Blinded by the Right

Last year, Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" was released as a major motion picture, with one major difference from the novel on which it was based. In the novel, the villains were Muslim terrorists, but in the film they were changed to be Neo-Nazis instead.

Today, John Grisham returned in force to the big screen with the release of "Runaway Jury." And as with "Sum," there is a major change from the book. In this case, the novel's villain was a tobacco company, but the film changed them to be a gun manufacturer, and further altered the story to address (or perhaps promote) gun control.

The commonality between these two is clear. In both adaptations, the film creators jettisoned the nearly-universal villain in favor of one that is traditionally an enemy of the Left. Instead of Muslim fundamentalists, the villain becomes white men (albeit racist white men). And instead of Big Tobacco, it's the gun lobby. And I don't see any reason in either instance as to why the original story demanded change.

For some time, I've lamented the lack of positive conservative portrayals from Hollywood. Now it seems that that's not enough, and they've moved on to inserting conservative villains into stories that originally lacked them.