Hillary Should Fear ‘Bay-ghazi’

Hillary Clinton appeared to dodge serious political damage following her appearance in October before the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearings. Democrats and the mainstream media dismissed the 11-hour marathon session as nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.

Few news outlets examined her lies about the nature of the attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, (she claimed they were caused by a YouTube video, all the while knowing they were not). Even fewer reported on the then-Secretary of State ignoring 600 emails asking for more security at the Benghazi compound.

But Clinton will have a far tougher time dealing with Hollywood.

“13 Hours,” a movie set for a Jan. 15 release date, will tell the Benghazi saga from the perspective of CIA security contractors on the scene during the terrorist attack. The movie doesn’t appear to have an overtly partisan agenda. The two trailers for the film fail to name check Clinton or President Obama. Instead, we’re given an action movie formula tied to actual events.

[lz_ndn video= 29908603]

The director, Michael Bay, is no Michael Moore. Bay’s most famous films involve gargantuan robots (the “Transformers” series), hardly the stuff of partisan kerfuffles. The most that can be said about Bay’s ideological potential is that he appears to hold the U.S. military in high regard, given how he’s treated men and women in uniform in past screen efforts.

That’s why what’s already been dubbed “Bay-Ghazi” might be so damaging to Clinton’s mystique.

The movie, based on Mitchell Zuckoff’s nonfiction book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” will put a human face on the tragedy, giving audiences a real sense of what happened during that extended attack. Could they have been saved? Did top military officials order those who could have swooped in to “stand down”?

Critics may be rigorously cruel to Bay’s body of work, often for its undeniable flaws. But few would deny the director knows what audiences want to see on the screen. His commercial track record has few peers. Movies still matter to the culture at large, and they can do more than start a fashion trend or make an unknown actor into a superstar.

There’s a reason audiences can now check out “Truth,” the biased retelling of the RatherGate scandal, at a theater near you. The movie attacks not just former President George W. Bush, but tries to argue, 11 years later, that the CBS report on Bush’s National Guard service was true despite monumental evidence to the contrary.

There’s a reason audiences can now check out “Truth,” the biased retelling of the RatherGate scandal.

We may forget all the news accounts from that time, as well as the font nuances from the discredited documents that were uncovered by Internet sleuths, but the movie’s defense of Dan Rather and his team is assembled in slick, Hollywood fashion. And the minds behind the film hope it changes a heart or two in the audience, possibly much more.

Films can sway viewers’ opinions beyond what they see on screen. Some of the brave men who were there during the Benghazi attacks — security contractors Mark “Oz” Geist, John “Tig” Tiegen, and Kris “Tanto” Paronto — will be doing promotional interviews in connection with the film.

That means newspapers and media outlets across the nation will get their side of the story. Americans can assess what they have to say with less of a filter than anchors trying to do damage control to Clinton’s presidential hopes.