Looked at in retrospect, the Black Lives Matter movement — which spent much of the past decade claiming that unarmed black men are “murdered” about once daily by U.S. police officers and that America is currently overseeing a “genocide” of black Americans — reminds us of a movie.
In director Billy Wilder’s now classic film, Ace in the Hole, Kirk Douglas played a cynical reporter who intentionally delayed the rescue of a trapped miner named Leo Minosa in order to sell the story as a serial. While Douglas’s character cashed in on the national drama he created, the cigar-chomping local sheriff used Minosa’s rescue to promote his reelection campaign, and almost every local business fleeced the well-heeled tourists who drove in to gawk at the whole thing. Unfortunately, however, the manufactured multiday delay ended up killing Minosa — a hapless victim of yellow journalism and business boosterism.
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