This article originally appeared online at the Los Angeles Times on July 6, 2011.
Palin supporters ready to flood theaters for ‘Undefeated’
By James Oliphant
Sarah Palin’s many supporters are launching a grassroots effort — to support her movie.
Team Sarah, a website devoted to Palin, wants to put fannies in the seats for “The Undefeated,” the highly favorable treatment of Palin’s rise to political prominence directed by filmmaker Stephen Bannon.
The movie premieres later this month in, as they say, select theaters in such states as Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. Palin attended its debut last week in Pella, Iowa.
(The site promoting the movie features a blurb that calls the film a “sweeping epic” but also oddly notes that the project was done in “secret”—not the kind of if-you-see-one-movie praise you find in, say, Variety.)
There is a method to all it, at least in the minds of Palin’s backers. In trying to make the movie a hit, they have a chance “after years of media lies and distortions,” as they say on the site, “to help PUSH BACK in a big way.”
“You can be the spark that becomes a grassroots revolution helping to ignite, solidify, inform, and unify Americans around the values that Sarah Palin represents, and, frankly, it isn’t that terribly hard!” the site says.
A groundswell of support for the film could also factor into Palin’s looming decision about whether to run for president. On her northeastern bus tour and elsewhere, the former Alaska governor has said that she’s looking for signs of enthusiasm for a potential run among rank-and-file Republicans.
Palin herself promoted the film in a Facebook post Wednesday, while also taking a moment to denounce a U.K. tabloid for reporting that she was “in tears” over criticism of the film. She also took a few shots at other members of the mainstream –or “lamestream”–media.
“MSM, you should check it out too. (You’ll learn the facts many of you have failed to report for the last three years as you’ve continued to do what makes you less and less relevant in our country’s discourse: you’ve chosen to just make things up.) There’s a story there, but you’ll never find it if you continue lying and carrying water for the powers that be,” Palin wrote.
The Team Sarah website is affiliated with Susan B. Anthony’s List, a political advocacy group dedicated to electing women candidates who oppose abortion rights.
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