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Jonathan Demme’s “Jimmy Carter Man From Plains” documentary thunders into the nation’s metroplexes October 26th, using Carter’s last [but not current] book tour to remind the nation once again how he came to be so loved and loathed. The trailer seems designed to push all the Right’s buttons at once: “the conscience of the world,” and the “”most admired man in the world”

Back in the 70s Director Demme had other interests, giving the nation perhaps our finest women in prison film with “Caged Heat.”

In anticipation of the coming wave of Carter gush, and as the bombers warm up for runs on Tehran, some voices are pre-butting Carter and readying fallback defenses for the possible Iran debacle to come.

It is, was, and shall always be Carter’s fault.

Apparently Carter stabbed the Shah of Iran in the back, put the Mullahs in power, and/or America felt so shamefaced about having backed the Shah we hid his rug.

Moonbattery warms up:

“Jimmah also saw fit to call Rudy Giuliani “foolish” for leaving open the option of one day defending ourselves from Iran, which has been at war with us since Carter pulled the rug out from under the Shah during his disastrous presidency a generation ago”

The Mayor of Beverly Hills says Carter not only dumped the Shah but brought in the Bearded One:

“he changed the whole dynamic of the Middle East by his backing of Khomeini, and that has had a whole ripple effect in the Middle East, which America is still trying to recover from.”

Sage of Arkansas Paul Greenberg brings the feisty, using the beloved Harry Truman to disparage, um, all of contemporary society?

Let’s travel back to a simpler time with Greenberg:

“About the only feature I remember from my earlier visit to the Truman Library was a huge Persian carpet that had been suspended from the balcony. We’d pass it more than once during our brief tour, and each time Mr. Truman would say, “Yeah, that’s a rug the Shah of Iran gave me.“

“Old Mossadegh found out that the Shah had given me the rug, and he was burned up.”

But then Greenberg knew sin:

“The rug is no longer in sight. Political correctness must have overtaken even this monument to Give ‘Em Hell Harry.”

Whatever is his point here? That America once proudly backed a Ruritanian kleptocracy, then lost interest in the burdens of empire?

A National Defense University paper on how Carter turned his back on the Shah:

“On September 10, President Carter, with the approval of both Vance and Brzezinski, called the
Shah to make public his continuing support and to bolster the shah’s confidence. This action was interpreted by the moderates in Iran as signifying Carter’s approval of the massacre and probably proved
counterproductive to later U.S. efforts to relate to moderate groups in Iran…By late December clear divisions in recommendations emerged between Vance and Brzezinski, with Vance still seeking to find an acceptable coalition that would let the shah remain and with Brzezinski ready to urge the Iranian military, if necessary without the shah, to assume full control and crush the dissidents. The shah, apparently earlier than any U.S. leader, saw the impossibility of saving the monarchy and was unwilling to initiate the bloodshed of the “iron fist” approach. “