South Africa, March 10 -- Last weekend, as newsfeeds filled with reports of escalating strikes and retaliation in the Middle East, I could not help but think about her recommendation, because truth is often stranger than fiction and because that 1997 satire feels more relevant today than it did then.

Wag the Dog is a film about attention and the machinery that shapes what the public sees, what it feels, what it debates, and what it forgets. In the movie, a political crisis threatens a presidency, and the response is a crafted story.

The president is advised to manufacture a conflict produced like a campaign, complete with symbols, a soundtrack, and a narrative arc designed to push other headlines aside.

Back then, it played as a sharp,...