First came “reality TV,” and then in 2008 we had two prominent “fact-based” movies that are now making their rounds on DVD: “Flash of Genius” and “Changeling”. Both culminate in high-profile trials with jarring results, and we will not spoil the endings here. But we can observe how the weaker movie attained liberal acclaim for its feminist distortion of the truth, while the better movie somehow got the truth out past the Hollywood censors.

The movie that lived up to its claim to be factual was “Flash of Genius,” which recounted an attempt by a small inventor to receive credit for his invention of the intermittent windshield wiper. Now standard on all cars, the intermittent windshield wiper is useful when there is a light drizzle, when a pause between the wiping is desired before water builds up again on the glass. The inventor was inspired by how the human eye works; it does not blink constantly, which would be irritating, but pauses between movements. This movie is factual down to the tiny detail of even referencing the correct resort town of Harbor Springs that auto executives preferred to visit during the heyday of Detroit’s success.

Robert Kearns was the real-life eccentric inventor described in the movie, and there is no feminist attempt to claim that his wife was the secret genius behind the man. Quite the contrary, the movie candidly and unsympathetically describes how his wife left him at the height of his struggle for recognition, and yet their six children continued to stand by their father for over a decade of his bitter fight against Ford Motor Company for taking his invention.

Kearns was a man with plenty of flaws, and the movie portrays them candidly. But his hard work and refusal to give up brought tremendous value to others, including other small inventors. The hardships created by Kearns for his wife were probably exaggerated by the movie. For example, the movie did not explain how his brief detention by a psychiatric ward would justify his claim for disability income for his family, and that his ex-wife held a job as an editorial assistant for the National Institutes of Health. Regardless, the wife’s departure from her husband certainly did not alleviate any financial hardships the family may have had due to Kearns’ fight for credit for his work. This leading lady was, without explanation, a single mom who leaves her 9-year-old son home alone for a day in densely populated Los Angeles, with tragic results. The movie then portrays more than a half-dozen people – all men – as being directly or indirectly responsible for the tragic crime or the delay in solving it. But in real life, the person convicted for the crime was actually a woman who is never seen or mentioned in this “fact-based” movie. In real life that woman confessed and was punished with a prison sentence lighter than what a man would have received for a similar crime. But feminists hide the truth and push the fiction that women are always victims, and men are always the villains.

For falsely pretending that men are evil and women are good, “Changeling” was highly acclaimed at liberal film festivals. But for brilliantly telling the truth, “Flash of Genius” fell by Hollywood's wayside.