Art/Culture

Death Of A Prez Ads Nixed By CNN, NPR

Posted by on October 24, 2006 at 4:26 pm. 1 Comments :

Death of a President is a new film that has been generating both controversy and acclaim. It is the winner of the International Critics’ Award from the Toronto Film Festival. The film’s web site describes it as…

“a fictional TV documentary broadcast in 2008, reflecting on another monstrously despicable and cataclysmic event: the assassination of President George W. Bush on October 19th, 2007.”

Sadly, the media’s martinets of virtue are again patrolling the avenues of our psyches, deciding what is safe for our aesthetic consumption.

CNN and NPR are refusing to air advertisements for the film. There is nothing in the ads that is inappropriate for broadcast. Indeed, the ads were approved by the Motion Picture Association of America for all audiences. But that fact has not deterred the programmers from engaging in censorship. CNN issued a brief statement that virtually admits its intention to censor, saying that…

“CNN has decided not to take the ad because of the extreme nature of the movie’s subject matter.”

By basing their decision on the movie’s “subject matter”, they have installed themselves as the public’s nanny. They believe that they are in the best position to decide for us which subjects matter. While they are a couple of yards further over the line than NPR, the public radio network’s excuse is not much better:

“The movie is fairly likely to generate significant controversy and we’ll cover it as a news story. To take a sponsorship spot would raise questions and cause confusion.”

One wonders if that criteria also applies to sponsorships from Ford or McDonald’s. Surely they have generated controversy connected to their products. Has their sponsorship raised questions or caused confusion?

This film already has an uncommon burden to overcome as a result of its premise. Two of the nation’s biggest movie exhibitors, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark USA, have announced that they will not play the movie in any of their ~8000 theaters. Newmarket Films, the movie’s distributor, insists that they will be able to open in plenty of theaters. They say that they are getting support from many exhibitors including the Landmark Theater chain.

These broadcasters and exhibitors, who have appointed themselves the protectors of the public’s tender sensibilities, deny that any partisan motive is at play. But an objective observer would note that they all previously played nice with another controversial release distributed by Newmarket, “The Passion of the Christ.”

So what is the reason that this film is getting such a different reception? It couldn’t be the subject matter, could it? Look at the trends:

  • The Dixie Chicks criticize the president and they’re thrown off the radio. Has that ever happend to a right wing artist?
  • A network TV biopic about Ronald Reagan is protested by conservatives and it gets shuttled off to cable. But ABC’s Path To 9/11 airs despite opposition.
  • An artist exhibits a work entitled, “The Proper Way to Display the Flag,” and the gallery is told to shut it down. But when Bush walks on a flag at Ground Zero, it’s just another photo-op.

It appears that everyone has an equal right to protest, but only Republicans can turn their protests into edicts that deny all Americans access to the embattled works. It’s called censorship, and it’s alive and well in America.

Update: Tim Graham at NewsBusters takes issue with this story. Responding to my criticism of NPR he asks…

“Can’t this blogger differentiate between a Bush assassin and Ronald McDonald?”

Tim is veering off on a detour to address a point that’s right in the middle of the road. If NPR declines an ad for this movie because of the appearance of bias in the event that they cover it editorially, doesn’t that same consideration come into play for any sponsor that they might cover editorially? And by the way, I can differentiate between a Bush assassin and Ronald McDonald. The Bush assassin in the movie harms no one except another character in the film. Ronald McDonald’s influence on real children harms thousands of them every year.

Eat At Cheney’s

Posted by on October 1, 2006 at 2:39 am. NO Comments :

Now at Cheney’s,

It’s The Grand Scam Warfest Breakfast
A celebration of culinary barbarism.

At Cheney’s, abuse is on the menu 24 hours a day. So tie up the wife, bind and gag the kids and come on down to Cheney’s.

Don’t Torture Yourself!

With the passage of the Freedom to Torture Act of 2006, all Americans can learn to appreciate the joys of Waterboarding and Sleep Depravation. In fact, we should be able to partake of it in our own communities in the comfortable surroundings of establishments we commonly patronize. Torture is no longer an elitist pastime reserved for the priveliged few. Thanks to the United States Congress, discrimation is once again cast out of American society. Aren’t you proud?

The Flash movie linked above is my entry in the Huffington Post Contagious Festival. I would appreciate it if you’d take a look and, if you like it, send it to everyone you know. And I do mean everyone. I’ll be checking so don’t try any funny stuff.

