Former Democrat presidential contender Howard Dean has taken a swipe at the tea party while claiming that "angry men" are going to see the hit movie "American Sniper."
The blockbuster film, based on the life of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, the most deadly sniper in U.S. history, has touched off a furor in Hollywood while grossing nearly $200 million in 10 days.
Now Dean, the former Vermont governor who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004, has jumped into the storm during an interview with Bill Maher on HBO's "Real Time,"
according to Mediaite.
"There's a lot of anger in this country, and the people who go see this movie are people who are very angry," said Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman.
"This guy (Chris Kyle) basically says, 'I'm going to fight on your side.' I bet you if you looked at the cross-section of the tea party and people who see this movie there's a lot of intersection."
Maher, a liberal who had called Kyle a "psychopath patriot," appeared to nod his head in agreement with Dean, Mediaite said.
But statistical evidence shows that it's not angry men and tea party conservatives who are the film's majority viewers,
according to Deadline, which reports that 43 percent of the audience over its first four days were women, while 37 percent were under 25.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior box office analyst for Rentrak, said: "No matter on what side of the aisle your politics fall, you've got to admit this movie resonated with a broad audience. This film is … generating numbers generally reserved for super-heroes and summer movies."
Mediaite writer Joe Concha scoffed at Dean for making the unsupported allegation that the tea party members were turning up in droves to see the war movie, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper as Kyle, who had 160 confirmed kills.
"So despite Dr. Dean's unchallenged assumptions and comically broad brush, it appears more than just very angry conservatives are powering this film to historic box office and critical success," said Concha. "Millions of women are seeing it, millions more young adults are seeing it."
Meanwhile, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who started the criticism by calling Kyle a "coward," has fueled the fire with a new weekend tweet, saying, "Tomorrow's Sunday School. What Would Jesus Do? Oh, I know what he'd do - hide on top of a roof and shoot people in the back!"
Concha suggested that Moore may have invoked the name of the son of God because Kyle was a devout Christian who is depicted in the film as carrying the Bible with him and saying prayers while gunning down his targets from 1,000 yards away.
Kyle was shot dead on a gun range by a war veteran suffering from PTSD he was trying to help.
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