{"id":1631,"date":"2008-01-18T12:28:24","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T12:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html"},"modified":"2008-01-18T12:28:24","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T12:28:24","slug":"iraq-film-flimflam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html","title":{"rendered":"Iraq Film Flim-Flam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"iraqwar.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/iraqwar.jpg\" width=\"160\" height=\"200\" style=\"float:right;margin:5px\">It\u2019s become a truism that Americans don\u2019t want to hear about the Iraq war, especially not in their entertainment. Last week Noah Feldman led off the New York Times Magazine with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/01\/13\/magazine\/13wwln-lede-t.html\" target=\"_new\">a piece<\/a> bemoaning the lack of Iraq discussion among the presidential primary candidates, and as an aside repeated the CW about the conflict: \u201cThe film studios could barely get a Middle East movie to break even in the past 12 months (&#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0478134\/\" target=\"_new\">In the Valley of Elah<\/a>,&#8217; anyone?).\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThe assumption here, and I think a mistaken one, is that we don\u2019t care about an real-world event because we don\u2019t flock to the theaters to watch fictional renderings of them. The most important and lasting films about Vietnam (\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0077416\/\" target=\"_new\">The Deer Hunter<\/a>,\u201d \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0078788\/\" target=\"_new\">Apocalypse Now<\/a>,\u201d \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0077362\/\" target=\"_new\">Coming Home<\/a>\u201d) didn\u2019t begin to appear until four years after the fall of Saigon, and even then they opened wounds many would have seen kept closed. Just because we don\u2019t presume to know what the Iraq war means to us yet, or what Brian DePalma and other directors say it should, doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s become a truism that Americans don\u2019t want to hear about the Iraq war, especially not in their entertainment. Last week Noah Feldman led off the New York Times Magazine with a piece bemoaning the lack of Iraq discussion among the presidential primary candidates, and as an aside repeated the CW about the conflict: \u201cThe&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Iraq Film Flim-Flam<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Iraq Film Flim-Flam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s become a truism that Americans don\u2019t want to hear about the Iraq war, especially not in their entertainment. Last week Noah Feldman led off the New York Times Magazine with a piece bemoaning the lack of Iraq discussion among the presidential primary candidates, and as an aside repeated the CW about the conflict: \u201cThe&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-18T12:28:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/iraqwar.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul O&#039;Donnell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Iraq Film Flim-Flam","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Iraq Film Flim-Flam","og_description":"It\u2019s become a truism that Americans don\u2019t want to hear about the Iraq war, especially not in their entertainment. Last week Noah Feldman led off the New York Times Magazine with a piece bemoaning the lack of Iraq discussion among the presidential primary candidates, and as an aside repeated the CW about the conflict: \u201cThe&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2008-01-18T12:28:24+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/iraqwar.jpg"}],"author":"Paul O'Donnell","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html","name":"Iraq Film Flim-Flam","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/iraqwar.jpg","datePublished":"2008-01-18T12:28:24+00:00","dateModified":"2008-01-18T12:28:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a59300d59ee976fd192c2fce579ee2b9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/iraqwar.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/iraqwar.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/01\/iraq-film-flimflam.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Iraq Film Flim-Flam"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a59300d59ee976fd192c2fce579ee2b9","name":"Paul O'Donnell","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/bdd\/bdd9d0254f1398197f333149ab55e3f1x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/bdd\/bdd9d0254f1398197f333149ab55e3f1x96.jpg","caption":"Paul O'Donnell"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/podonnell"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}