Invader

The Country's reaction to "Fahrenheit 9/11": Some Predictions

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 opens in limited realease today in New York and Washington, D.C., and in the rest of the country on Friday. And while I do plan to see it, I am, like Orcinus, looking forward more to the reaction to the film than the film itself (like most political junkies, I'm already familiar with much of the film's content, such as the evacuation of the Bin Laden family, George Bush's plentiful vacation time, and the fact that nary a lawmaker read the Patriot Act).

That said, here is what I predict will happen:

1. The film will do incredibly well. It probably won't give Dodgeball or Shrek 2 much competition, in terms of earnings, simply because it's not as well distributed. But it will likely break opening weekend records for a documentary (here are the top five grossing documentaries of all time, by the way - given that the No.1 film - Bowling for Columbine - earned $21.6 million in total, breaking the opening weekend record, as well as the overall record, shouldn't be difficult). Expect to hear of packed showings, lines around the block, and other reactions typically reserved for a major Hollywood blockbuster.

2. A right-wing organization will protest and/or disrupt showings. Already, there was an attempt, by Republicans, to curtail the distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11 by enlisting a PR firm which set up a phony grass-roots organization named Move America Forward that encouraged boycotts of theaters showing the film. With that effort failed, expect protests outside theaters by some of the more militant elements of the Right, in addition to - possibly - attempts to actually shut screenings down, by unscrupulous means. In fact, if you google "Fahrenheit 9/11" and boycott, the first site returned is a message board hosted by a certain radical-Right organization known for its confrontational tactics, with plenty of calls to protest, or "shut down," Moore's "traitorous" film.

3. The media will continue to spin this film as "highly controversial," and portray theatre-goers as wild-eyed "Bush Haters.". If your local television station covers the opening of the film, expect to hear that the film is "highly controversial" (despite the fact that it's been thoroughly fact-checked) and that it's been "heavily criticized" by the Right (with probably no mention of the mostly rave reviews it's received from non-partisan and even some right-wing critics - Fox News, of all sources, gave it a nod). Also, expect to see carefully selected shots of the most stereotypically "liberal" members of the audience (they'll probably go out of their way to zoom in on the white guy with the dreadlocks and the tye-dyed t-shirt), and sound bites from the most inarticulate attendees they can corral. This was the sort of coverage that the local stations in my area provided of the major anti-war rallies in spring of 2003, and while the press isn't whipped into the same patriotic fervor now as it was then, I can't expect they've changed their ways that much.

I'll review my predictions on Monday, and we'll see whether or not I'm the Jimmy the Greek (minus the racism) of societal prognostication.

Unreasonable

I recently caught Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on C-Span promoting his new book, Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America.

While I haven't read it, I imagine it would provide an intriguing counterpoint to David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, which may as well be titled "Money: Why Conservatives Have Already Won the Battle for America."

Brock's book is an excellent, if deeply unsettling read, for anyone curious as to why and how the mainstream media has lurched so far to the right over the past thirty years. He describes, in detail, how a vast network of right-wing think-tanks (Heritage, AEI, etc.) and media outlets (the New York Post, the Washington Times, Fox News, etc.) have ensured that nearly any story reported in the American press gets a conservative spin.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of what he describes is the fact that these think-tanks, newspapers, television networks, and other organs of right-wing propaganda are so well-funded, and have had such success establishing themselves as "reputable" sources, in the eyes of the public, that there seems no conceivable way to diminish their influence. Of course, Brock is doing his part, with his new website, Media Matters, which attempts to catalog conservative disinformation that enters the public discorse. But, noble as this is, it's akin to trying to stop a herd of stampeding elephants (pun intended) with a pea-shooter.

So, with apologies to Mr. Reich, it seems that, in fact, no matter how reasonable the argument, it's of little use, when it's drowned out by a wall of noise produced by a virtual army of bought-and-paid-for pundits. The "battle" of which he speaks is far from a certain victory for liberalism.

Lollapalooza Cancelled: What is the world coming to when twenty-somethings can't afford $50 concert tickets?

