How did 'Waiting for 'Superman's' ' Davis Guggenheim become the right wing's favorite liberal filmmaker?

No one is a more well-credentialed progressive than Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore's influential global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," as well as produced a dramatic short about Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. But with his new documentary, "Waiting for 'Superman,' " which opened today in selected cities across the country, Guggenheim has become conservative medialand's favorite new filmmaker.

Why? Because "Waiting for 'Superman,' " which has been getting good reviews all across the political spectrum, ably makes the case that the nation's children have been betrayed by teachers' unions while portraying charter schools in a hugely flattering light, two concepts that nicely dovetail with the prevailing sentiment in the conservative community.

So the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page has mocked Gore and any scientist who raised the alarm about global warming for years, has given Guggenheim and his new film a firm embrace. In an op-ed piece this week, William McGurn calls "Superman" a "stunning liberal expose of a system that consigns American children who most need a decent education to our most destructive public schools."

Guggenheim is getting similar treatment from the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's arch-conservative tabloid. Post film critic Kyle Smith heaped scorn on Guggenheim's "Inconvenient Truth," mocking the props Gore used in his onscreen lecture. Smith wrote: "He assesses the trade-off between the economy and the environment with the kind of buffoonery you'd expect in a Marxist comic book, displaying a cartoon of a scale with Earth on one side and bars of gold on the other. Why doesn't he get specific and replace the 'gold bar' side of the scale with, say, a $50,000 tax on SUVs?"

But when it comes to Guggenheim's "Superman," Smith is all smiles, describing the film on his blog as "one of the best films of the year." In his review he calls the movie a "heartbreaking yet thrillingly hopeful documentary [where] adults are finally starting to notice how badly kids have been betrayed by teachers unions."

If you're a documentary filmmaker, you're happy to get rave reviews from any source, since you need all the good PR you can get. But I find it revealing, when it comes to the liberal vs. conservative partisan divide, that whenever Michael Moore releases a new documentary promoting a liberal cause, conservatives are quick to bash him for being a left-wing propagandist. But when Guggenheim makes a film offering wholehearted support for a conservative cause, liberal critics have written just as many glowing reviews as conservative ones. (The film has a sky-high 93 fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.) What does that tell you about who's got the most open mind here? 

Photo: Davis Guggenheim at a press conference in Toronto for the film "Waiting for 'Superman.' " Credit: Warren Toda / European Pressphoto Agency

Comments

[christopher hubbard]

maybe because conservatives are more interested in the product than in the person per se who creates it, what all good free marketeers and those more focused on results and outcomes value most. if it comes out of the mouth, or the lens of a leftie, so be it. it actually reflects better on them that they are less concerned about the who and what of their political identity than many of those on the left who see, read, hear and react to so much through their left-right lens. conservatives believe in what they believe in no less than do liberals but are less inclined in putting or attaching a political value to just about everything they believe in. as a former lefty, one of the things i find the most liberating is how i am no longer suffocated by a need to put everything i believe in through a political prism. people who want to fix problems are less interested in things like "structures" and "narratives" and many of the other barriers to progress that so many on the left, in order to flatter themselves in considering how smart they are, overvalue and that usually gets in the way with simply solving the problem. conservatives are more interested in getting from a to b, and finishing the task. liberals too often want to remake the world that a and b operate in and usually fail at creating their new "superstructure" nor at getting from a to b. in their analysis of why the superstructure didn't work as well in real life as it did on paper, they lament that connecting a to be is impossible, heck if they the smart ones can't fix it, by golly the countrybumpkin conservatives can't either. it is both liberal arrogance as much as their inability to solve problems, largely because they make them bigger than they were in the first place that differentiates liberals from conservatives.

the conservative approach is better, not because it is superior, but because it is simpler.

many conservatives, especially social conservatives, yes those types of conservatives who the left loves to mock and make fun of the most, have been championing school choice and alternatives to public education for a long, long time. that it has taken so long for many established liberals to finally realize that inner city and urban education systems, which are overwhelmingly run, administered and financed by fellow liberals, the teachers unions, graduates from education schools and by city pols, (the status quo( and are making common cause with conservatives, many of whom have less money or political connections than their liberal counterparts, i count as progress.

now if only the lefties in the obama administration and who claim to care about the state of inner cities would stand up and support keeping DC schools chancellor michelle rhee continue in her job to do the lord's work that she has been doing and making real progress, i'll come to the happy realization that a critical mass of self-identified liberals have graduated to the point where they have placed outcomes and results over good intentions. conservatives will be only be too happy to accept you and welcome you on board.

cheers!

[Leah]

Please check out alternatives to Waiting For Superman.

There are many many students, parents, educators and activists working to improve public school systems without a privatized corporate superhero.

A Community Concern is a documentary that shows the powerful changes that happen when organizers, parents and youth work with educators to improve urban public schools.

http://www.acommunityconcern.org/

[Carl Hardwick]

You've really got to get off this thing trying to prove leftists are actually fair. Not only is it getting BORING, as someone famous once said, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Here's the simple explanation.

When a proven leftist produces something to the liking of other leftists, no matter how true or false, other leftists will support him or her.

Guggenheim produced something about Gore's Balls Warming [sic], so his leftist credentials have been established forever. Leftists will support him when he criticizes teacher's unions because the cause of Warming Gore's Balls is greater than the cause of greedy teachers.

Moore uses out of context editing to produce his works, they're a mixture of half truths and outright lies. Leftists like his anti-capitalist narrative, so they'll give his work good reviews, no matter how inaccurate or to what extent the people he interviewed protest. The leftist narrative is important above all.

