Wag the Dog is a movie about a White House that fakes going to war in Albania to bury the news of a President’s sex scandal. Exactly one month after the movie was released, the Monica Lewinsky affair was first made public. We go into the movie and the real world events it magically foretold.
Hosted by Liam, Russian Sam, Halal Sam, and Abram.
Correction: at 19:40 Liam says Green Room, but he meant Green Zone. At 1:08:00 Liam says Good Old Shoe, but he meant Courage Mom. Good Old Shoe is the folk blues song in the movie. Courage Mom is the country song.
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Further Reading
The fictitious President looking at a firefly girl (left) and Lewinsky watching Clinton as he greets staff at the White House during a re-election celebration in November 1996 (right).
Saddam & Bombing (Jan 24, 1998)
https://groups.google.com/g/soc.culture.iraq/c/P2_PTxKiQsQ/m/gzqxOspdaQUJ
John T writes
This Traitorous man sitting in the oval office is rumored to want to play “Wag The Dog” with our soldiers, sailors, airmen’s lives to try to get the people’s mind off his scandalously perverted sex compulsions. Of course, if he ‘LOATHES’ our military as he has stated he does, a few thousand lives don’t matter to him. He thinks he’s more important.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.impeach.clinton/c/kY8WV18Yh9I/m/4Y-TRWMsQNcJ
John H writes
Weather you agree with the Pres on Iraq or not, you’d have to agree that the problems in Iraq are ANYTHING but “phony” and streached back for almost a decade now. Seeesshhhh are we going to see insipid “Wag the Dog” posts EVERY time we have military action from now on??
Don’t Bomb Iraq protest in DC (Feb 21, 1998)
A couple thousand people showed up at Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. and marched to the White house to express their disgust and outrage over President Clinton’s threatening to bomb Iraq instead of continuing negotiations. Above is a photo of the “Wag the Dog Precision Drill Team.” In response to one chant of “No Blood for Oil” the drill team later chanted, “No Blood for Monica.”
High resolution photos of the protest can be found in this flickr album
https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/albums/776256/
Bootleg of the Week: Wag the Dog (Mar 06, 1998)
https://ew.com/article/1998/03/06/bootleg-week-wag-dog/
What’s must-see TV in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? ABC News reports that a ”poor-quality, pirated” video of Wag the Dog aired in that besieged nation on Feb. 18.
Is Life Imitating Art? ‘Wag the Dog’ Springs to Many Minds (Aug 21, 1998)
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-wag.html
In the movie, the president’s handlers invent a war to distract public attention from his sexual transgressions. In real life, was the Clinton administration doing something similar?
These Americans may well represent a minority. A random sampling of opinions around the New York region yielded at least as many people who said that the president’s authorization of military force in Afghanistan and the Sudan seemed wholly justified and that the United States could never be too aggressive in its efforts to stamp out and deter terrorists.
“The first thing that popped into my mind was how convenient this was,” said Brian Cooper, an investment banking analyst who works in midtown Manhattan. “My brother called me to tell me what had happened, and I said, ‘Doesn’t this remind you of ‘Wag the Dog’?”
Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel investigating the Lewinsky matter, fielded a question about “Wag the Dog” from reporters on the steps of a court house in Little Rock, Ark.
“Yes, I have seen it,” Starr said with a chuckle. “Other than that, I’m not going to comment.”
And Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, mentioned the movie in his defense of the president’s actions Thursday. “I don’t think the President would be foolish enough to do a ‘Wag the Dog’,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Amanda Urban, a prominent Manhattan literary agent, said that she immediately drew a connection Thursday between “Wag the Dog” and the news reports that she was hearing, but that she shuddered at the serious thought she gave to the parallels.
“It’s downright scary that we have to consider the possibility,” Ms. Urban said. “These are incredibly cynical times.”
Three U.S. soldiers captured by Yugoslav army (Apr 1, 1999)
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/01/nato.attack.02/
Photo of three U.S. army soldiers being held captive by the Yugoslav Army (left) and Woody Harrelson as Sgt. William “Old Shoe” Schumann in Wag the Dog (right).
Three U.S. army soldiers were held captive by the Yugoslav Army Thursday after it said the three men “were captured on Serb territory” and “resisted arrest.”
Serb television showed pictures of the three men dressed in camouflage military fatigues. One of the men had several cuts on his face; another had a cut on his nose.
Serb television said: “According to the Serb Army Corps in Pristina on March 31, three U.S. Army soldiers were captured on Serb territory. … All three belonged to the 4th U.S. division based in Germany. During the capture, all three resisted arrest.”
Meanwhile, Serb television broadcast footage of what was said to be a destroyed bridge over the Danube River at Novi Sad in Serbia’s northern Voivodina province.
Yugoslavia’s representative to the United Nations, Vladislav Jovanovic, said NATO was creating an “artificial humanitarian situation” and trying to broaden the organization’s influence in the Balkans.
Speaking on CNN in response to Solana’s statement, Jovanovic said Belgrade was merely cracking down on “terrorism,” and he blamed the refugee crisis on NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
“Albanian terrorists, in close cooperation with NATO, have told the people to escape from Kosovo in order to manufacture an artificial humanitarian situation,” he said.
