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By Jim Lakely
How depressing to learn from The Daily Mail that a bio-pic on Margaret Thatcher — now reportedly in pre-production and tentatively slated to star Meryl Streep — will be a strikingly vicious hit job by the Hollywood left. Depressing, but hardly unexpected, no?
The Iron Lady remains the only woman to achieve the post of Prime Minister of Great Britain, and she retained the confidence of her party and the people for 11-and-a-half years — one of the longest tenures in history. That alone would put her near the top of any objective list of the most accomplished women of the 20th century.
But, of course, Thatcher — a conservative — blanched at gender-identity politics. One of her most famous quotes was a thumb in the eye of feminists in her country and the United States: “I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.” Indeed, her story is one of individual triumph, a Horatio Alger story of a woman of modest upbringing but immense talent who helped change the world. With Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, she never even hinted at wavering in her defense of the liberty of “the other.” Thus, she helped defeat the evil Soviet empire and destroy the Iron Curtain. And her economic policies revived a Britain that her predecessor consigned to perpetual malaise. That is the core truth of Thatcher’s legacy — which is why the left is now leveraging its immense power in the popular culture to destroy that truth and erect a demented edifice in its place.
As Power Line’s John Hinderaker notes:
Liberals can’t seem to leave anything alone, and they soil everything they touch.
And soil, they do in this project. From The Daily Mail, which has apparently seen an early script:
Told by means of flashbacks of her political life, the film opens with the octagenarian Lady Thatcher sitting alone in a sparsely furnished drawing room muttering to herself.
She is a melancholic, ghostly figure whose world has shrunk to almost nothing thanks to her declining mental powers. It soon becomes apparent that she frequently holds conversations with her late husband, Sir Denis, seemingly unaware that he is dead.
As the film unfolds, she sifts through some of the more controversial points of her 11-and-a-half years in office — notably the Falklands War and the Brighton bombing — questioning the decisions she made, rueful of the consequences of her extraordinary achievements.
In old age, the famous conviction politician is apparently racked by doubt; the unavoidable impression given is that this once-towering figure has been reduced to a pathetic figure consumed by doubts and fears.
Good Lord! The only wonder is why Hollywood hasn’t already made this exact same picture about Reagan. I have little doubt that such a script is sitting around somewhere in Hollywood, waiting for the green light somewhere around 2012.
Perhaps the most scurrilous plot turn of the script involves a doddering, mentally declining Thatcher regretting how her political career frayed what should have been a tight bond with her fraternal twin children, Mark and Carol. According to The Daily Mail, neither of the Thatcher children were consulted about any part of the script. Obviously, they should have. Said Carol Thatcher to The Daily Mail:
I don’t think it’s for me to comment on my mother’s behalf, but I am the greatest fan of what she did. She is a remarkable, decisive woman of great courage, and her political record stands alone.
Surely, that is an inconvenient fact that only gets in the way of the “larger narrative” the filmmakers wish to tell — that of a hard, soulless, conniving and heartless woman who abandoned her family to pursue power only to inflict suffering on ordinary Britons for her pleasure. But, you see, in her old age, Thatcher now has regrets. It’s a story of redemption! Or something. . . .
It’s hard not to imagine a future bio-pic of Hillary Clinton, and have it reflect the (by all accounts) similar affection and admiration Chelsea Clinton has for her almost-equally accomplished mother — as opposed to a fictional opposite. But, as Sarah Palin has learned, strong, accomplished women who do not adhere to the liberal, feminist agenda — and, in fact, actively reject it — must be destroyed. All of them.
This film will not destroy Lady Thatcher’s remarkable legacy. The Daily Mail story’s tone of outrage is heartening. But Hollywood does write history for many in Western society. I fear these lies will take hold in the public consciousness, and will take the diligence of conservatives to counter in perpetuity. As I stew over this latest Hollywood outrage, I take solace in another Maggie Thatcher quote:
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
Indeed. Stiff upper lip required.
(BTW: Big Hollywood has a take on this issue, too. As they put it, this is the “Besmirching of a giant.”)
Crossposted from The Freedom Pub, used with permission.
How sad that Mrs. Thatcher is being portrayed by a self-agrandizing hack such as Streep. As with all “true life” movies, nothing will be true except the names.
Rewrite the thing and get a better actress.
i dont know about the film, but whoever dkid the reserch about thatcher did a lousy job. if they had done a half decent job, they would have realised that it was due to thatcher that there was a recession in britain in the 1980′s.
they would know that when she was minister for education, she severely cut the education budget to such an extent that people were leaving school barely able to read or write.
many people did not want her as the leader of this country. in the end, HER own party threw her out