{"id":18,"date":"2008-10-10T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T10:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html"},"modified":"2008-10-10T10:00:20","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T10:00:20","slug":"best-political-film-or-frank-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gvrCjf4Fhxs&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gvrCjf4Fhxs&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/object>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>The latest YouTube video from the always delightful, always informative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/reelgeezers\">Reel Geezers<\/a> offers a brief history of Hollywood&#8217;s political films, focusing mostly on movies about the electoral process. They cover some of my own favorites&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0042276\/\">Born Yesterday<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0068334\/\">The Candidate<\/a>&#8211;and also meander into movies whose politics are meta, such as &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life,&#8221; a movie that prompts Reel Geezer Lorenzo Semple to utter, &#8220;Frank Capra was a fascist.&#8221; That&#8217;s exactly wrong: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wisebread.com\/fbi-considered-its-a-wonderful-life-communist-propaganda\">Capra was a\u00c2\u00a0socialist with a populist impulse.<\/a> (More on that pressing issue &#8217;round Christmastime.)\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The Reel Geezers don&#8217;t mention <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0056218\/\">&#8220;The Manchurian Candidate,&#8221;<\/a> one of the greatest films ever and certainly a great political film. That&#8217;d probably go down as my favorite, though the movie I&#8217;ve thought about most during this year&#8217;s election is 1972&#8217;s &#8220;The Candidate,&#8221; starring Robert Redford as a young, attractive, inspiring political upstart who overtakes a graying, seasoned, cynical political veteran. It&#8217;s uncannily parallel to 2008, down to the very subjects the characters debate: the environment, the economy, etc.\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What about you? Do you have a favorite political film? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0106673\/\">Dave<\/a>? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0120885\/\">Wag the Dog<\/a>? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0112346\/\">The American President<\/a>?\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00c2\u00a0 The latest YouTube video from the always delightful, always informative Reel Geezers offers a brief history of Hollywood&#8217;s political films, focusing mostly on movies about the electoral process. They cover some of my own favorites&#8211;Born Yesterday, The Candidate&#8211;and also meander into movies whose politics are meta, such as &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life,&#8221; a movie&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17,15,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-media","category-movies","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist) - Text Messages<\/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\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist) - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00c2\u00a0 The latest YouTube video from the always delightful, always informative Reel Geezers offers a brief history of Hollywood&#8217;s political films, focusing mostly on movies about the electoral process. They cover some of my own favorites&#8211;Born Yesterday, The Candidate&#8211;and also meander into movies whose politics are meta, such as &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life,&#8221; a movie&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-10T10:00:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist) - Text Messages","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\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist) - Text Messages","og_description":"\u00c2\u00a0 The latest YouTube video from the always delightful, always informative Reel Geezers offers a brief history of Hollywood&#8217;s political films, focusing mostly on movies about the electoral process. They cover some of my own favorites&#8211;Born Yesterday, The Candidate&#8211;and also meander into movies whose politics are meta, such as &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life,&#8221; a movie&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html","og_site_name":"Text Messages","article_published_time":"2008-10-10T10:00:20+00:00","author":"Patton Dodd","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html","name":"Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist) - Text Messages","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-10T10:00:20+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-10T10:00:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/best-political-film-or-frank-c.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Best Political Film (or, Frank Capra is a Fascist)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/","name":"Text Messages","description":"Christianity and culture with Patton Dodd","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/?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\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe","name":"Patton Dodd","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","caption":"Patton Dodd"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/author\/pdodd"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}