FILMMAKER: RIGHT-WING MEDIA 'BRAINWASHED' MY DAD
'Life consumed by agendas inundating him on radio, television, and through the mail'
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/03/Brainwashing-of-my-Dad-FB.jpg
Frank Senko, shown here in 1974, is the subject of the 2015 documentary “The Brainwashing of My Dad” (Photo: Facebook, The Brainwashing of My Dad)
A new documentary by a liberal filmmaker explores the way her father was allegedly “brainwashed” by conservative media and asks if it is possible to “deprogram” the man.
Jen Senko’s “The Brainwashing of My Dad” centers around her father, Frank, who went from being a “Kennedy Democrat” to a staunch conservative as an old man. She blames conservative media for his transformation, which coincided with his enjoyment of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
The project was first unveiled at Michael Moore's film festival in Traverse City, Michigan, last summer, but will be released at select theaters in California and New York on Friday.
"All the kids in the neighborhood really liked him. He was a really good dad. We came from humble roots. He never had a bad word about any race or people or person," Stenko says in one of the film's trailers. Regardless, she chose to portray her father as a "brainwashed" American needing treatment reminiscent of the "re-education" camps used by Chinese communists during the Cultural Revolution.
"I asked myself, 'Would it be possible for someone like my dad to be deprogrammed?'," Senko says in one trailer.
Promotional material for "The Brainwashing of My Dad" features academics like Berkeley linguist George Lakoff and author Noam Chomsky saying the media landscape was "taken over by the extreme right by the '70s and '80s." Footage of former First Lady Hillary Clinton discussing the need to expose a "right-wing conspiracy" is included, along with screeds against Fox News titans Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/03/Noam-Chomsky.jpg
Left-wing author Noam Chomsky tells Jen Senko "the media had been taken over by the extreme right" by the 1970s
Senko, a supporter of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, told the Daily Beast over the summer that Fox News' emergence took her father's passion for politics to a new level.
“His entire life became consumed by the agendas that were inundating him on the radio, the television, and through the mail. He joined every radical right Republican organization he could. Like the NRA – he had never fired a gun in his life! He never hunted, he wasn't a sportsman. ... It was scary," Senko told the website on July 31, 2015, as if firing a weapon is a prerequisite to understanding the importance of the Second Amendment.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/03/Jen-Senko.jpg
Filmmaker Jen Senko travels the country for her film "The Brainwashing of my Dad" to see if her father could be "deprogrammed" of conservative beliefs (Photo: YouTube, Jen Senko)
Conservative outlets have used the time leading up to the film's release to expose an assortment of straw-man arguments, red herrings, and hypocritical stances found in the trailers alone.
The Federalist noted the irony last August of using Lakoff to talk about manipulation given his advisory role to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats on how to use language to one's benefit.
"Lakoff is so oblivious to his insanely biased academic pettifogging, in 2009 he was asked about the anger being expressed in congressional town halls over Obamacare being rammed through in the face of overwhelming public opposition, and he said this: 'I think it is very hard because [Democrats] don't have the message machine the Republicans do. The Democrats still believe in Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the truth, they will come to the right conclusion,'" the website reported.
PJ Media also weighed in on Stenko's project March 11, noting that it was the Drudge Report that broke news of former President Bill Clinton's affair to Monica Lewinsky while allegedly unbiased broadcasters sat on the sidelines.
"[Conservative media], mostly in the form of the fledgling Drudge Report, simply broadcast reality to an unsuspecting nation. Remember, Newsweek had the Lewinsky scoop but sat on it. That's the media world Senko wants back," writer Christian Toto said.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/03/Brainwashing-Dad.jpg
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