The scene outside a movie theater in Jenkintown, Pa. as a Bush supporter grabs a Kerry supporter by the throat. Both men Vietnam Veterans, seem to symbolize a nation bitterly divided over war.
(Photo: Rick Kintzel / AP) http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102104W.shtmlThe Sinclair Broadcasting Group is trying to influence a presidential election by airing a scurrilous smear against John Kerry.
It's that simple.
I don't really give a damn how they dress it up, it's about corporate influence and greed, intended to override a public election. They can dress George Bush in a flight suit, but that doesn't make him a warrior pilot - just the toy soldier of corporate political corruption.
No film is going to change the deadly lie of Vietnam. It was never a "good war," and forty years later it cannot be re-written into an extension of the glory days of WWII.
Sinclair has taken it upon itself to act as the state-run media and present the party line of its political benefactor, the Bush GOP. Like the former Soviet news agency, or Iraq's previous state-owned media, Sinclair has pre-determined the issue and the truth for broadcast. And if that doesn't send a chill down your spine, nothing will.
The American media should be exposing this chicanery, but instead chooses silence. Silence was never an American principle of freedom, and it certainly was not what those of us who served our country fought and died for - at least according to those who sent us.
Sinclair has enshrouded itself with the loathsome Swift Boat Liars, whose fraudulent charges against John Kerry have been debunked by ABC, Media Matters, The Daily Howler, William Rood of the Chicago Tribune, eyewitnesses who served with Kerry, and even the surviving Viet Cong villagers. But Sinclair chooses to serve up more lies and ignore the truth, while spinning and manipulating both the public and these POWs,
in order to influence an election for its benefit. Sinclair does not give a rat's bottom whisker for these men, only for the value of their partisanship to achieve corporate goals.