Earlier this year, Dinesh D’Souza released the documentary 2016: Obama’s America, and you’d think any possible revelations in that would be nullified by the fact that the trailer had a black family fighting over a Monopoly board while Arab music played. But when some people see that, and instead of immediately recognizing it as idiotic, they go straight into “YEAH BUT SOME LIBERAL DOCUMENTARIES ARE EVEN WORSE!” it’s a perfect illustration of how our two-party system ends up making everyone dumber. But I digress. 2016 went on to become the second-most successful domestic political documentary ever (behind Fahrenheit 9/11), grossing $33 million. You’d think that since then, D’Souza’s life would be nothing but sunshine and puppy farts. Turns out, not so.
Last week, D’Souza was forced to resign as president of evangelical King’s College after he was caught having an affair with a married student while still married to his own wife (he says they were separated). Which isn’t really a big deal unless you’re always spouting about the biblical sanctity of marriage and whatnot, which he is. Then this week, D’Souza was dragged to court in two separate lawsuits. The first was filed by another producer on 2016, Douglas Sain, who alleges in part:
Sain alleges that D’Souza is using revenues from the movie for projects and personal matters unrelated to the movie. D’Souza has used the OAF- compensated marketing team to promote his own business interests: a separate book which he claims as his own, his former employer-King’s College, a movie about Ronald Reagan which is currently being developed by an OAF vendor and D’Souza independently from OAF, and crisis management dealing with his personal extra-marital affair.
Meanwhile, his investors on 2016 are also suing him.
In a separate suit (read it here), 2016 investors are seeking profits from D’Souza’s bestselling book Obama’s America: Unmasking The American Dream. The Nevada-based Rancho Esperanza investment group claims that the author has received more that $1 million from the film already but that he owes them all revenus from the book because it relies heavily on material from the documentary. Rancho Esperanza’s unnamed investors say in their suit that they own the intellectual rights to 2016. The book was released on August 13, over a month after the documentary was released and a week before its run was widened to 1,100 theaters. [Deadline]
I admit, it’s not as exciting as a black family throwing Monopoly pieces at each other, but if someone films these proceedings, speeds them up real fast and puts Yakkety Sax over the whole thing, we might have something. I mean look, Dinesh D’Souza may have affairs and ruin marriages and lose jobs and steal from his investors, but at least he doesn’t fight over Monopoly like “the blacks.”