The Plan to Breitbart FDR. Film will portray Roosevelt as sleeping with his cousin.

[leveymg]

To those who curse Hollywood's supposed liberal bias, here's a remedy. A film in production casts Bill Murray and Laura Linney as live-in cousins involved in an extramarital affair in "Hyde Park on the Hudson". The project has been funded and cast, while another Roosevelt biography that would have told the story of General Smedley Butler who thwarted the Banker's Plot, which Oliver Stone was to have cowritten and Directed, has been abandoned.

The multiplex portrait of FDR's alleged incest is getting first attention in a local New York newspaper:

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110607/NEWS01/106070331/From-SNL-FDR-Murray-play-Roosevelt-upcoming-film?odyssey=tab
HYDE PARK — Academy Award-nominated actor Bill Murray has agreed to portray President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a new movie and was in the town Sunday researching the role.

Murray, well-known for appearing on "Saturday Night Live" from 1976 to 1980, will play the 32nd president and Hyde Park native in "Hyde Park on Hudson."

Rhinebeck resident Richard Nelson, who wrote the screenplay for "Hyde Park on Hudson," confirmed Monday that Murray has agreed to take the role.

"Hyde Park on Hudson" will focus on the late commander-in-chief's relationship with his cousin, Margaret "Daisy" Suckley. Historians have concluded that Roosevelt and Suckley, who lived at the Wilderstein estate in Rhinebeck, were intimately involved.

Meanwhile, the book and movie that Stone was working on in 2000 has disappeared. The Smedley Butler project was apparently abandoned by Stone after a falling out with the book's original authors.

Oliver Stone's interest in the Smedley Butler affair was first reported in a 2000:

http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg47618.html

Stone Sets Sights on Roosevelt


Updated 3:29 PM ET July 28, 2000
NEW YORK (AP) - Oliver Stone has his sights set on another conspiracy.
The "JFK" director wants to make a movie about an alleged plot by rich
Republicans to topple President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, according to
Friday's Daily News.

"The coup d'etat planned against President Roosevelt has amazingly
disappeared from the history books," Stone writes in the introduction to the
newly published book, "Oliver Stone's USA: Film, History and Controversy."

Stone cites J.P. Morgan Jr., Douglas MacArthur, the media and others as
conspirators in their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the president, the
Daily News reported. Stone is still working on the script. He is basing it partly on William
Corson and Joseph Trento's book, "The Last President," due out in 2002.

But, neither the book nor the film ever appeared after Stone took an interest in the project, reportedly contributing personally to a rewrite of the script. As The New York Post reported the following year:

Writers William Corson and Joseph Trento have pulled a literary reverse. A year ago, they sold film rights to a nonfiction project called "The Last President"- about a real-life plot to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 - to producer Arnold Copelson. Copelson has since gotten Oliver Stone and 20th Century Fox interested in the project.

Now, with Stone said to be well along in writing the script, the authors have turned around and sold the book proposal to Simon & Schuster's Free Press imprint for an estimated $200,000. According to Free Press editor Chad Conway, the book will detail how some of the nation's leading capitalists - alarmed by the election of FDR and his plans to introduce radical reforms during the Great Depression - tried to engineer a military coup to overthrow the government. The plotters first talked to General Douglas MacArthur and then to General Smedley Darlington Butler, Conway says. "Butler eventually exposed the plot," he says.

< . . .>

Corson is a writer and former FBI agent, and Trento works for the Public Education Center. "Corson's father was one of the guys involved with investigating the original plot," Conway says. The Free Press is planning a 100,000 print run for the book for fall 2002.

Simon & Schuster and 20th Century Fox are owned by NewsCop. 9/11 also happened. The Smedley Butler story did not. Stone, instead, went on to film a pair of curiously ambivalent films with mixed reviews about Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.

It seems this has not been a viable environment for a project that deals with an attempted fascist coup against FDR. Maybe, it's finally time to tell that story. In the meantime, Roosevelt's reputation will have to endure the airing of the salacious "Hyde Park on the Hudson."

[midnight]

1. I went to school with two girls who married their cousins....

I know for medical reasons it's not deemed healthy, but I think this was more acceptable in the past...

[MineralMan]

21. Over half the states allow first cousin marriage.

The health risks are only very, very slightly higher for children born to first cousins than in the general population. It's really no big deal.

[Pab Sungenis]

2. Umm... Eleanor Roosevelt was her maiden name, too.

FDR and Eleanor WERE cousins.

[leveymg]

3. Eleanor Roosevelt is not Margaret "Daisy" Suckley

Margaret Suckley (pronounced "Sook-lee") (December 20, 1891 - June 29, 1991) was a close friend and confidant of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as archivist at the first American presidential library <1>. Generally called 'Daisy' by those who knew her, she was born December 20, 1891<2> at Wilderstein in the Hudson Valley, and died June 29, 1991<3> in Rhinebeck, New York <4>, after living to nearly 100 years old. She was a neighbor and sixth cousin <5> of President Roosevelt.

[Doctor Hurt]

5. Eleanor Roosevelt was FDR's cousin too

is what the poster is saying.

