Do minor inaccuracies about politics/history in news, movies or TV shows bother you?

[LBJer]

Like with many other things, for me it's a matter of degree.  It's unrealistic to expect even the work of professional historians or other experts to be 100% accurate, let alone movies and TV shows.  However, I think there's a limit.  For example, the movie Braveheart is so ludicrously inaccurate that I think it would have been far better for Mel Gibson to make a movie and say that it was merely inspired by William Wallace's life, and give the lead character a different name, than to have it supposedly be about Wallace himself.  As it is, some of the inaccuracies are of such magnitude that it would be like making a movie about the Iraq War in 2700 in which George W. Bush attacks Iraq because he learns that Laura is having an affair with Saddam Hussein! 

[Joe Republic]

When there's election maps that make no sense, that pisses me off so much.

You'd enjoy the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, where this map was shown in the background behind an election night TV reporter:



(Sorry for the atrocious picture quality, but it's enough to get the idea.)

[DaleCooper]

When there's election maps that make no sense, that pisses me off so much.

You'd enjoy the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, where this map was shown in the background behind an election night TV reporter:



(Sorry for the atrocious picture quality, but it's enough to get the idea.)

Oklahoma to the left of New York, Louisiana too close to call.

[President Johnson]

When there's election maps that make no sense, that pisses me off so much.

Yeah, in that respect, Veep's election map was decent (although WTF Delaware??)


Compare this to the 2006 West Wing election:

That's even worse than the 2016 House of Cards map, lmao:

[Deep Dixieland Senator, Muad'dib (OSR MSR)]

Sometimes.

It's common for westerns to have anachronistic guns. The anachronisms in Westerns don't really bother me, I just point out that it's an anachronism afterwards. I'm just more impressed when they are using more period correct firearms. Personally I think they could make some more cap and ball revolvers in shootouts. I think it could definitely add to the drama with struggling to reload quickly. The Ned Kelly movie too didn't bother me with the whole gang having helmets rather than just Ned.


The interesting thing is that some minor things really do annoy me tho.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
The use of the current German flag instead of the period correct one. Seems like something one would think they'd get correct. Like I don't expect to see 50 stars on a union flag in cowboy movies and they don't do that.

I bought a massive multipart Documentary about the First World War with an American Narrator (I don't recall the name of the doco or the bloke). He mispronounced Schlieffen Plan. How am I supposed to have faith in the doco if you can even get that right. I returned it the next day.

[Schiff for Senate]

Yeah, somewhat.

No good examples on the top of my head right now except for one of the obvious ones (in West Wing, they hold presidential elections in midterm years), and that I noticed some of the same errors the OP did when I watched House of Cards over a year back.

[Schiff for Senate]

- House of Cards claiming there's a special election for governor of Pennsylvania in 2013. There are no special elections for governor in that state. After Jim Matthews' resignation, his lt. governor would just have taken over until the 2014 election (if 2013 was necessary, why didn't they use Virginia instead?). Also, their 2016 map is laughable. I think they also got it wrong that Will Conway was elected governor of New York in 2012, though New York doesn't elect the governor in presidential years.

If we're looking for inaccuracies about politics in House of Cards, then these barely even register. For one, if we take the idea that the show's world is supposed to be close to our own seriously (for some reason), then Frank Underwood, a white Southern Democrat who loves the idea of taking on teachers' unions and 'reforming' Social Security, would have lost no later than 2010 and would presumably now be a very frustrated lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.

I agree, though I guess it is possible he hung on by the skin of his teeth in 2010 and 2012 (extremely unlikely, I know, but not impossible - for instance, Nick Rahall survived 2010 and 2012 in a deep-red seat in WV) and then got rescued from inevitable defeat in 2014 by becoming VP.
I also thought Cathy Underwood still being a Senator from LA was kind of unrealistic, but then I thought about it and realized it's possible she was (re)elected in 2008 (this would be very realistic - 2008 was a blue wave year, and in real life, LA reelected Democratic senator Mary Landrieu), and became Secretary of State before she was up for reelection in 2014 (when she would have quite certainly lost).

[Ferguson97]

When there's election maps that make no sense, that pisses me off so much.

Yeah, in that respect, Veep's election map was decent (although WTF Delaware??)


Compare this to the 2006 West Wing election:

That's even worse than the 2016 House of Cards map, lmao:

Tbf didn’t Frank only win TN/WV because of actual vote manipulation? Like they faked bomb threats at precincts? It’s not totally ridiculous if you flip those to Conway.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
The use of the current German flag instead of the period correct one. Seems like something one would think they'd get correct. Like I don't expect to see 50 stars on a union flag in cowboy movies and they don't do that.

Probably an example of "the viewers (are expected to be) morons".

They thought it is better to use the current and better known one, before possibly confusing the audience.

It's a Guy Ritchie action movie after all.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Like with many other things, for me it's a matter of degree.  It's unrealistic to expect even the work of professional historians or other experts to be 100% accurate, let alone movies and TV shows.  However, I think there's a limit.  For example, the movie Braveheart is so ludicrously inaccurate that I think it would have been far better for Mel Gibson to make a movie and say that it was merely inspired by William Wallace's life, and give the lead character a different name, than to have it supposedly be about Wallace himself.  As it is, some of the inaccuracies are of such magnitude that it would be like making a movie about the Iraq War in 2700 in which George W. Bush attacks Iraq because he learns that Laura is having an affair with Saddam Hussein! 

I think the point Mel Gibson tried to get across was that FREEEDOM is good  - and apparently that the English are irredeemable evil   - and the movie certainly succeeds in both tasks.