For America's young adults, the days of Wine and Roses - or iPods and Razor Scooters, if you will - appear to be officially over. Perry Farrell and the other backers of Lollapalooza learned this the hard way, today announcing that, due to poor ticket sales, the touring summer festival has been cancelled.

Farrell and the other tour organizers had apparently hoped to reinvigorate the once-popular concert tour by showcasing artists who - while they weren't necessarily household names - oozed indie cred, such as Modest Mouse, TV on the Radio, PJ Harvey, and Le Tigre. This reversing a trend toward filling out the bill with more mainstream acts (e.g. Metallica, Incubus, Audioslave) in the late 1990s and early part of the millenium.

Unfortunately, this strategy of indie-fication backfired, as, the dot-com bubble having long ago burst, 22-year-old English majors are no longer pulling down $75,000/yr. salaries as "content providers" at cash-flush internet start-ups. Yes, with the 1990s behind us, urban-dwelling, liberal-arts majors - the indie rock demographic - are returned to poverty. "Starving artist" is once more a literal role, and not merely a figure of speech. A fifty dollar concert ticket, which just a few short years ago might have represented half-an-hour's worth of work for a freelance web-scripter, may now be equivalent to a month's worth of food, for many of today's recent college graduates.

And while this reduction in financial standing may not spell doom for twenty-somethings (though it is posing major challenges to students who, owing to the present sky-high cost of an elite education, are graduating from college with up to $100,000 in debt - check out the Village Voice's series Generation Debt for more on this) it almost certainly means difficult times ahead for those who had become accustomed to taking advantage of this age group's nearly limitless discretionary spending during the past decade. Lollapalooza is just the first of what may become many major casualties of the up-and-coming generation's economic return to reality (yes, reality - perhaps I'm wrong, but was there ever a time, before the mid-to-late 1990s when a Philosophy major could expect to get a $50,000/year salary and stock options upon graduation? (as was the case with one of my friends - now laid off, by the way)). Purveyors of high-end goods aimed at the youth market - Apple, Volkswagen, Diesel - would do well to take note of Perry's perils.

Bill O'Reilly: Keeping America safe from them pesky Negroes

Bill O'Reilly, who only last year saved America from the danger of being sold Pepsi by Ludacris, is at it again. Apparently (via Jimmy Kimmel Live - sorry, but no link for the time being - no doubt one is coming soon), he's called for his viewers to boycott the Fox Network (biting the hand that feeds him - he must be really, really serious) until they drop the show "Method and Red," which, he asserts, stars "thug rappers" Method Man and Redman.

Of course, calling Method Man and Redman (both of whom have predicated their musical and film careers on their devotion to rockin' the doob, if you will) "thug rappers" is akin to calling Phish "hardcore death metal." But, that doesn't matter to O'Reilly, who almost certainly drops a load in his Depends upon seeing a black man not wearing a suit and tie on the street (and even then, his bowels probably quiver). Any black male on television who isn't Bill Cosby, or describing sports results, is a threat to him and his viewers.

I hence encourage all readers of this blog to watch "Method and Red," if only to spite Bill O'Reilly. Although of course, this may be just a publicity stunt, on the behalf of his bosses, to boost viewership of the show (a la his unintentional promotion of "The O'Franken Factor). In which case... uh... well, just keep on not watching his show, and go get yourself a copy of Tical.

We're Number 29!

Congratulations to my beloved Mariners, who today cemented their status as the second-worst team in Baseball by completing a three game sweep of the worst team in Baseball.

Winning What Really Matters for the Gipper

I don't think my friend Kevin could have put it better:

If Republicans want to honor Reagan's memory, they shouldn't do it by feverishly trying to slap his name and/or visage on anything and everything (highways, currency, Mount Rushmore, etc.), they should do it by helping to eradicate Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and many other diseases by insisting that stem cell research gets the support in DC that it deserves.

Especially, if, as the Corner's John Derbyshire suggests, Reagan had a "visceral loathing" of Communism. The "let's name everything after Reagan" push smacks, ironically, of nothing like Leninist hero worship.

