bread and circus

tonight i watched a documentary, as often nights i do. this particular film was titled "manufacturing dissent" and billed as the film michael moore does not want you to see. it begins as a sweet, fan based bio pic on moore, showcasing his history as a journalist of sorts, writing and editing an indie paper in the eighties called the flint voice, and moving on to edit the internationally distributed and loudly controversial, mother jones. a job from which he was relieved after only four months. slowly the focus turns from his achievements to his indiscretions as a film maker.

now, i would like to make two things perfectly clear here, the first being that i am a fan of michael moore's work. while i have witnessed his muck-raking tactics first hand, and was not particularly impressed with them, i still believe that he is, and this will lead to my second point, a highly entertaining man, with a knack for pushing buttons not often pushed by mass media. that brings me to my second point of interest...
HE IS AN ENTERTAINER! period.

joining the ranks of moore are other highly entertaining, politically focused entertainers, john stewart and steven colbert. both of which contend that they are not news sources, rather satirists and comedic commentators on the news infrastructure that has both embraced and condemned these three men, and also mangaed to severely betray the american public, time and again, in their haphazard and slanted reporting of distracting and irrelevant "news". almost a true, and rare, definition of irony is boiling up here. we go to our "news" sources, cbs, abc, nbc, cnn and the dreaded fox news network and find reports on the happenings of hollywood's drunken starlets, and go to our hollywood comedians, stewart, colbert, lewis black, michael moore, to get the scoop on our political affairs. this is a sad commentary in and of itself, worthy of interrogation and ridicule by the men in question.

do we hold a higher moral standard to our entertainers than we do to our elected officials, or to those whose job it is to report, truthfully and unbiased, on the actions of our elected officials? what could this possibly say for our collective intelligence?

i watch michael moore because i want to laugh, the same reason i religiously watch programs such as the office. granted, i am aligned for the greater part with the views expressed by moore, but i am also aligned with the views expressed by the family guy. do i need to fact check the sarcasm and snide remarks on society made by the family guy to enjoy it? will it change the way i vote? no.

there is a fourth orwellian truth that needs to be added to big brother's campaign, "distraction is education". we seem to crave distraction from the harsh realities of our world so much so that we have decided to call these distractions informative.

every time i see a bold headline, indicting a hollywood star with capital fraud, or discovering a cum covered blue dress, i race to page fourteen to find out what third world country we bombed that morning. fox news offers us bill o'reilly, an editorialist with a professed agenda not of truthfulness but of thwarting the efforts of the so-called liberal media, and let's us believe that this man is somehow reporting to us, the american public, accurate and true news. meanwhile, on comedy central, through the guise of comedy, we are discovering that even more illegal arms deals by our government in the 60's to israel could be fodder for the supposed terrorist attacks in our own country. now, here it comes.

did he say supposed terrorist attacks? yes, and here is why. this is not a conspiracy theory. if, in fact, we were attacked by nineteen saudi's on that famous date so often repeated by the bush administration, then it is clear that it is not a terrorist attack, rather a declaration of war. the only terrorists that i can see are john ashcroft, dick cheney, g w bush and every major news organization in america. for the last six years we have been force fed the idea that we are most certainly in harms way. terrorists have move din next door and powder our krispy kremes with anthrax. the only true safe escape is a vacation to florida, to disney world, where we can sun bathe our blues away.

we are now told of those evil illegal aliens who get drunk and drive through our peaceful cities, running down our children and clocking in at our jobs in the morning. the welfare moms sucking off the teat of the good old american taxpayers. they are the new commies, the new russians, the new japs, the new resistance to our way of life.

according to news sources, we need our military here, and now, armed and firing at our neighbors. we are so scared of one another that we forget the bogey men behind the curtains of corporate america. i know, i know, why would the media lie? who stands to profit? good question, in which lies the answer.

those media conglomerates, at one time, survived on advertising money. they needed to fulfill a certain agreement to sell ideas to consumers in order to provide the people the programs they wanted. not so much anymore, as clear channel takes over most air waves and all media outlets are controlled and monitored by a small group of corporate hustlers. these same hustlers also own stock and or sit on boards of major military contractors and big oil. hmmm. these same board members sit in office and dictate who gets bombed and why. hmmmm. then telling the american people to get behind it or "shut the hell up" as bill o'reilly so eloquently put it on his show when addressing the american public about the war effort.

get behind it or shut up!

now, do you think it is at all possible that, if bill o'reilly can say that to us, the consumer, that someone can say that to fox news? hmmmm. interesting. it is also interesting that very very little was reported on the Military Commissions Act, a clearly unconstitutional bill that strikes down upon dissenters of this corrupt administration as war criminals. this is beyond the wettest dreams of on senator joe mccarthy, who could only have hoped that someday the american people would all be on trial for thoughts against the american system. thought crime? there goes that orwellian bell again.

i am tired for now, and will touch on this a lot more but for any further inquiry, check out keith olbermann. he is right on. here he is discussing the MCA.