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S-11 Redux: (Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse
Halo1 writes "The Guerrilla News Network has made a great 11 minute movie, culled from over 20 hours of footage from different channels. It's a lightning fast razorsharp analysis of the post 9/11 coverage by the general media and gives you quite a different view of the politicians and their calls for war. It's insightful, frightning and funny at the same time (we need a new mod option! :). The links on the movie page go to the Windows Media version at the Sundance Online Film Festival (they're competing with that movie), but they also have Quicktime versions available locally: low and high bandwidth (links posted with permission from all involved parties)."
Interesting that the clip of Ted Koppel in which he talks about wishing "all our Muslim viewers a happy Ramadan" doesn't include the full quote, which ended with something along the lines of "We do want to be politically correct, don't we?" The full clip is available in this amazing "illegal" video Spin
at illegal-art.org, where incidentally you can download other illegal audio & video.
Secondly, Steve Allen was a genius.
The thing I really didn't like about this video (aside from its political angle, but it _did_ come from GNN after all..) was its methodology of trying to create a constant stream of ideas (like a audio-visual 'stream of consciousness') out of a series of quotes taken out of context, or even cut to mean the complete opposite of what was then said. Add to that the various funny bits, such as slow framing Bush, and him umming and ahhing with the combined effect of making him appear vacant, and altogether we actually have a standard piece of propaganda: Shaping how we think through use of the media, and giving 'sound bites' to give the appearance of rational arguments, while the actual content is a lot more vacuous than it appears.
In a recent news report covering an anti-US rally in Iraq, one man was shown holding a banner reading "A nation of sheep, owned by pigs, and led by wolves." (or something to that effect). Most Americans would probably find this very offensive unless they consider the facts of the matter, and the truth is that we have let Donald "Let's Rumble" Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush-lynching mob get completely out of control.
Yes, because all Americans happily serve our corporate employers in our wonderfully spacious cubicles without a hint of grumbling or complaining, and cheer on a daily basis as yet another politician gives Big Business a nice, hard bitch slap for the little guy because he's an upstanding, principled American citizen.
This message brought to you by 1940s American sitcoms, whose sponsors remind you to, "Grow up, you ignorant, self-important fuckwit that assumes that everyone else is stupid."
While you're assuming what "most Americans" would do, you may want to look at one of the latest polls, the second most popular source of generalizations about American beliefs (with first place going to the speaker's ass, of course). It paints a pretty unsurprising picture for anyone that doesn't blindly assume that those around them are inferior to themselves. It states that the American people disagree with the Bush Administration in its priorities, believe that its policies favor the rich, believe both that Bush is handling Iraq the wrong way and that that sentiment will be ignored, that the US is not winning the "War On Terror", and that Bush is too quick to involve the military. As always, though, the President's approval rating remains unchanged even as American attitudes slowly change, because the approval rating for an American president usually only changes when they either do something or are close to an election, and Bush has been dragging his feet for months on the Iraq issue.
"As always, though, the President's approval rating remains unchanged even as American attitudes slowly change...."
:) The NYT had a pretty good article about rising unemployment and the shitty economy. In one interview with an unemployed man who wasn't going to receive any more benefits (not even with the recent extention; he was laid off too early), the man claimed he felt betrayed, surprised, and so on.
And there we go right back to me feeling superior to them.
Yes, that's right. An unemployed man feeling "betrayed" by a Republican president who isn't giving him money for not working. Wasn't that blatantly fucking obvious from the get-go? Wait-- you mean that if I vote for the Republican candidate, I'll get less welfare and social services? Run that by me again. Hold on a minute-- this from the man who vowed to cut taxes on inheritances over $1 million? Who's crusading for elimination of the tax on dividends, which will primarily effect people earning several hundred thousand dollars a year?
If people can't figure out that the Republicans are NOT the party to vote for if you want a larger unemployment check, they're too fucking stupid to vote.
I do think (well, hope anyway) that person was anomalous. So, while I think exactly the same thing when I read the post you were responding to-- that is, I think "Grow up, you ignorant, self-important fuckwit that assumes that everyone else is stupid"-- I also see the reason he's started to think that. Anyone with half a brain and 10 minutes a day on the newspaper knew who they were voting for.