A tale of two movies

So American Sniper is breaking box-office records and Selma is tanking.  LITD has already chimed in on Al Sharpton's outrage about the whiteness of this years. Oscar nominations.

Al can take heart in the peacenik wing of the Left stepping up to denigrate Sniper on anti-military grounds.  The Academy has enough members of that odor to prevent the film from garnering many, if any, awards.  Michael Moore is mincing no words, calling Chris Kyle, whose life is the subject of the movie, a coward.  Oooookay.

File this one under "eye-openingly unusual development": Jane Fonda tweets in praise of Sniper:

Just saw "American Sniper" Powerful. Another view of "Coming Home." Bradley Cooper sensational. Bravo Clint Eastwood. http://www.americansnipermovie.com/ 

I would imagine she's trying to bolster the public impression that she's in about-face mode, now that she's publicly apologized for the 1972 North Vietnam trip.

Then there's Selma, with its historical inaccuracies, particularly the portrayal of the MLK - LBJ relationship as acrimonious, which isn't sitting well with fans of the architect of the modern welfare state, causing the kind of rift that is inevitable on the left when identity politics reaches maximum thorniness (see post below on the latest in San Fran).

Let's not oversimplify, but I believe there is something to the fairly self-evident fact that Americans prefer pride to guilt.