Let’s Go to the Movies: Week of October 23, 2023: Wag the Dog

Satire plot: If the president of a superpower becomes embroiled in a sex scandal, or the prime minister of a Middle East democracy finds it difficult to negotiate a suitable coalition, a tried and tested way to deal with “public opinion” is to start a new war.

Wag the Dog is a very funny and clever education about the engineering of fake news in order to solve a political problem. It is remarkable that this movie with Hollywood grandees Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman came out in 1997, and only a year later, in 1998, it played out in real life when President Bill Clinton, entangled in the Lewinsky media affair, bombed Afghanistan and Sudan.

And here we are in 2023, with the same script still playing.

On a recent Money & Markets, Catherine discovered once again that John Titus hasn’t yet seen this movie. Alas, you cannot possibly understand the modern world unless you have seen Wag the Dog.

Watch Wag the Dog on various platforms.

Related:

Movie: Wag the Dog (Wikipedia)

Phrase: Wag the Dog (Wikipedia)

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