![]() |
|
With all the hype, I had to check out Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Overall, I liked it. It was genuinely funny, but sad in parts, entertaining and thought-provoking. It brought tears to my eyes more than once and made me laugh out loud more than once. It was also, frankly, kind of scarey.
Some of it is hard to watch. Certainly the mangled bodies of Iraqi civilians, but the scene I found hardest was when a woman whose son was killed in Iraq encountered two other women in Washington, one protesting the war and the other for it.
The protester appeared to be from the Middle East and was protesting the civilian casualties. The mother told her her son had been killed and there was an immediate rapport between them. Then the pro-war counter protestor came up and started haranguing the protestor, saying the photos of civilian casualties were staged. The mother told her about her son's death and the pro-war-bitch just brushed it off as unimportant. Like so many right-wingers, she was too intent on pushing her political agenda to recognize the real humanity of the grieving mother standing in front of her.
To me, the scariest part was the revelation that our trusty legislators rarely read any of the bills they sign. That brought home to me the importance of letting them know how we, their constituents, feel. Outside of the special interest groups and pressure from other deal mongering legislators, that's probably the only thing that gives them any idea whether or not to sign all those bills they've never read.
Do we really want any of these people in office? I mean, even I know better than to sign anything I haven't read!