Obama documentary maker: The only negative aspect of Obama is … Republicans
posted at 12:10 pm on March 9, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
Allahpundit introduced you to the story of the Obama campaign documentary — allow CNN’s Piers Morgan to introduce you to its producer, documentarian Davis Guggenheim. Morgan fillets Guggenheim after the filmmaker insists that he found no negatives at all about Barack Obama, and that the only negative aspect of Obama’s term as President comes from … his opposition. No, seriously:
Daniel Halper has a partial transcript, but I want to complete it, bolding the part where Guggenheim gets stumped on Obama’s negatives:
Piers Morgan: “Most documentary makers balance these movies with the negative as well as the positive. What are the negatives in your movie about Barack Obama?
Davis Guggenheim: “Well, I mean the negative for me was, there were too many accomplishments. I had 17 minutes to put them all in there.”
Piers Morgan: “Oh, come off it! You can’t say that with a straight face. Come on.”
Davis Guggenheim: “I’m looking at you right now with a straight face.”
Piers Morgan: “The only negativity about Barack Obama is there are too many positives?”
Davis Guggenheim: “That was the negative — excuse me, that was the negative for me.”
Piers Morgan: “Oh.”
Davis Guggenheim: The challenge for me is, I wanted to put more in there. I did.
Piers Morgan: But are there any negatives in there?
Davis Guggenheim: [pause] I think there are negatives in the sense that, the challenges when you’re trying to pass health care in a really toxic environment, in terms of the opposition he’s had, the political climate in Washington. I think that’s — Time and time again you hear that from people who work closely with him. He says, you know — they — he really ran hoping to change the political climate in Washington, and that hasn’t changed, and he, you know, he’s wanted to bring people together, he’s wanted to compromise, he’s wanted, you know, to bring people together to make decisions, I say that in the movie, and he hasn’t had another side working with him.
Piers Morgan: “But where do you find fault in him, personally?”
Davis Guggenheim: “I — you know, I don’t. I don’t, frankly.”
Piers Morgan: “He’s a perfect human being?”
Davis Guggenheim: “Well, no. but I’m really quite in awe of him, as a leader, and the choices he’s made.”
Piers Morgan: “I mean, I’m only asking because you are a well-known documentary maker, and this would be the first movie, I guess, you’ve made where it’s all completely positive. And even you personally don’t see any negative at all in the guy. Do you think you were the right guy to make this? I mean, are you dispassionate enough to make a Barack Obama video?”
Davis Guggenheim: “But, Piers, you haven’t seen the movie. You’ve only seen the trailer.”
Piers Morgan: “Well, I’ve asked you to list all the negatives and you said the only negative was you couldn’t put enough positives in.”
Davis Guggenheim: “Well, that’s true. That’s true.”
Awww … the only negative Guggenheim could find was that Obama couldn’t charm people out of their political principles. This looks like a great way to spend 17 minutes, although if you really want a tongue bath of this magnitude, all you have to do is turn on MSNBC during their prime-time programming. You get a lot more than 17 minutes of this kind of hero-worship there.
Morgan skewers Guggenheim at the end:
Piers Morgan: How much did it cost, and who paid?
Davis Guggenheim: Well, I’ll let the campaign tell you that. I, you know, I took a pay cut to make this. But, you know, the — again, I make movies –
Piers Morgan: I’m surprised you weren’t paying him, by the sound of it. For the sheer honor and joy.
Well, this is a campaign advertisement, so it’s not like Team Obama would let Guggenheim include data points like the mirage of shovel-ready jobs, Operation Fast and Furious, or Solyndra, just to name a few items off the top of my head. Still, I wish Guggenheim well and hope that he wins a much-deserved Riefenstahl Award for his efforts. Morgan deserves an Emmy for that humorous dismantling of a guest, but I suspect he won’t get a nomination for that segment.
Update: I didn’t recall that Guggenheim won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, but Jake Tapper did — and he points out a few more inconvenient truths that Guggenheim almost certainly leaves out of his “documentary.”
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As I just posted HotairLib has their whole head up their six o clock.
hamradio on May 24, 2013 at 2:43 PM
Who wrote the speech? Or are you just praising the messenger?
mixplix on May 24, 2013 at 2:57 PM
Connect the dots: journolist meeting by invitation only at the White House on, what Tuesday?, “big”speech by Obama on Thursday, lame stream media fawning over speech on Friday. Who would have seen that coming, huh?
parke on May 24, 2013 at 2:58 PM
They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.
They are just trying to massage it so that they don’t offend the Muslims, international Libtards and their own sensibilities anymore than necessary.
A few Muslim terrorists here and there are quite expendable to this Administration despite their sympathies for them. These drone attacks also do much deflect any potential criticism that the Administration is weak in dealing with such matters.
Dr. ZhivBlago on May 24, 2013 at 2:59 PM
MSNBC is nothing but a left wing propaganda machine serving their master, Obama.
rplat on May 24, 2013 at 3:07 PM
I believe that he was officially nominated 10 days after he was sworn in. Wow! The WON really worked long hours that week and a half to earn that POS medal. During those ten days he ordered NO DRONE STRIKES to keep his peaceful record clean.
fred5678 on May 24, 2013 at 3:22 PM
Obama: Don’t worry about that Ben Ghazi guy. I killed Bin Laden, and Bush didn’t!
And Obummer still wants to close Gitmo? Good luck with that–not even Upchuck Schumer was willing to hold trials in New York!
Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:24 PM
They just changed the definition of terrorist. They used to be jihadis from the Middle East–now they’re Minutemen in Arizona and Tea Partiers in Ohio.
Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:29 PM
Erika, sometimes your writing shows signs of rivaling even the Master of Snark himself, Allahpundit. Good work!
KS Rex on May 24, 2013 at 3:45 PM
I love how crazy Al invoked the Nobel Peace Prize in praise of a speech that spoke about dropping bombs on people’s head. Maybe it was the “fewer” bombs than before that raised this to historic levels.
Do they even know or care that they are morons.
marnes on May 24, 2013 at 3:46 PM
His speech made less sense than Bluto’s Animal House Speech and was far less entertaining. Nothing less than base rallying time. Never thought I would say this, but Code Pink was the best part.
DDay on May 24, 2013 at 4:01 PM
Sperling posted this at the Examiner on May 23 about this “historic speech of Obysmal’s:
You see, we are just not working hard enough to “work with the Muslim American community” who are a “fundamental part of the American family.” Watch out, too, because Obysmal is again trying to limit the impact of the Internet.
onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:22 PM
That Chris Hayes is a bit of a twink, isn’t he?
onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:25 PM
Obama apparently gave two speeches yesterday and I watched the other one.
myiq2xu on May 24, 2013 at 5:03 PM
Nah. I’d detest the little pissant s.o.b. if he was white…or Asian…or any one of the myriad of made-up racial divisions.
Solaratov on May 24, 2013 at 11:00 PM
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