Deep In The Heart Of Dixie Chicks

Posted by on September 19, 2006 at 1:26 am. NO Comments :

The Toronto International Film Festival recently screened the documentary, Shut Up and Sing, chronicling the travails of the Dixie Chicks after their righteous slap at Crawford’s Lost Idiot. In remarks at a post-screening news conference, the Chicks demonstrate their grasp of the hazards of institutional media:

…the Chicks say they have absolutely no regrets about speaking their mind. If anything, the experience made them realize just how vulnerable to censorship we are in the world of consolidated media ownership and nationally uniform radio playlists.

“Consolidation means one guy at the top decides everything and I don’t think the media has been successful in pointing out why it’s so dangerous,” [Emily] Robison says.

Of course “the media has been [un]successful in pointing out why it’s so dangerous.” The handful of corporations that control the media are the architects and beneficiaries of consolidation. That the Dixies recognize the significance of this issue speaks to the fact that they are well informed and aware of the forces that they have learned, the hard way, are dangerously encroaching on press and creative freedom.

Since the media cannot be depended on to act in the interests of the public, it is up to all of us to act in our own interests. Visit Stop Big Media, bookmark it, and email the link to your friends and family. Contact the FCC and tell them that more consolidation does not create competition. It is critically important that people realize that we cannot solve any of our society’s problems without solving the problem of the media first. No matter what your pet issue is, you need access to communication channels to produce movement. Without a free, diverse and independent media, those channels will be denied to us.

The Dixie Chicks get it. They continue to be impressive, both artistically and socially. Their honesty and courage shines through the mud that is hurled at them. And throughout the ordeal they’ve refused to back down as evidenced by their hit single “Not Ready To Make Nice” and by the audacious declaration in the documentary that Bush is a “dumbfuck“.

Ah…the simplicity of truth.

The Hypocritical Patriotism Of George W. Bush

Posted by on September 13, 2006 at 6:54 pm. 1 Comments :

"What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" [by Dread Scott] is an “installation for audience participation.”…In 1989, while on display at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, [it] became the center of national controversy over its use of the American flag. President Bush Sr. declared [it] “disgraceful” and the entire US Congress denounced this work as they passed legislation to “protect the flag.” U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush stand on a carpet commemorating the date of the attacks of September 11, 2001 near a mural depicting those attacks outside the Ladder Company 10 firehouse opposite the site of the World Trade Center in New York, September 10, 2006.

REUTERS/Jason Reed


The News Corpse Film Salon: Update

Posted by on September 13, 2006 at 11:23 am. NO Comments :

I have added a couple of films to the Salon that deserve some attention. You can see the full list of 11 progressive-themed films that are scheduled to be released between now and election day in November at The News Corpse Film Salon.

Al Franken: God Spoke
The makers of “The War Room” turn their cameras on yet another burgeoning political career. AL FRANKEN: GOD SPOKE is a cinema verite pursuit of Al Franken, shot over the course of two years, which follows the former Saturday Night Live comedian from his highly publicized feud with Bill O’Reilly to his relentless campaign against George Bush and the right wing.


The War Tapes
In March 2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several members of one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, carrying digital video cameras. THE WAR TAPES is the movie they made with Director Deborah Scranton and a team of award-winning filmmakers. It’s the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves on the front lines in Iraq.

In Defense Of The Pre-9/11 Mindset

Posted by on September 11, 2006 at 12:52 am. NO Comments :

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile.

In September of 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a sinister demonization of Democrats, warned that…

“if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and it will fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact, these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we’re not really at war.”

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is much maligned as mindsets go. Disdain is heaped upon it as if it were a discarded hypothesis. There is now a stigma associated with a worldview that was perfectly acceptable 24 hours prior. And a cadre of power hungry fear merchants is restlessly hawking the notion that everything we thought we knew has withered into irrelevance. The Post-9/11ers propose that an imaginary line has been drawn that illuminates the moral and intellectual differences between those who stand on one side or the other. So what exactly does it mean to be 9/10ish?

I remember clearly what was on my mind. I was still upset that a pretend cowboy, whose intellectual marbles rattled around vacantly in his 2 gallon hat, had gotten away with stealing an election. I was recalling, with renewed appreciation, an era of domestic surplus and international cooperation. Or as The Onion headline put it when Bush was first elected, “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile. The history of human civilization reveals that we simply do not change that much from one century to the next. And the events that actually do precipitate change are rarely the ones we presume them to be. There was terrorism before 9/11. There were birthdays and funerals and parking tickets and snow cones and life’s everyday extraordinary spectrum of pleasure no matter how painful.

What changed was that a nation that was once perceived to be inviolable and courageous was now seen as vulnerable and afraid. Like a child lost in a crowd, America was searching for a guardian, but what we got was no angel. As President Bush took to the mound of rubble for his megaphone moment, he was not alone. He was accompanied by a media that sought to construct a hero where none stood. I must admit that it was an ambitious undertaking considering the weakness of the raw material. They took an inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt, who on September tenth was considered by many to be Crawford’s lost idiot, and transformed him into a statesman overnight. The enormity of this achievement underscores the power of the media.

