If You Like Truth, Don't Watch 'Truth'

From Megan McArdle at Bloomberg News via H/T at Instapundit:

Megan McArdle watches the movie in which Robert Redford portrays the face of a newsroom working diligently to topple a Republican presidency — no not that one, the new one — and responds, “The original sin of the movie was trying to make Mary Mapes the hero:”

[Writer-director James Vanderbilt] could have told a great story about someone who made a terrible yet basically understandable mistake, and who suffered horribly for it. Instead, he wanted to make a movie about someone who did a good job in a good cause, and suffered anyway. Since this story is not compatible with reality, he had to do what Mapes did: believe six impossible things before breakfast, to avoid facing one, glaringly obvious fact that doesn’t reflect well on our hero. The result doesn’t really work on any level as a movie.

As a metanarrative, on the other hand, it couldn’t be more perfect: Just like his hero, James Vanderbilt got taken by a source.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

Lies, lies, and more lies.