Moore Trouble, More Box Office

Michael Moore needs no defense, least of all from me, but I have to laugh every time I hear something like this:

"I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care," wrote [Republican Sen. Fred]Thompson, the subject of speculation about a possible presidential run. "I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore's talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented."

Every time one of these neocon slime artists makes such a statement, the "well documented" part is never accompanied by...well..documentation. We always get the charges without any accompanying substance. And I won't even raise the question of how these creeps can dare speak about anyone else's "clever falsehoods." Well all right, I will raise it.

Moore's crime, if you could ever get these neocons to tell the truth about their bruised egos (including the media pundits among them), is that he asks too many questions, and often gets very uncomfortable answers. Or that he out-hustles the mainstream media (remember the My Pet Goat video?). After his Oscar acceptance speech in 2003 (for Bowling for Columbine), no one short of the Dixie Chicks was so reviled for public remarks that turned out to be right on target, as more than two-thirds of Americans would now agree.

So let the Bushies go after him, if that's what they think will silence him, or keep people away from his movies. It will have the same effect as the Catholics boycotting Dan Brown's novel or its film version: longer lines at the bookstore and the box office. Once again, as Disney did before Fahrenheit 911 was released, they're playing right into his hands. Our corporate government: a pack of idiots who repeatedly fail to learn from their own mistakes. Moore's films have pointedly brought this reality home, and SiCKO is not likely to be any different in at least that one respect.
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Friday Reflection: Surpassing Belief

Do you fear you will be forgotten when you die? Among humans, it is true: you will inevitably be forgotten. But in the mind of the formless, you will endure. The cosmic memory has a mind for every one and every thing that has ever taken form in the universe. This is also true, of course, while you are still alive. But do not make this a matter of belief. Let experience guide you instead.

No book, no group, no church, no state can lead you as well as can your heart of uniqueness. Trust this, and discover for yourself the truth that has never been printed in a Bible or a manual; that has never been spoken from a pulpit or a dais; that has never been engraved onto the tablets of Law, Commandment, or Belief.

That discovery is your truth. Accept it in gratitude, but do not grasp it. Instead, pass it around; throw it into the wind and see who else it may touch. Thus does consciousness stretch to infinity, where Death is routed, and Life, affirmed.