12/26/2016

New piece at National Review on what the movie Miss Sloane and the election results tell us about where the gun debate stands

I have a new piece at National Review on what the movie Miss Sloane and the election results tell us about where the gun debate stands.  The piece starts this way:
Miss Sloane, a highly anticipated movie demonizing the NRA and calling for gun control, has bombed. The movie succeeded only in emphasizing the top-down nature of the gun-control campaign and how little intensity there is for more regulations.
The movie seemed to have everything going for it. Liberal movie critics loved it, and it was backed by a hefty ad budget along with heaps of favorable news coverage. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has already nominated the movie’s star, Jessica Chastain, for a prestigious Golden Globe, considered a strong predictor of the Oscars.
But two weeks after its national release, it has made only $3.2 million. During its second weekend, it averaged just $102 per movie theater per day. With a ticket price of $10.30 per adult, that comes to an average of only 9.9 people a day seeing the movie in any given theater. At least people had no problem finding a good seat.
And it wasn’t for lack of trying to get people to show up. Out of the 200 highest-grossing movies of 2016, only ten exceeded the $15.9 million television advertising budget of Miss Sloane, and seven of those did so by very small amounts. Miss Sloane spent more than the Star Wars spinoff Rogue OneStar TrekPete’s DragonArrivalDoctor Strange, and Hacksaw Ridge. It had twice the advertising budget of such hits as SullyThe Girl on the Train, and The Secret Life of Pets.
For every dollar spent on advertising, Miss Sloane brought in just 21 cents in ticket sales. By this measure, it came in dead last out of the 200 top-grossing movies in 2016. No one else was even close. Coming in second-to-last was Collateral Beauty, which made 53 cents per advertising dollar. The average movie made almost $2 for each dollar spent on advertising.
TV ads for Miss Sloane aired a total of 2,270 times: 316 times on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC; 289 on prime-time CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox shows. All told, they covered 34 different networks.
The concept of the script had also been thoroughly road-tested. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have galvanized public support by suggesting that politicians are intimidated from passing sensible regulations only because gun makers want to make money. And, like a Clinton or Obama speech, the film leaves out all of the strong arguments made by gun-control opponents. There is no response to concerns that the very gun-sale-control regulations being pushed in the movie primarily disarm law-abiding citizens, especially poor blacks and Hispanics living in high-crime inner cities.
Poorly funded gun-control advocates are shown doing battle with the big, bad National Rifle Association. Of course, Michael Bloomberg is never mentioned. He would spoil the story, since he gives $50 million a year to his regulation-pushing Everytown for Gun Safety. This is 2.5 times more than the NRA spends on political activities. From 2013 to 2016, Bloomberg donated a total of $48 million to candidates running for federal office. The NRA contributed just $2.1 million. And that’s not even mentioning the hundreds of millions that Bloomberg, George Soros, and others funnel into producing gun-control research. . . .
The rest of the piece is available here.

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Snopes.com founder,who will arbitrate what is 'fake news' on Facebook, is accused of engaging in fraud to give himself credibility and of defrauding website

From the UK Daily Mail:
One of the websites Facebook is to use to arbitrate on 'fake news' is involved in a bitter legal dispute between its co-founders, with its CEO accused of using company money for prostitutes.Snopes.com will be part of a panel used by Facebook to decide whether stories which users complain about as potentially 'fake' should be considered 'disputed'. . . .
Now a DailyMail.com investigation reveals that Snopes.com's founders, former husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson, are embroiled in a lengthy and bitter legal dispute in the wake of their divorce. . . .
They are accusing each other of financial impropriety, with Barbara claiming her ex-husband is guilty of 'embezzlement' and suggesting he is attempting a 'boondoggle' to change tax arrangements, while David claims she took millions from their joint accounts and bought property in Las Vegas. . . .Profiles of the website disclose that for some time before it was set up, the couple had posed as 'The San Fernardo Valley Folklore Society', using its name on letterheads, even though it did not exist.A profile for the Webby Awards published in October describes it as 'an entity dreamed up to help make the inquiries seem more legit'. . . .
In the filings, Barbara, 57, has accused her former husband, 56, of 'raiding the corporate business Bardav bank account for his personal use and attorney fees' without consulting her.She also claimed he embezzled $98,000 from the company over the course of four years 'which he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired'. . . .

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