U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney’s highlighting an inaccuracy in Steven Spielberg’s hit movie, “Lincoln,” is generating Washington buzz and Hollywood blowback, drawing the mild-mannered Connecticut congressman into the world of Oscar intrigue.
With the start of final Oscar voting Friday, an amused Courtney is being asked if his fact-checking was intended to defend a slighted predecessor, Augustus Brandegee of New London, or help a more recent benefactor, Ben Affleck.
Affleck’s “Argo,” an account of the Iranian hostage crisis that takes its own liberties with the facts, is in competition for Best Picture with Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” Conspiracy theorists take note: Affleck campaigned for Courtney in 2006.
(via The Connecticut Mirror)
Now it can be told, in a CTBlue exclusive, for we have gained access to Joe’s
diary.
Dear Diary:
Went to see Lincoln today. Good flick, but during the roll call scene I think I struck gold. According to the movie, Connecticut’s representatives voted against the 13th Amendment. I’m pretty sure that’s not so, not that I care, but I’m getting my campaign staff to look into it. Right away it struck me that this was a golden opportunity to do Ben Affleck a favor. Here’s the plan. I make a polite complaint about the inaccuracy, and ask that that error be corrected when the movie comes out on DVD. The thing will snowball, causing all those Oscar voters to swing their votes to Affleck’s picture. It’s the only possible outcome and of course it came to me in a flash. The beauty of it is that no one would ever suspect that I intended that result all along, because, on its face, you’d have to be a member of the tin foil hat brigade to rise to that level of paranoia and that’s just not the kind of thing that’s done in this country, where our media is always careful to avoid enabling rumor mongers and conspiracy theorists. My plan is to play on the media’s integrity. It would never give the time of day to anyone who exposed my real intentions. This plan can’t fail.
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