Because it is an election year, a successful documentary, Obama 2016, seeks to add its opinion into the fray as how important the upcoming election is for voters.
The film, by author/filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, can be considered part of a series in regards to the subject matter of his recent work. Obama 2016 follows in the same vein as his books, The Roots of Obama’s Rage and Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream.
After watching the film, it comes across as a propaganda piece as it does not provide a balanced, unbiased analysis of President Obama. It is clear that D’Souza has an agenda and uses far-reaching claims to satisfy this agenda.
The basis of the documentary is the idea that Obama’s estranged father had a greater influence on his son than the distance between them implied. D’Souza uses passages from the President’s book “Dreams from My Father” and a psychologist whose never treated Obama as a way to explore this influence.
Obama is portrayed as being shaped by his father’s anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-Christian world views, and that these views were allegedly further cemented by mentors late in life.
These ‘founding fathers,’ as he calls them, are the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Bill Ayers, and Roberto Unger. D’Souza paints the President of the United States as anti-American due to his influences and that the worst thing that American voters could do is re-elect him.
There is also an interview with a half-brother that does not reveal anything that can be remotely tied into the thesis of the documentary. It could have been edited from the movie, for it was pointless.
The film has the title 2016 because it predicts that President Obama serving again would result in the creation of a superpower, the “United States of Islam” in the Middle East. While the United States is tethering on the brink of economic collapse and another World War. Just to set the mood, there is ominous music and dark clouds.
If I were Roger Ebert, I’d give it two thumbs down. It just seemed like an extended political commercial about President Obama’s hatred of America and a prime example of ‘preaching to the choir.’
The intended audience have already formulated their opinion.