My Pre-9/11 Mindset was thrust into fear on that transitory day because I knew that the imbecile we were stuck with in the White House was incapable of reacting appropriately to the threat. I remember vainly trying to persuade previously reasonable people that if they thought Bush was a moron the day before, there was nothing in his breakfast that infused him with wisdom on that sad morning.

What transpired since has, regrettably, proven me right. We toppled the Taliban but let the 9/11 commander escape. Now the remnants of the Taliban are rising again and creating havoc in an unprepared and unstable Afghanistan. We were misled into an unrelated conflagration in Iraq via fear and deception. Now tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been liberated – liberated from the confines of their physical bodies. It’s too bad that these liberated corpses will be unable to march in the parades celebrating their liberation. A world that had nothing but sympathy for us after 9/11, is now repulsed by our arrogance. At home we are paying for our adventures by burdening the next few generations with a record debt. And we pay a much greater price in the cost of lost liberties, courtesy of a despotic cabal in Washington that has more trust in fear than it does in our Constitution.

The historical revisionists that cast the Pre-9/11 Mindset as a pejorative are blind to its inherent virtue. The Pre-9/11 Mindset honors civil liberties and human rights. It recognizes real threats and inspires the courage to face them. It demands responsibility and accountability from those who manage our public affairs. It condemns preemptive warfare and torture. The Pre-9/11 Mindset is not consumed with fear, division, and domination. It is rooted in reality with its branches facing the sunrise.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is superior in every aspect to the Post-9/11 apocalyptic nightmare that has been thrust upon us. Its adoption is, in fact, our best hope for crawling out from under the shroud that drapes our national psyche. Vice President Cheney also said that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

If that’s true, then the terrorists must have perceived the weakness of the Bush administration and considered it an invitation to launch their attack. How do you suppose they perceive us now? They’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators. They see us as fearful and submissive. Is this not emboldening the terrorists for whom this perception of weakness will be seen as yet another invitation to attack?

Yes, I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset and it is not a yearning for a simpler bygone era of harmony. You could hardly call the maiden year of this century simple or harmonious. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I’ve had it all along; all through the Post-9/11 defeatism and scare-mongering; through the war posturing and false bravado; through the sordid attempts to divide Americans and vilify dissenters; through the bigotry and arrogance of those who believe that their way is the right way and the world will concur as soon as we’re done beating it into them. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have not let the Post-9/11 Mindset infect my spirit with its yearning for a bygone era that more closely resembles the Dark Ages than the Renaissance.

I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have a mind, and I use it.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Post-9/11 Mindset
Enduring Peace Perpetual War
Prosperity Poverty and Debt
Civil Rights The Patriot Act
Human rights Torture
Accountability Corruption
Reality Fear

Path To 9/11 Propaganda

Posted by on September 7, 2006 at 9:57 am. NO Comments :

The Disney-ABC croc-udrama, Path to 9/11, is starting to get the treatment it deserves in the blogosphere and even some of the cable news nets. But I wanted to tie this hit piece more securely to the description of what it really is. So I thought that I would initiate a Google bomb effort to associate the program’s title to the word propaganda. First, I checked the obvious – is there a Propaganda.com?

Guess what? The URL redirects to Open Letter to ABC, a clearinghouse of info and links related to the show and how to respond. It appears to be the work of Matt Stoller of MyDD. Thanks Matt, you’ve saved me a lot of work.

Update: Here is a link to some more info on the folks behind the scenes of Path to 9/11 – A motley crew of villians that include David Horowitz, Richard Mellon Scaife, and the Liberty Film Festival.

Also, the president will be making a speech on the evening of Monday, 9/11, for which ABC will likely have to interrupt their program. Does anybody else get the feeling that this is an intentional move to insert the President’s comments into the program so that it will almost appear as if he is a sponsor and/or is associating the White House with the movie?

The News Corpse Film Salon

Posted by on August 24, 2006 at 8:20 am. NO Comments :

As a public service, News Corpse has compiled a selection of progressive-themed films that are scheduled to be released between now and election day in November. These films all have themes that could potentially impact a voter’s perspective on important issues of the day. There truly is something for everyone – documentaries, dramas, comedies and music. So feast on these cinematic treats and, while there is no talking allowed in the theater, it is encouraged everywhere else.

The Ground Truth
The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home.


My Country, My Country
My Country, My Country follows the agonizing predicament and the gradual descent of one man caught in the tragic contradictions of the U. S. occupation of Iraq and its project to spread democracy in the Middle East.


