A wealthy family from the Memphis suburbs takes in a kid with no education who they find wandering the streets and eventually become his family. Great story right? Well, if that happens to be a white, Christian family who takes in a young black man then you have the makings of a racist movie- at least according to The Huffington Post. Nevermind that this is the true story of Michael Oher and the Tuohy family; according to Mark Blankenship- who apparently is training for a job with MSNBC- movies like this should not be shown.
From Blankenship:
This is the story we’re told: A poor, ignorant, and “innocent” black teenager (IBT) stumbles into the privileged world of white society. Because he’s so “backwards,” the only white people he can communicate with are small children. And even they know better than he does. One little boy even has to teach the IBT how to smile at girls so they won’t be afraid of him.
And oh, thank god for the white boy’s kindness, because the IBT’s life is hard! He’s never had his own bed, he’s never gotten much schooling, and the other black people in his life are Mean and Scary and Probably Do Drugs. It’ll take a white kid’s mercy to get him out of this mess.
Except wait. No. It’s not the white kid who can help the IBT. It’s the white kid’s pretty white mother (PWM). When the PWM learns about the IBT’s hard knock life, she uses all of her rich white magic to make it better. She even helps him learn to play football. Yes! A skinny white lady teaches someone about football!
And you know what else? IBT’s simple-minded charm affects the PWM. When her rich whitelady friends compliment her good deeds, she says, with a small choke in her voice, that it’s really him who’s changing her.
There are many things I want to say about the low-life piece of trash writing for The Huffington Post, but I’ll just leave it at this: For some reason I think the real reason Blankenship didn’t like the movie is because a Christian family took Oher in rather than the government. That would make for a success story in the eyes of Blankenship and people who think like him.