Conservatives see through his fraudulent works and pan Moore. Guggenheim has apparently produced a work that has the ring of truth, so conservatives support this particular work.

Leftists support leftists no matter what. Conservatives support artistic or other works when they accurately reflect realty, no matter the source, and they pan inaccurate work, no matter the source.

Leftists are of one mind. Conservatives call each situation individually.

I guess that makes sense, leftists believe that collective action is the answer, conservatives believe in the individual over the collective.

So leftists take collective action in supporting each other, conservatives consider each individual case.

This constant injection of politics into a blog about arts has become repetitive to the point of being sickening.

You used to write interesting articles about the inside business of Hollywood. There are thousands of political blogs, both on the left and right but only a handful that talk about how Hollywood really works.

By talking about politics, all you're doing is diluting your work, converting it from something unique to some all too commonplace on the Internet.

It's beyond me why you feel it's more important to further the leftist cause, which is worth exactly nothing and isn't in short supply, instead of writing about a unique viewpoint about how Hollywood actually operates.

[Allan Heather]

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was not a liberal cause, it was propaganda and fictitious. Even a thinly-veiled comparison to 'Waiting for Superman' doesn't promote liberal open-mindedness. It is a well-known liberal tactic, that when you have no argument, simply change the subject. Nevertheless, Guggenheim is right on with his latest documentary.

That even liberals are seeing the reality of failed public (read government/union-run) schools is indeed encouraging to those of us who oppose socialism, and the damage it has done here in America, in any form.

[Ian Cambria]

It's not that conservatives don't have open minds; it's just that this guy finally made a film that's not chock full of falsehoods and alarmist doomsday scenarios dreamed up by our former crackpot of a vice-president. (Former VP, not former crackpot; He's still as nutty as a squirrel's breath!)

[Ryan Leon]

I must admit I was one of those fools who fell for the whole "Hope" propaganda campaigning that took place in 2008. I now totally regret voting for the man. I am 38 years old and I can't remember a President who has divided most Americans than every before. I can only imagine what propaganda he is going to try and sell us in 2012.

I would not vote for him again that is for sure!

[TomNJ59]

Guggenheim's "Truth" helped Gore increase his personal net worth to about 100 million dollars, while the ex-veep has attempted to turn the word "skeptic" into "denier", in hopes of conflating a speculative theory on the future with a bigoted, ignorant fleeing from factual history, the Holocaust. So if I don't support his Enron-like carbon trading, I am like those who pretend the death camps didn't exist. Even though we can prove there were death camps.

Indeed, it is exactly the kind of feeble thinking which Gore is peddling which dovetails so elegantly with the education failures the new film faces. "You don't believe in global warming...why you're a friggin Nazi! The science is uh...settled. No, I have no idea what science...I heard it was settled! So shut up Nazi and give Al Gore some bucks for his waterfront mansion!"

"Truth" was riddled with stupidity and falsehood. Superman almost has the balls to confront its target, the quasi-Soviet system of tenure that Michelle Rhee took on and lost.

Guggenheim's film confronts the public school system and the unions. It touches on the power of the union to Democrats and how they always put unions before kids. The film is brave, for a guy who probably will get a few less cocktail invites when visiting Martha's Vineyard next.

But I have to cut off my brain and say I agree with his first film when I don't, in order to say I agree with his second, which I do? Well, it's the same film maker! So you have to agree with him on everything, or nothing! Nazi, holocaust denier!

Luckily, I got a public school education before a frontal lobotomy was requisite to review films. Yeesh.

[Phill Lombardo]

The public school system really isn't failing. The schools in my neighborhood are great. In fact, charter schools have tried and failed in my area because they can't compete with the traditional public schools.

Waiting for Superman spotlights schools in poverty and minority areas. Those areas have overwhelming social problems that no school system can solve.

What we need is to accept the truth and deal with it. In that regards Davis Guggenheim has done us a great disservice by creating this film.

[Carol T.]

Waiting for Superman is a well-made, well thought out documentary. If I were not in the trenches, I would have been fully convinced.

Here are some observations. First of all, he shows a misleading graph (I just taught my sixth graders about misleading data!) showing how per pupil spending has doubled since 1971. In 1976 federal legislation mandated special education services. The lion's share of that increase goes to special ed. By the way, most schools have not been reimbursed by the federal government for the their 40% share of the costs.

Guggenheim briefly sneaks in the fact that the majority of charter schools don't perform as well as their public school counterparts. The stellar ones usually have some say about who attends. I can guarantee that ones who have 100% going to college don't have the usual mix that the public schools have. They are not dealing with the random population that the rest of us deal with: new immigrants, kids who go back to their homeland for a few weeks during the school year, other excessive absences (yeah, you can call in the authorities, but . . . ), egregious behavior (fortunately, the exception rather than the rule), kids whose parents refuse special ed. services.

There is a misapprehension that a teacher cannot be fired. Guggenheim showed a school official outlining the process for removing a teacher. This was one school district out of many. The L.A. Times reported on a teacher who was removed in LAUSD. Granted it is a time consuming, but not impossible. If more principals would take an active role, calling their teachers to task, maybe there would be less dross in the classroom. When an administrator comments on a teacher's test scores, room environment, procedures, most professionals would process the comments. In the ire of the public against public schools, I think administration has been largely left off the hook.

[Elizabeth]

I agree with the poster that this film focuses on inner-city schools who have a very difficult time retaining teachers. Their lives are at risk on a daily basis. the societal issues in which these students deal with on a daily basis make it extremely difficult for them to show to school with enough emotional stability to focus on the task of learning.
My question however is: which institutions are giving licenses to the teachers who are ineffective? Are our institutions if higher education so willing to graduate incompetent people for out nation's classrooms?