I was back living in Venezuela when this happened. I was damned sure he was the culprit and it was not till much later that I came to find out he was still a hero after all.
I believe Richard Jewell was targeted because he did not fit the physical idea of what a hero looks like according to the Media and Hollywood.
The “Not our class, dear.” school of snobbery is embedded deep in the DNA of the American elite.
The American media is largely owned by that elite and largely staffed by sycophants who think that by emulating that elite — in a cargo cult like fashion — they can become part of it.
For all their talk about diversity, inclusivity, and progressivism the Kennedy’s, Gore’s, Heinz’, Rockafeller’s and the rest of the Ivy League / Martha’s Vinyard / Manhattan Cocktail Party crowd all consider themselves to be an aristocracy of nobler blood than the rest of us… Especially a middle-aged, pot-bellied, redneck from the South.
Oikophobia, the fear of the lower class. There’s a popular gun writer who regularly uses disparaging language to describe rural people: “Cletus and Lurline,” “Doofi,” “Herpaderp,” etc.
Can somebody give me that cliff notes of this guy? I’ve never heard of Richard Jewell
TL;DR is that during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, a bomb was planted in a park where massive crowds of people attending the games were gathering.
A private security guard, Richard Jewell, discovered the bomb, alerted police, and began to evacuate people. The bombs still went off and people were hurt, but Jewell’s actions still saved many.
Initially hailed as a hero, the mainstream media soon turned on him. They smeared him as a terrorist, an attention seeker, a wannabe cop, a redneck, or all of these at once.
Jewell was, eventually, exonerated… But his life and reputation had been utterly destroyed. A few half-hearted retractions were buried on page 36-Z of a few newspapers, one or two corrections were read on CNN at 3:15 AM, and that was that.
https://law.jrank.org/pages/8241/Libel-Slander-Richard-Jewell-Olympic-Park-Bombing.html
This movie needed to be made and it needs to be seen. In this era of Fake News, it will resonate.
What I want to see is the media push back where they claim what they clearly did out of malice for views and ratings they didn’t do, because who are you going to believe, the media celebrities or your lying eyes?
Only Clint Eastwood could make this movie. He’s too iconic to be ignored, too famous to be hushed up, and too talented to be dismissed.
Eastwood. You are correct in every way.