As a career military veteran, I'll never forget the jaw-dropping response I got from a fairly prominent Hollywood screenwriter back in the 1990s when, during the course of discussion about a planned "Captain America" comic book arc unveiled at a comic book convention, I voiced my ire because the writer-artist planned to have the U.S. military implausably and mindlessly take over the United States to set up a fascist dictatorship. Basically, I complained, the comic book writer is making the U.S. military out to be like Nazi stormtroopers. The screenwriter's response about the other writer's plan was simply, "What's the big stretch?"

It was pretty obvious to me at that point that the gulf of understanding between us regarding the U.S. military could only be measured in light years, rather than feet or inches. Still, after I got over being royally pissed off, I did my best to explain why the concept was, in fact, totally asinine.

Did he ever really understand? I don't know. But the fact that someone as smart, well-respected and influential as he had such a fundamentally flawed understanding of his own country's military was very disheartening.

You're surprised that left-wingers and idiot Hollywood types think portraying soldiers as bloodthirsty, kill-crazy morons inflicting pain on innocent third-world people is 'apolitical'?

We live in a world where any book, TV show, or movie that dares to be even slightly pro-American is called 'jingoistic' (look at the reviews for recent books celebrated on BH, such as 'One Second After' - the reviewer always has to call out 'jingoism').

If you want the tide to turn, you have to keep voting with your wallet and not going to see these films. The Valley of Elah guy deserves a short career of flops.

Reminds me of the movie "W".

I am a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and was listening to an interview with Brad Sham (the "Voice of the Dallas Cowboys"). Sham had a small role as a reporter in "W". Since Sham had met President Bush while he was governor of Texas, Josh Brolin (who played Bush in the movie) asked Sham for some insight. Sham told Brolin that no matter what your politics were, when you meet George Bush, he is just a real decent, humble, regular guy who can drink a beer and talk sports with you. Brolin's response was "Wow, I never considered that."

That was some serious research they must have done for that film. :/