Maureen Dowd rips Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Tony Kushner's script of Lincoln for inaccuracies; 'The Oscar for Best Fabrication'

Tony Kushner image via the Charlie Rose Show;
Maureen Dowd photo by Fred Conrad for the New York Times

In her latest column, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd indulges her "pet peeve about filmmakers who make up facts in stories about real people to add 'drama,' rather than just writing the real facts better."
     She's not amused by a Hollywood that wants it both ways; promoting films based on their alleged authenticity (Look, we recorded Abraham Lincoln's actual watch!) and then, when challenged, reverting to the "Hey, it's a movie!" defense.

     Joe Courtney, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, recently wrote to Steven Spielberg to complain that “Lincoln” falsely showed two of Connecticut’s House members voting “Nay” against the 13th Amendment for the abolition of slavery...
     Tony Kushner, the acclaimed playwright who wrote the screenplay, told me he was outraged that Courtney was getting his 15 minutes by complaining about a 15-second bit of film on a project that Kushner worked on for seven years...
     Spielberg’s production people called the National Archives in 2011 to get a copy of the original voting roll and to plumb deeply into the details of the vote on one of America’s most searing moral battles, even asking whether the vote was recorded in a bound volume or on loose ledger forms. That roll shows that the first two votes cast were “Nays” by Democratic congressmen from Illinois, Lincoln’s own state. Wasn’t that enough to show the tension?