We watch a lot of Netflix and I subscribe to the company’s feed of video recently released to “Watch Instantly.”
The feed pushes out new titles with a brief synopsis. I’ve never seen one longer than about 35-50 words. Never, that is, until today.
I clocked the synopsis for Dreams from my Real Father at 274 words. The video is billed as a the “alternative Barack Obama ‘autobiography’offering a divergent theory of what may have shaped our 44th President’s life and politics;” a video that “chronicles Barack Obama’s life journey in socialism.”
The mockumentary poses pressing questions that may even be irrelevant in the mythical bizarro universe of an alternative Obama:
The film begins by presenting the case that Barack Obama’s real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA propagandist who likely shaped Obama’s world view during his formative years. Barack Obama sold himself to America as the multi-cultural ideal, a man who stood above politics. Was the goat herding Kenyan father only a fairly [sic] tale to obscure a Marxist agenda, irreconcilable with American values?
It seems odd to me that of the hundreds of Netflix synopses I’ve skimmed, this one stands out like an unpatriotic thumb to perpetuate 1hr 37m of drivel and lies. It seems unlikely that the release of this video mere weeks before the presidential election could be coincidence, and Netflix has been investing quite a bit in Washington D.C.
I hope Netflix intends to commit “equal time” to fictional biographies of Mitt Romney in the run up to election day.