There’s something fitting about the times. While many of us live under a form of house arrest, the Internet is delivering to us the purest vintage right-wing anti-government storytelling available, if you know where to look.
Various on-demand services now have Clint Eastwood’s little masterpiece from last year, Richard Jewell. The title refers to the security guard who foiled the 1996 Centennial Park bombing, then turned into the lead suspect of the FBI’s investigation, and was ultimately proven a wronged man. The script is more complex than some of the initial reviews gave it credit for being, but the message comes through loud and clear. In Richard Jewell, the media and the government are corrupted by their own strongly held, barely justified narratives of good guys and bad guys. And the people in these institutions are perfectly willing to destroy a few good guys to get ahead in their careers, especially if those good guys are strange in any way.
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