Selma Director's Rationale for Falsiying History: She Didn't Want to Make the White Guy (LBJ) Look Good

This is "progressivism" in action: when the truth collides with--and detonates--your narrative, simply ignore it and write your own version. That's what the director of Rev. Al's Oscar pick for Best Movie did:

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., [President Lyndon] Johnson’s top assistant for domestic affairs from 1965 to 1969, agrees, writing in the Washington Post that the film takes “trumped-up license” with the truth and should be “ruled out of awards season”: “Selma was LBJ’s idea, he considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement, he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted — and he didn’t use the FBI to disparage him.” Selma’s director DuVernay responded on Twitter that “LBJ’s stall on voting in favor of War on Poverty isn’t fantasy made up for a film.” She told Rolling Stone that the script originally was “much more slanted to Johnson,” but that “I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie.

I don't buy it. I think she revised history in order to make for better drama (or "art," as she calls it), and because a movie depicting LBJ working hand-in-hand with MLK on civil rights is not the story she wanted to tell, even if it happens to be the truth.


MLK and LBJ on the same page? Not according to Selma.