NATO has accused the Yugoslav authorities of deliberate “identity elimination” of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Song honors captured U.S. soldiers; proceeds to benefit refugee relief (Apr 15, 1999)
http://us.cnn.com/US/9904/15/kosovo.song/index.html
Inspired by a recent report on the Kosovo crisis he saw on TV, musician-composer Steve Gooden gathered a guitar he purchased for a friend – and 15 minutes later came up with a song dedicated to the three American soldiers being held captive in Yugoslavia.
Gooden on Wednesday performed “Let Them Be Free” at Schurr High School. Among those in the crowd of several hundred was Vivian Ramirez, the mother of captured U.S. Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez, 24. Ramirez graduated from Schurr High School in 1992.
The acoustical chorus by Gooden is his personal tribute to the three U.S. soldiers in Yugoslav custody. All proceeds from sales of the single will go to the American Red Cross, earmarked for refugee relief efforts in the Balkans.
https://raymrojmp3.blogspot.com/2015/07/worship-songs-by-steve-gooden-free.html
Similiarities between Kosovo and Wag the Dog (Apr 15, 1999)
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.movies.hitchcock/c/qqFTxsHb2DI/m/6A0zSOMbL2MJ
John writes:
NATO says it is protecting Albanian refugees, with pictures of Albanian refugees flooding Western media. In Wag the Dog, Kristen Dunst’s character plays an Albanian refugee fleeing (Serb?) prosecution in a scene made specifically for TV news.
In Wag the Dog, an US serviceman was accidentally left behind in the withdrawal. In the Kosovo operation, three US servicemen who are not participating in the offensive are captured.
A song was recorded in Nashville by a country singer honouring the war effort and the abandoned serviceman in Wag the Dog. Recently, a song was composed impromptu in Los Angeles by a country singer in tribute to the three captured US servicemen.
In Wag the Dog, public opinion of both the war and President both gradually become favourable. So far, a majority of Americans polled support Clinton and Operation Allied Force.
The made for TV scenes produced by Dustin Hoffman’s character in Wag the Dog are almost identical to what is seen on the US news programmes.
In both cases, the United States’ rationale for military action is to protect innocent civilians.
to which, Cipher replies:
Jesus christ, you Americans are paranoid nutters. First you all spout about the similarities between Wag the Dog and the last Gulf bombings, now Kosovo.
Yugoslav prize for Wag the Dog (Apr 18, 1999)
https://arhiva.glas-javnosti.rs/arhiva/1999/04/18/en-latest-news-0417.html
Yugoslav Academy of film based in Belgrade decided to award the biggest prize - “Special crystal prism” to authors of American movie “Wag the Dog,” which contents “became tragic truth for our country and our people.”
Yugoslav basketball player Vlade Divac, starting center for the Sacramento Kings, spoke during a press conference at the Regeant Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The movie “Wag the Dog”, which tells the story of a fake war in Albania organized by a US presidential advisor and a Hollywood producer to draw attention away from the president’s sexual misdemeanors, has received the top award from the Belgrade-based Academy of Film Arts and Science. A letter sent to the film’s director Barry Levinson and actors Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro was read by Divac.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/print/34270/Yugoslav-Film-Academy-Awards-Wag-the-Dog
Belgrade TV stations aired Wag the Dog on March 26, two days after NATO began pounding the country in punitive air raids.
How a President, Distracted by Scandal, Entered Balkan War (Apr 18, 1999)
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/041899kosovo-recap1.html
The eruption of violence in Kosovo in early 1998 could not have come at a more inopportune moment for the Clinton Administration.
The President and his aides were consumed by the Lewinsky affair. The Clinton foreign policy team was focused on Presidential visits to China and Africa and on Russia’s economic implosion. Legislative electoral politics, especially with an incendiary sex scandal enveloping the White House, was never far from the President’s concerns. And Kosovo did not register in any public opinion polls.
One of the President’s political advisers said in an interview: “I hardly remember Kosovo in political discussions. It was all impeachment, impeachment, impeachment. There was nothing else.”
Alexander Vershbow, the United States representative to NATO and a former National Security Council aide who had been deeply involved in Bosnia policy, suggested an answer in a classified cable titled “Kosovo: Time for Another Endgame Strategy.”
“Sooner or later we are going to face the issue of deploying ground forces in Kosovo,” he wrote in his cable. “We have too much at stake in the political stability of the south Balkans to permit the conflict to fester much longer.”
The cable landed in Washington on Aug. 7, the day bombs exploded outside the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. It was circulated as Clinton was preparing for his pivotal appearance before the grand jury investigating the Lewinsky affair and the White House was planning the cruise missile attack against Sudan and the Afghan bases of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile suspected of directing the attacks.
Clinton was under attack for his grand jury testimony and faced questions about whether his military decisions were motivated by domestic politics.
Jokes about the movie “Wag the Dog” became commonplace. Fittingly, the President in the movie seeking to distract attention from a sex scandal stages an ersatz conflict in, of all places, Albania.