Reply #4: This documentary could NEVER have been shown on US television [View All]

[DrBB]

Somehow that brings it home to me more than anything. That's a measure of where we are. There are programs that can be run on the open airways in British mainstream television that can't be shown here.

I mean, I CAN imagine Palast's stuff on US TV. Actually, didn't PBS air his thing on the 2000 election? Not popular, but imaginable.

And there are certainly things that are too conspiratorial and squirrely to run in Britain or here.

But this isn't the product of someone's hand-held camera and midnight ravings. He's interviewing Wm Kristol, top DOD officials, and has a budget to go to Iraq, Afghanistan and the US. Even if it is contentious, polemical stuff, it's mainstream TV.

And it could not possibly be shown here, I'm quite convinced. It would cause a shitstorm. Actually, it might do more damage than help to the cause of ousting the Chimp, simply because of the backlash.

At one point, Pilger asks Ray McGovern and one of the other experts about a Norman Mailer piece saying the US is in a "pre-fascist" state. McGovern answers that he hopes so, because his opinion is that there's nothing "pre-" about it.

Well, we're not quite there--at least not by the very useful and rigorous parameters David Neiwert lays out (click "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism).

But watching this thing and realizing how unthinkable it would be, now, to see it aired on US TV--and it really is NO more aggressive or contentious than things that we've seen here about American wars and foreign policy in the past--it just really came home to me how scary things are getting.