Wednesday, August 25, 2004
"A man with 6 good books is content, A man with time to read those books is in bliss"
Hmm well it would appear that i was bored enough to make this second post. So that being the case if this looks too long/boring for you well then just feel free to ignore and scroll down to the shorter one on the less political thoughts; aka my usual ramblings. If not well feel free to read and comment on this and hey reading the other one wouldnt hurt either. Anywho..
I was going to intially start this off talking about late night talk show hosts etc as a continuation of the last part but i came to a few realisations since then. Just to start it off id like to just say that whatever impartiality John Stewart used to hold just got tossed out the window when he had Kerry on as a guest. If that doesnt cement his political bias i dont know what does. Meh hes still a funny guy so ill let it slide. Really though this brings me to my point. In my last ranting/ramble i talked about how much it bothered me that the media doesnt seem to be able to remain unbiased when reporting the news and fails to use the editorial as the sole means of expressing ones bias as it should be with the media. Now my initial plan was to comment on how a great deal of late night hosts/comedians have been blasting there political views etc through comedy. Putting more thought into this i realised that esentially a comedic monolouge, routine etc is nothing but an editorial put in a more skillfull and amusing style than most of us can manage. You cant really expect a comedian to be completly unbiased otherwise well for one it wouldnt be all that funny and would end up being incredibly unentertaining. So i cant fault a comedian for stating his/her opinions through there jokes and i dont think that anyone really can. Its not like jay lenno is trying to pass himself off as a credible news source and hopefully no one is expecting anything otherwise.
This being the case i now reach what is the focal point of this ramble, why it is that i hate Micheal Moore. Well where to start? hmm not sure really. Damn writers block. Well if there is one thing that you can say about the guy is that he really doesnt try to hide his political leanings, not that im faulting him for that. Nothing wrong with expressing your opinions cause if i was to say that well then it would make me one of the larger hypocrites to walk this here earth. What bothers me about him is that he has such an overbloated ego and is such a blowhard that he feels that not only everyone wants to hear his point of view but appears to refuse to accept that there are other opinions that deserve to be heard. On top of that he then had the nerve to come on canadian tv during the federal election to tell us, the canadian public who we should vote for. Oh yes im sorry, clearly the opinion of an egotistical moron who doesnt live in canada, cannot vote in canada and for all intensive purposes should not give a rats ass who gets elected in canada is far superior to my own opinion. Thank you Mr. Moore for pointing out how i was wrong, ill be sure to call you up for you help with every other decision that doesnt effect you at all.
Moving on from his public actions though, i come now to what pisses me off about him the most. This of course is his films. Now just for the record my politics dont factor into this. There is some stuff that i do agree with that he says, such as gun control etc and some that i do not. That doesnt however have anything to do with my thoughts on his films. My trouble comes with the way that he packages his thoughts. Since his career started, Micheal Moore has marketed his movies as documentary films. Now a documentary is supposed to be a clear, intelligent and most importantly unbiased and uncontrolled telling of events, history etc. A documentary is supposed to bring light to the facts and show you what happened. The filmmaker might bring out his own opinions but the point of documentary film-makings is so that they state there own opinions so long as the real facts are not modified allowing you to draw your own conclusions from the film. There was a rather good article in the Herald back when Fahrenheit 9/11 first came out which first brought this train of thought to my attention and i totally agree with what it said. So yes a documentary is supposed to remain an unbiased viewing into a portion of history etc.
Why does this then bother me when discussed with Micheal Moores films? Well for one thing like i said he markets all of his works as a documentary. If you ever take a look at one of his films, not based on your own personal views but looking at his film techniques its pretty obvious that his films do not try to remain unbiased. Throughout ever one of his films Mr. Moore takes various bits of truth and half truths and arranges them such that they express his own personal opinion. He utilizes humour to esentially make fun of those who he feels are the enemy within his selected topic of that particular film and takes one or two tiny bits of information that are most likely taken out of context and adds them in to make it seem realistic. Hmm dressing up opinion within shreds of facts in order to convert people to your opinion isnt a documentary but it sounds alot like another type of media, rather popular in the 30's and 40's in fact. Whats it called again... oh right! Propaganda! Moore has got the system so down pat that he would put Goebbels in awe. Not only do you have major film studios competing to give him funding for his propaganda movies but as fahrenheit showed has people willing to throw down large amounts of cash to watch. This would boggle Goebbels mind! A society that prides itself on its freedom is happily and enthusiastically lining up to watch some good old propaganda, and all without the threat of a gestapo investigation. Not only that, you now have "credible" awards panels giving what is clearly propaganda awards for being a documentary. Of course im sure that if he came out and admitted what he really was producing that sales wouldnt be as stellar but the fact remains the guy is lying about his predominant source of fame (or infamy whichever you prefer). Granted being an egotistical blowhard is probably keeping him in the spotlight as well.
The fact that he lies so bad throughout his films, and then in the subsequent marketing of the films makes him a rather large hypocrite. Constantly he rants about how Bush lies, how he is a "fictitious president" etc. and yet the guy cant stick to the facts in his own films. Clearly he utilizes just as many lies and half truths as he claims Bush has but because of the rather appearant left bias of the media within the united states no one calls him on this or those who do are seen as a minor newsblip, nothing more (which in my opinion is all that Micheal Moore should be himself but sadly he has seen to it that people think otherwise). This is incredibly appearant within the entertainment based media that seems to have there political leanings shoved so far up there respective rectums that they cant stop heaping praise on moore based just on his opinions that they are unable to take a step back and really look at his film making techniques. You get a scant few reviews that have actually said wait a second and realised that the guy doesnt make the documentaries he claims he does and scores accordingly. So all you get is the happily politically biased media heaping praise on there star propaganda machine so that the american consumer happily pays to have Moore shove his opinion down your throat. Ahh God Bless America. Sadly i cannot see this cycle ending any time soon but at that ive basically ran out of things to rant on. This being the case i urge you people to like neil brought up, next time you watch the news or go and see a film/documentary/propaganda disguised as a documentary take a second to think about the bias the reporter etc has coming into it and view/read accordingly. If everyone did this i think our political system would be for the better but then again thats just my opinion.
Till Next Ramble
The Amazing, Boring Yurko
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