Nazis at the Racetrack?

Tom Piatak looks at an absurd review of the film Secretariat.

I should have realized that any movie I enjoyed would make someone else angry. In this case, the angry person is movie critic Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com, who found Secretariat a work of creepy, half-hilarious master race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl. In his review, O’Hehir accused the film of “presenting a honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past as the Tea Party would like to imagine it, loaded with uplift and glory and scrubbed clean of multiculturalism and social discord.” O’Hehir was bothered by the movie’s quoting from the Book of Job and featuring Gospel music, and was especially upset by the portrayal of Secretariat’s groom, Eddie Sweat, described by O’Hehir as belonging to “a far more insidious tradition of movie stereotypes. Eddie dances and sings. He loves Jesus and that big ol’ horse. He is loyal and deferential to Miz Penny, and injects soul and spirit into her troubled life.”

Share