Handicapping the Next Big Thing

I will gladly wager, with any of my readers, on the band Psychic Ills becoming, within the next year, one of the hottest bands in New York. Not necessarily as hot as the Strokes (or, rather, as hot as the Strokes were, way back in 2001) or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but maybe on par with the Walkmen, or the Liars.

For those who haven't heard them, think droney, space-rock a la My Bloody Valentine or Spacemen 3. And, while, in terms of what they're doing, they're not winning any points for originality, they more than make up for it with their songwriting. Their songs have a primitive, earth-shaking throb that will keep fans of neo-psychedelia (or, "stoner rock," if you will) nodding along, but feature more than enough hooks to keep pop-oriented listeners interested, as well (reading over the past sentence, I realize I've probably been spending too much time on All Music. Anyone who's ever read any of their reviews will know what I mean. They have a propensity for describing bands, in so many words, as "of interest to fans of their genre, but also to fans of music in general.").

For a listen, check out this performance recorded live at WFMU (their set starts at about 4:30 into the show).

The "i" stands for "I need something real to get angry about."

As reported in the Village Voice, and posted on a number of blogs, sometime last week an "activist" defaced a block-long row of iPod posters in downtown Manhattan, using a permanent marker to emblazon each with such slogans as "the 'i' stands for isolation" and "the 'i' stands for impolite."

So... forget the disaster that is Iraq (not to mention Afghanistan), the faltering economy, the increasingly bleak prospects of the American working class, the state of the environment, and about 10,000 other things actually worth getting upset about - what gets this individual's blood boiling is... iPods! And, sadly, he, or she, is not alone. I can't count, over the past year or two, the number of conversations I've overheard, or message board postings I've read, that have involved some sort of quasi-intellectual trashing of iPods; none of them, I should add, even remotely intriguing. Take the words "solipsistic," "paradigm," "narcissism," "worldview," and "yuppie," and a handful of appropriate pronouns and conjunctions; spend ten minutes playing magnetic poetry with them, and you'll have reconstructed probably ninety percent of the anti-iPod screeds I've observed.

Now, I should probably mention that I do not own an iPod; nor do I ever anticipate owning one. So, this isn't personal. Rather, it's about wondering why the heck people get worked up about such petty nonsense, given there are so many other things worth getting angry about. The Walkman was invented in 1979, which means people have been walking around listening to music on headphones for a quarter of a century. But, why this has just now become an issue, with the introduction of the iPod, is beyond me. Yes, wearing headphones is isolating, but no more so than, say, reading a book, or daydreaming, or any of the many other things people do in public that distracts them from their surroundings. And listening to headphones is only impolite, in the context of interaction with the larger world, if they're used as an excuse to ignore others - which has nothing to do with the inherent properties of the headphones themselves. One could just as easily ignore others by humming or staring into space.

Really, I can't explain iPod-bashing. I suspect it's a manner of rationalizing not buying one: most of the iPod bashers I've talked with will readily admit that iPods are pretty damn nifty, but that they can't - because they can't afford it, or, more often, because they eschew anything "trendy" - buy one themselves. Either that or it's just good old fashioned class warfare - attacking what amounts to conspicuous consumption amongst urban hipsters. At any rate, it's not worth the time, or energy. You may as well make a point of complaining about toasters, or alarm clocks. The iPod is just a thing, that people buy. Nothing else.

The powers that be do enough to divide the populace without us doing their work for them. There's no use in fighting amongst ourselves over a hunk of white plastic and circuits while the U.S. turns, slowly but surely, into a nation modeled, economically and socially, on a third world theocracy. If the "i" is going to stand for anything, let it be "I don't care that you have an iPod. I have more important things to worry about."

The Revenge of the Return of Invader

I had the interweb delivered to my home, so now, I really have no excuse not to post eighteen or so times a day. Expect updates on what color socks I'm wearing, what my cat is doing (right now: chewing on my toes), and if I get around to it, maybe - just maybe - my thoughts on politics and society.