From Salon’s Q&A with Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of Nancy, director of Journeys With George) about her new documentary, “Right America: Feeling Wronged. Some Voices From The Campaign Trail,” for which Pelosi “attend[ed] McCain and Sarah Palin rallies in 28 states and puts her microphone in the faces of some very passionate conservatives:”
PELOSI…I felt they were really underrepresented in the media. I didn’t feel like I saw these people on TV. And when I went out to talk to people, the first thing they would say to me was, “I can’t believe you’re talking to me.” They were so flattered that I wanted to hear what they had to say because they’d say, “The media doesn’t listen to us. You turn on the TV and all you see is Obama nation and you don’t see us.” They had some points. My liberal friends, I have to remind them that they have some really good points. No. 1, the media did not fairly represent them in this election. Obama was on the cover of every magazine all summer long. I understand Obama sold magazines. It’s a business. But when you’ve got a presidential election and you have half of the country feeling really underrepresented, I think that’s a real problem. And I think that’s a bigger problem than Obama versus McCain.
According to Michael Leahy, who reviews Pelosi’s film in today’s Washington Post (h/t, Michael Calderone), Pelosi doesn’t exactly “fairly represent” her subjects either. Writes Leahy:
Note: Just to turn on the camera and record the juvenility and venom at a campaign rally isn’t nearly enough to capture the whys of that behavior. Except for some celebrities, we never see most of her subjects for more than a few seconds. We never enter their homes, never view what they do for a living. We never get to know their families or acquire virtually any information about their backgrounds. We don’t know if anybody has been scarred by a traumatic event or recently lost a job. My gosh, with one exception, we never learn their names.
Also of interest from Salon‘s Q&A: Pelosi explains how she handled “assertions of fact made in the movie that are demonstrably false,” like “Barack Obama is a Muslim.” (My colleague Clint asked a handful of campaign reporters the same question back in October.) Pelosi says: “I let them say what they wanted to say, and then I would ask, ‘Where did you hear that?'”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.