SHOVELING COAL FOR SATAN

[chiburb]

(Mods: I know this is a topic in GD, but it may disappear too quickly and many might miss it. Please allow this cross-forum dupe?)

Snip:

One friend I know describes working in the media as shoveling coal for Satan. That's about right. A worker in a tampon factory has dignity: He just uses his sweat to make a product, a useful product at that, and doesn't lie to himself about what he does. In this business we make commodities for sale and, for the benefit of our consciences and our egos, we call them ideas and truth. And then we go on the lecture circuit. But in 99 cases out of 100, the public has more to learn about humanity from the guy who makes tampons.

I'm off on this tangent because I'm enraged by the numerous attempts at verbose, pseudoliterary, "nuanced" criticism of Moore this week by the learned priests of our business. (And no, I'm not overlooking this newspaper.) Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of us had any balls at all.

If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush press conference last year and shouted, "Bullshit!" it might have made a difference.

If even one network, instead of cheerily re-broadcasting Pentagon-generated aerial bomb footage, had risked its access to the government by saying to the Bush administration, "We're not covering the war unless we can shoot anything we want, without restrictions," that might have made a difference. It might have made this war look like what it is—pointless death and carnage that would have scared away every advertiser in the country—rather than a big fucking football game that you can sell Coke and Pepsi and Scott's Fertilizer to.

More here:
http://nypress.com/17/26/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm

[LoneStarLiberal]

1. Anyone Who's Reading This, Read The Whole Article

It's a damned fine article!

And what a title...

[Warpy]

2. Televised "journalism" (the worst), relies heavily upon the young

the attractive, the thin, the blow dried. This is also a cohort who went through college by and large on purchased term papers. These poor little schnooks have no clue how to generate verbiage all their own, and have to wait for press releases to fall into their laps.

Unfortunately, the area geared up to generate an avalanche of press releases is on the far right. There are no equivalent think tanks on the left that are endowed well enough to be doing this.

The left desperately needs a Santa Claus to do for it what Scaife did for the extreme right, to endow all sorts of fledgling enterprises and hope some of them fly. So far, Soros has endowed one. One. We need more than that if we're ever to counter this barrage of disinfo from the right.

[Trailrider1951]

3. Good article, but

I think the author has MM confused with "Dick" Cheney. Quote:

"Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. "

Yeppers, sounds like "Dick" to me!

[Cassandra]

4. Here is a wonderful LTTE in response to the F9/11 review...

/hit piece written earlier:
http://nypress.com/17/26/mail/TheMail.cfm

"Moore vs. White, XI

I was having a rather enjoyable walk home on Tuesday when I happened upon your newspaper, appropriately disguised as wind-tossed trash. What had been a good day of productive work, comfortable weather and a nice commute to the office was brought to an abrupt end as soon as I kicked your trash/paper over and looked at the front page. "Is This Man a Fascist?" (6/23). Great Photoshop work there with the flames... I was thoroughly spooked.

Are you kidding me? Last time I checked, all Michael Moore was guilty of was producing a film he knew his distribution company, whipped into submission by FCC (Fascist Conservative-only Communication commission), wouldn't release. "It's seven minutes of the most powerful man in the world suffering. He's miserably distracted." Seven minutes of suffering? Please! Is this man not our commander-in-chief? If he suffers for seven minutes from a terrorist attack involving planes, how long will we have to wait for him to get over himself and do something if we're attacked with a nuclear device or a biological weapon? Forty minutes? An hour? A day?

Bush's utmost and ultimate responsibility is to be our commander-in-chief and provide clear and instantaneous command of our armed forces in a time of war or emergency. He cannot allow himself to be miserably distracted if he wants to be president. He could have suffered in the limousine on the way to Air Force One, where he could get more up-to-date information and perhaps have expedited NORAD's slow-ass response to the attacks.

I'll be taking your paper now and putting it in a recycling bin where it belongs. And I'll try to remember how pleasant life was before your dirty paper wrapped itself around my shoe.

Ari Reyes, Manhattan"

[glitch]

5. I like this last paragraph especially

"Yeah, well, we don't write about those people, because they're just doing their jobs, whatever that means. For some reason, we in the media can forgive that. We just can't forgive it when someone does our jobs for us. Say what you want about Moore, but he picked himself up and did something, something approximating the role journalism is supposed to play. The rest of us—let's face it—are just souped-up shoe salesmen with lit degrees. Who should shut their mouths in the presence of real people."

Thanks for posting!

[ixion]

6. great read... thanks

This guy really knows how to go to the heart of the matter.

[muchacho]

7. excellent

One of the best pieces I've read about the MM/F911 hoopla.

Thanks

[chiburb]

8. kick to the front page...n/t

.

[hatrack]

9. If you have time to read this whole thing, please, please do!!

It's one of the best single columns on the Great Millenium Media Circle Jerk I've ever seen.

[chiburb]

10. Kick for the weekend.... n/t

.

[sadiesworld]

11. kick

for truth...and hope.