THE THIRD REICH 'N' ROLL SWINDLE.
Dinesh D'Souza, his publicists, and their factota think, or pretend to think, that D'Souza's new movie is being suppressed by Google. The Hollywood Reporter:
Lawyers representing Dinesh D’Souza’s newest film, America, have fired off a letter to Google demanding that the search engine correct problems that they say are hampering the ability of consumers to figure out where the movie is playing.
The letter claims that Google has been confusing America with 2016: Obama’s America, which was D’Souza’s first movie and has been out of theaters for two years, while Lionsgate released America on July 2 and it is currently playing in about 1,100 theaters nationwide.
This is my favorite part of the whole thing:
While Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment, some potential moviegoers are accusing the search company, or others, of engaging in a plot of misinformation. "This mixup is likely being coordinated by those in the film industry who hope the film fails at the box office," one wrote at the film’s Facebook page.
Say this for D'Souza's team: Getting mainstream press to take this seriously is impressive, but getting The Hollywood Reporter to put Facebook comments by "potential moviegoers" in their story is even more impressive. Best of all, they got action from Google:
“Our systems have unfortunately confused the title of the movie America, because it’s a common term and appears in many movie titles,” a Google spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday. “We’ve updated the Knowledge Graph, our database that stores this type of information, but it will take some time to display showtimes and other details for this movie. We’re always working on improving our systems, and we appreciate the feedback.”
The squeaky wheel gets the publicity!
The complaint is of course bullshit -- any "potential moviegoer" who can't remember the full name of the movie he wants to see, nor think to check with his local theaters, is probably too developmentally disabled to go outside alone. And you can imagine what kind of "update" Google is doing based on one complaint, even one sent by lawyers.
But for D'Souza's purposes it doesn't matter: If box office receipts go up, the D'Souzans can say it was because they broke the Google-Commie logjam; if they don't go up, they can claim Google is stonewalling them, just like the IRS!
As anyone can see by the steady stream of paranoid emails (and Reason videos) that they churn out, pitchmen for conservative products believe their audience are suckers for anything that stokes their persecution mania. On the evidence, it seems they have assessed that audience correctly.