Maureen Dowd throws down for ‘Fair Game’

Choice NYTimes pull-quotes by lefty liberal-leaning Maureen Down at her progressive propaganda pulpit from your suspicious Socialist sympathizers at Awards Daily.

Republicans are gearing up to start re-sliming Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson when “Fair Game,” the movie based on their memoirs, opens next month. Robert Luskin, a lawyer for Rove who considered Plame collateral damage and labeled her “fair game,” dismissively told Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The Times that the Wilsons are “a little past their ‘sell-by’ date.”

It’s hard to believe that it was seven years ago when the scandal of the Glamorous Spy and Showboating Ambassador exploded. Joe Wilson first accused the Boy Emperor of not wearing any clothes on the Iraq W.M.D.’s, and then charged the Bush White House with running a “smear campaign” against him and outing his wife as a C.I.A. spy. He was right on all counts and brave to take on a White House that broke creative new ground in thuggery and skulduggery.

…The movie makes clear that Plame was not merely ‚Äúa secretary‚Äù or ‚Äúmediocre agent‚Äù at the agency, as partisan critics charged at the time, but a respected undercover spy tracking Iraqi W.M.D. efforts.

…The film creates composites to heighten the tension and suggests that Plame‚Äôs Iraqi contacts and their families were murdered once she was outed ‚Äî a subplot Variety called ‚Äúapocryphal and manipulative.‚Äù

But the movie is a vivid reminder of one of the most egregious abuses of power in history, and there are deliciously diabolical turns by actors playing Scooter Libby, David Addington and Rove. Plame’s C.I.A. bosses are portraits in cravenness, cutting her loose at the moment she starts receiving death threats and her Iraqi sources become endangered.

…Costumed with lush mane and round paunch, Sean Penn is well suited to capture Wilson‚Äôs arrogance and mouthiness, while also showing his honesty, brazenness, sly charm and fierce love of wife and country.

They were the Girl and Boy Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, and we should all remember what flew out.