Michael Moore. What to do about Michael Moore?
This darling of the American Left (making him a moronic oxymoron) recently claimed that there was a foul conspiracy aimed at stifling his First Amendment rights, orchestrated, no doubt, by "greedy corporations" and John Ashcroft. But as the Independent reports, charges of his untimely censoring are just as false as his "documentaries":
Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.
You see, it turns out the Cannes Film Festival is right around the corner, and it would do the "Shamu-fat" activist some good to get some publicity. Playing the "I've been silenced by the Bush Administration and their cronies in Big Media" card is sure to go over like gangbusters at Cannes. I suppose that there's nothing quite like making a movie based on lies that slander the Bush family distorting truths and promoting conspiracy theories, lying about Disney's role in making him movie, and then lying by claiming that he's been censured by the Bushies and their jack-booted thugs to help portray a flannel-wearing, Atkins-impaired multimillionaire as a hero of the industrial proletariat by the world's entertainment media.
In what amounts to an irrefutable indication that cognitive dissonance is now the rule of the day for our mediated culture,
Moore's publicity stunt, if that is what is, appears to be working. A front-page news piece in The New York Times was followed yesterday by an editorial denouncing Disney for censorship and denial of Moore's right to free expression.
Moore told CNN that Disney had "signed a contract to distribute this [film]" but got cold feet. But Disney executives insists there was never any contract. And a source close to Miramax said that the only deal there was for financing, not for distribution.
The extent to which disnformation, spin, and outright lies are being used to establish truth is quickly becoming one of the dominant themes of our time. I find it curious that the American Left have made the "lies" of the Bush Administration and Bush's "compassionate conservatism" thei ground for their resentments, while their poster boy is not known for letting facts get in the way of his moral sanctimonious and "humor" -- and making millions by trafficking on very real human anxiety and suffering. Not that this should get in the way, you realize. As Dr. Burgess-Jackson explains, this is do to the egoistic vision of the Left:
The first thing you must realize is that liberals have a program. They are visionaries. They envision a world in which everyone controls the same amount of resources. Nobody is born to privilege or disadvantage; or, if anyone is, it is swiftly neutralized by the state. To allow disadvantage, they believe, is to become a participant in it. Society, to the liberal mind, is a massive engineering project. Most of us distinguish misfortune and injustice. Not the liberal. No misfortune goes unaddressed by the social engineers. It is presumed -- conclusively, without evidence or argument -- that disparities in wealth are the result of morally arbitrary factors (accidents of birth or circumstance) rather than individual character, effort, discipline, work, or merit.
As the philosopher John Kekes has pointed out so eloquently, liberals disregard or discount concepts that loom large in the thinking of most of us, such as personal responsibility and desert. Most of us believe that responsibility and desert should play a role in the distribution of benefits and burdens. Liberals disagree. Deep down, liberals deny that anyone is responsible for anything. What we are, in terms of personal character, is a function of circumstances beyond our control. How we behave depends solely on our environment. Our very choices are determined, not free. Liberalism dissolves the person. To the liberal, we are loci of movement rather than initiators of action, patients rather than agents, heteronomous rather than autonomous beings. Liberals will deny this, of course, but look at their beliefs and policy prescriptions.
Liberals, unlike conservatives, are zealous. Like all zealots (true believers), they are eager to implement their program, but when they attempt to do so, they meet resistance. This resistance frustrates them immensely and eventually leads to anger toward and aggression against those who stand in their way (or are perceived as standing in their way). Ideally, liberals would rationally persuade those who resist in the hope of bringing them around. But this doesn't work. Belief in personal responsibility and desert is widespread and entrenched. Time and again, liberals run up against it. Since it seems obvious to them that the belief is baseless, they tell themselves a story about why it's pervasive.
Hence, hard-working and endeavoring companies which provide real value to consumers for things that they really want and use become evil, greedy multinational corporations run by (white) fat-cats that manipulate the ignorant souls in TV land and force them to buy things that they really don't need while poisoning the environment and eating kittens and martinis for breakfast. Which also explains why 9/11 is seen in darkly conspiratorial terms on the Left: terrorism is never the fault of terrorists; the horrible conditions that they live in determine their behavior, and the state of the world is the fault of greedy multinational corporations and the GOP.
On this dissonant reasoning, it's okay if Moore has to lie to get the "truth" out, it's because of the system, man, which like, dehumanizes everyone, so power to the people!
UPDATE: Drink this... fills up a special cup o' hemlock for the idiot Moore. Bottoms up fat boy!
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