Thought #1: Does it make me a radical that when I watch this movie my main response is "Yeah, and...?" All this is the same stuff I believe anyway...it's like, the sky is blue, and this is a fucked-up gun-worshipping illogical culture that has very poor judgement as a whole. The two statements are about equivalent in their shock value to me.
Thought #2: I'm not sure that's James Nichols being interviewed by Moore. It LOOKS like they couldn't GET James Nichols, and instead they hired Mike McDonald from MAD TV to PLAY Nichols. The man is literally a caricature of himself; as Stella would say, "a wackadoodle". I half-expected him to burst out into the Stuart character: "Look what I can do!"
Thought #3: I'm wasting my life doing nothing. I could be Michael Moore (though I think I take myself a little too seriously to do THAT). I could be writing and raging and speaking my mind--and I'm not. In fact, most of the things I say are focussed on the fact that I'm not saying anything. Which is, should you wonder, a ghastly reductionist paradox, and no fun at all to live in.
Thought #4: I have a new respect for Marilyn Manson after watching this movie. Not that I will EVER listen to his crap-ass nu-metal pseudo-Goth music; in fact, the obvious compassion and intellect he displays during his interview with Moore makes his music and his posturing all the more pathetic. He obviously has a grasp of the difficulties of being a kid, of the influence of the media--"...and it's a campaign of fear and consumption...keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume." And I liked what he said about the people of Littleton when Moore asked what he would say if he could talk to the people who were affected by the shooting: "I wouldn't say a word--I'd just listen to what they had to say."
Thought #5 (in which I expose my real naivete): Truthfully, I didn't entirely realize up til now the following: in terms of atrocities, the Democrats are no better than the Republicans. The Republicans seem to INITIATE more atrocities; the Democrats, though, when they have the opportunity, generally fail to STOP them. They don't start TOO many new ones--Kosovo and Waco standing out as recent Very Big Exceptions--but they don't STOP them either.
Thought #6: Charlton Heston is, without exception, the biggest asshole in human history. No, that honor does not fall to George W, Hitler, or any of the other likely candidates--because THOSE guys were evil. Heston is clearly evil in his own way, but Heston is deliberately, provokingly, schoolyard-bully cruel. To stand in a community which has just suffered a loss of that magnitude, hold aloft an example of the weapon that brought that loss about, and state "I have just five words to say to you tonight: FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!"...That takes a level of jackassery not previously seen in humankind.
I don't know if there's a place on earth that doesn't contain fucksticks like these. I just know that America has more than its fair A.P.S.M ratio: Assholes Per Square Mile.
(Funniest quote, from a news voiceover: "This t-shirt landed a student in court; she wanted to start an Anarchy Club." Um, an Anarchy Club? Isn't that an oxymoron?)
There's so much more I want to say on this, but as always, I don't have enough time.
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