American Hardcore
Hardcore was more than music-it was a social movement created by Reagan-era misfit kids. The participants constituted a tribe unto themselves-some finding a voice, others an escape in the hard-edged music. And while some sought a better world, others were just angry and wanted to raise hell.


The U. S. vs John Lennon
Exploring Vietnam-era struggles that remain relevant today, The U. S. vs John Lennon tells the true story of the U. S. government’s attempts to silence John Lennon, the beloved musician and iconic advocate for peace.


Sicko
Like [Michael Moore’s] other movies, what we start with is not always what we end with. Along the way, we discover new roads to go down, roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas. I don’t think the country needs a movie that tells you that HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies suck. Everybody knows that. I’d like to show you some things you don’t know.


Man of the Year
Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) has made his career out of skewering politicians and speaking the mind of the exasperated nation on his talk show. He cracked jokes at a fractured system night after night…until he came up with a really funny idea: why not run for president himself?


Fast Food Nation
Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear)-a marketing executive at Mickey’s Fast Food Restaurant chain, home of “The Big One”-has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company’s best-selling burger. To find out why, he’ll have to take a journey to the dark side of the All-American meal.


Iraq For Sale
Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.


Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing
The film follows the lives and careers of the Chicks through the writing and recording of their first album since “the incident” – and three years of political attack, making music, birthing babies, bonding, death threats, and laughter. At the end, the film presents a complete reconsideration of who people think they are, who they want to be and who, ultimately, they really are as women, as public figures, and as musicians.


Al Franken: God Spoke
The makers of “The War Room” turn their cameras on yet another burgeoning political career. Al Franken: God Spoke is a cinema verite pursuit of Al Franken, shot over the course of two years, which follows the former Saturday Night Live comedian from his highly publicized feud with Bill O’Reilly to his relentless campaign against George Bush and the right wing.


The War Tapes
In March 2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several members of one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, carrying digital video cameras. The War Tapes is the movie they made with Director Deborah Scranton and a team of award-winning filmmakers. It’s the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves on the front lines in Iraq.

That should keep you busy.

From Ally McBeal to Ann Coulter?

Posted by on July 26, 2006 at 1:11 pm. NO Comments :

Well, probably not. But Calista Flockhart, formally of Ally McBeal, will be playing a conservative pundit on a new ABC series debuting this fall. “Brothers & Sisters” will follow “Desperate Houswives” and will also feature Sally Field as Flockhart’s mother.

Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, “She’s not Ann Coulter. She’s not insane.”

“She’s not insane.” That’s a nice qualification to differentiate the show’s character from Coulter’s lack of same. But I think the show is missing an opportunity. Drama thrives on conflict and who is more conflicting than Coultergeist? The potential for story lines that drip with dramatic tension is enormous. The character’s rabid antogonism, unbounded ego, and even gender confusion, could give the show some powerful ammunition for salacious entertainment.

And while drama thrives on conflict, television thrives on controversy. The closer this show’s character is alligned with Coulter, the more promotion juice they could squeeze out of it. If ABC is going to be too timid to run with this, I hope somebody else will do it.

Designs On Dissent

Posted by on July 13, 2006 at 3:35 pm. NO Comments :

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum recognizes the works of designers in an annual ceremony held in conjunction with the White House Millennium Council. The purpose of the program is to celebrate “design in various disciplines as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world.”

Some of the winners of the 2006 awards did their part to shape the world and demonstrate their humanity by refusing to participate in the ceremony hosted by First Lady, Laura Bush. Their letter, detailing the reasons for choosing to stay away, was published by the Design Observer and says, in part:

“it is our belief that the current administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communication of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America. We therefore feel it would be inconsistent with those values previously stated to accept an award celebrating language and communication, from a representative of an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning.”

The letter was signed by 2006 winners Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, and Georgie Stout, of the 2×4 design studio; finalist Paula Scher; and last year’s winner Stefan Sagmeister.

I applaud these patriots for staking out a position that comes with some risk and some personal sacrifice. Their willingness to resist the lure of the halls of power for the sake of their principles is commendable. I, myself, might have shown up and made my statement in the spotlight in which the White House glows. But I cannot criticize the method these folks used to speak their minds.

I believe that the creative arts are an invaluable resource for movement building and social progress. I am also disappointed that this resource is so glaringly underused. Historically, artists have always been the key to inspiring and motivating people to take action. It is their conscience, passion, and communication skills that resonate through our communities and culture. Artists need to reassert themselves in the public sphere and assume their traditional role as interpreters of the human condition. Until they do, I fear that the stage will be left to the decidedly dull discourse of pundits and politicians.