourne is obviously a pansy lib. I bet Billo gets moist over Jack Bauer!
Posted by: willis | August 13, 2007 8:42 PM
As a long time lover of the Bourne Identity and the following books I was left cold by the movies. I like Matt Damon as an actor, and enjoy spy/action movies, but found that the movie storylines were too far removed from the book(s) to warrant their association with Jason Bourne.
Posted by: KiwiInOz | August 13, 2007 9:47 PM