MORE MICHAEL MOORE

Of course, the corporate apologists were annoyed.

Read this Time essay. It may take a moment to load.

I read this writer guy's bio and I found out a few things. James Poniewozik started his career in the publishing industry. From there he moved on to Salon, which is heavily entrenched in the corporate establishment, as a media critic for a couple of years (it's always amusing when members of the media criticize the media). After Salon, he hit the big time. Literally. In 1999, he landed a post at Time Magazine as a television and media writer and has now been there for nearly four years. I hope everybody realizes that Time's parent company, Time Warner Turner AOL, is one of the five or six corporations that control virtually all mass media in the United States, and is one of the most powerful and influential organizations represented in Washington. In other words, Poniewozik has spent his entire career as a corporate media insider, and is now one of their top mouthpieces. Understand that to advance so high in the corporate media, one has to mirror the views of one's superiors: Poniewozik isn't just surviving treacherous corporate media career waters; he's thriving in them.

His essay on Michael Moore, I'm sure, makes his corporate masters proud.

It is interesting to note that he begins his essay with the typical lip service paid to freedom of speech. This is totally in keeping with the dominant media script that basically mouths a few meaningless platitudes about concepts such as freedom and liberty before ripping into those concepts. Poniewozik plays by the rules.

He then goes on to show that he either doesn't understand what Michael Moore has been saying for nearly fifteen years, or that he's just trying to obfuscate Moore's message. Sometimes, it's hard to tell if guys like Poniewozik believe their own bullshit. The truth is that Moore isn't trying to simply end a war. Moore (among many other goals) is trying to end the conditions that make war likely. That is, Moore opposes the corporate usurpation of our great republic--corporate control of the government, and therefore, the military, makes future war making all but inevitable: the ability to impose by force a stable business climate on the world makes the temptation to fight when confronted with difficulty almost irresistible to the wealthy elitists that run the country. Of course, Poniewozik would have addressed this point of view in his essay if he was actually a journalist, instead of a Waylon Smithers-like corporate toady.

The truth is that Michael Moore, with only a very brief speech at a key place and time, has spawned more discussion in the mainstream media about the movement that he represents than all of his documentaries and writings put together. Moore has also managed to frame these issues in ways that the O'Reillys of the mass media world would never allow on their shows in a billion years. I heard the tail end of a CNN Headline News report on Moore's speech and the one comment that resonated was an anchor saying something like, "It's too bad we didn't get to hear from the other side." What a total laugh. The mass media constantly, always, all the time, pounds away at a pro-consumerism, pro-materialism, pro-corporate, pro-free trade, pro-war message from which there is no escape. Moore's speech was a drop among a veritable monsoon and the corporate wonks are crying "foul." Buch of baby losers.

Poniewozik and his ilk want Moore to be nicer because they know that nice guys finish last. The conservative movement didn't get where they are now being led by soft-spoken pussies like the milk toast Democratic governor of California, Gray Davis, or wussy-boy Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle, or the snotty, pissy, founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinam. No, the conservatives came into power led by enormous buttholes like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Tom DeLay--bullies, like super-bitch Ann Coulter, keep up a full-court press.

General George S. Patton once said, "Give me an army of West Point grads and I win a battle; give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war."

Give the progressive movement a bunch of good for nothing, Democratic, careerist politicians and we may get a bill passed. Give the progressive movement a handful of Michael Moores and we'll change the whole damned country.

Up yours, Poniewozik.

Thanks to my old friend, Matt, for emailing me the article.

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