[leveymg]

7. One difference is, FDR didn't have an affair with Eleanor.

[Doctor Hurt]

11. no difference to me.

*shrugs*

he's long dead, and everyone knows he screwed around.

[Doctor Hurt]

4. If it's true, why let it bother you?

This is really not particular bad.

[leveymg]

6. It's not what I or you may think. It's all those out there who are easily outraged

by sex scandals.

Guess they're recycling the older liberal Democratic Party figures sex scandal material.

[FLPanhandle]

8. This isn't "Breitbarting" FDR, it's just another drama/love story

As for Stone's movie, after his stupid JFK movie, it's probably better left to someone else.

[leveymg]

9. How many real heroes do we have left? FDR is one of the few.

There's been an effort to tear down JFK, as well. It's fine if it humanizes them, but the likely effect is simply to turn the American public into an ever-more cynical mob absorbed and distracted by sex crimes and scandals.

What do you think we just went through here?

[FLPanhandle]

13. Why do we need heroes?

I've never understood the desire of most people to put someone on a pedestal and look up to them.

I admire what some people accomplished, but, being human, there are always flaws. Sometimes it's good to remind people that all these "heroes" had flaws/human failings be it George Washington, Lincoln, Gandhi, FDR, JFK, etc. They weren't supermen or gods.

As for the public being distracted by sex crimes, that's been going on since the days of Athens & Rome. Human nature.

[leveymg]

15. As for the need for heroes, that's been going on since the days of Athens & Rome, too.

It's something innate to human beings, like the urge to scapegoat and drive out those who threaten community morals, whatever they happen to be at the time.

I'm not making a judgment about FDR's morality, I'm pointing out the tearing down of another icon, and it's political significance.

[FLPanhandle]

16. Yes, but we've been tearing heroes down since the days of Athens & Rome too.

We aren't a pretty or well behaved species.

As for FDR, I don't even see this as much of a tear down.

It was a long time ago and this movie will have no real political significance today. In fact, Murry is well liked and will probably do a good job of humanizing FDR.

[LibertyLover]

10. Oh good grief

Daisy Suckley was a fifth or sixth cousin of FDR - a lot further down the family relationship line than Eleanor, whom FDR married. I don't see what the fuss is all about to be quite honest.

[cali]

12. this is ridiculous. no one, but no one, considers an affair with a sixth cousin incest

and Eleanor and FDR were more closely related than Suckley and FDR.

We have no idea how FDR will be portrayed in this new flick. what a very silly hissy fit.

[leveymg]

14. It's what people will remember about FDR instead of the fact that Wall St. plotted to

overthrow him in a military coup.

Personally, who sleeps with whom is not really that interesting.

[sufrommich]

17. How many people do you imagine don't already know that

FDR married a distant cousin? Most people learn that before they're out of High School.

[leveymg]

18. I think it's interesting what films that get made deal with, compared with those that disappear

I knew that Eleanor is FDR's (3rd, I think) cousin, and that hardly shocks me. Nor am I averse to a story about his (alleged) extramarital affairs. There was something on the tube about Daisy Suckley and FDR (I recall it was about 2 years ago, perhaps CBS Sunday morning) that dealt with the story in a respectful way.

The timing of that article in the local NY paper just struck me, and started me thinking about all the politicization of sexual hysteria that Breitbart and the GOP dirty-tricks squads continue to feed, and the politics of reputation.

[cali]

19. no, it's not. a movie like this will attract a small audience.

[leveymg]

20. More Americans know about "Daisy" Suckley than Smedley Butler. There's something wrong here.

That's my main point.

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. Sixth cousin?

That's not very closely related at all and certainly not "incest" by most definitions. Sixth cousins are in the seventh generation of descent from a common ancestor.

[leveymg]

23. That's a fine point that will be lost on most in the buzz.

Buzz, biz, swarm, smarm. It's all about politics and money.

[sufrommich]

24. But the well known fact that he married his 3rd cousin has

affected his status how?

[leveymg]

25. Actually, only a tiny percentage of Americans know that.

You're assuming a nice, rational, well-informed public. That can be a slippery starting point.

This isn't a really big picture, but it has its exploitation potential.

[sufrommich]

26. Yes, the tiny percentage who made it to the 6th grade. nt

[leveymg]

27. The tiny percentage who remember the 6th Grade.

Just because information is offered doesn't mean that it's necessarily retained.

Anyway, that's a side-issue. We'll see how Access Hollywood treats the film, if at all, and whether it gets any resonance.

[LynneSin]

29. Hell I'm 5th Cousin to George W. Bush

of course I have no desire to have sex with him but it goes to show that when you go back that many generations you're bound to run into some interesting folks in your family tree.

[LynneSin]

28. I'm my own 3rd cousin once removed - find something else to shock me with.

Outside of the increased risk of genetic disorder should they have children, I find no problem with marrying cousins. 100 years ago this was not uncommon for cousins to have relationship, my grandparents were 1st cousins once removed.

And no, I have never actually dated a cousin, to be fair I didn't have very many close cousins. My mother was an only child and our family lived hours away from any of our closest relatives.