The Documentaries

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Now that the initial shock of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has worn off I would like to comment on something that has been on the back burner of my blog list.

Hopefully, by the time someone stumbles across this blog in a few years they will ask the question, "Who was Sarah Palin". My nightmare scenario is that they will say, "Oh, you mean the President?".

Enough has already been written about her and I am sure there will be more. I don't intend to expand on that debate. As I have commented to others, I am just content to watch the new Reality Show called Presidential Politics and see who gets voted out of the Oval Office next. I see it as entertainment more than anything else. It has gotten too bizarre to be taken seriously. This may sound a bit harsh, but if you really want to know my views on it, check out the blog I wrote about 2 years ago called "Don't Vote".

The issue that Sarah Palin's candidacy brought up is that there are folks that DO think she is an excellent candidate. Most of my friends don't like her and believe that she is a bunt in the baseball game of politics meant to shake things up. However, there is also a large amount of the population that believe she is a God-Send and are now 'eager' to vote for John McCain. I got to see a great example of these folks on television the other night.

I have repeatedly lamented the state of the American Media (radio, television, print, Internet) and the way it manipulates us and skews our views. Regardless of the slant that ABC or CNN give Sarah Palin, they are giving her a bunch of air time. The thought of simply ignoring her as a one-off freak of politics never enters their mind. Viewers are like hungry puppies, they gather around any food dish you put in front of them.

In my disgust with the media, I have turned away from it to try and find other sources of information that might give me a balanced view, a different view. I want to turn over the rock of American Society and see what is crawling around underneath. Most media outlets don't want you to see what is under their.

One of the sources I have turned to is the Documentary Film Maker. The person that creates informational media outside the corporate umbrella and therefore is free to explore issues without fear of retribution. You won't find most of these film in wide circulation. They play at art house cinemas which are few and far between and on a few cable channels if you buy the premium package. I find them on the Internet and download them to my iMac, then transfer them to my AppleTV (a small DVR hooked up to our HDTV). I would gladly pay to see most of these, if they ever came to this state for viewing, but they don't, for good reason.

Major players in the media markets (political parties, mega-corporation, religious sects) don't want you to see these films. They peel back the veneer of society that main-stream media has created and show a world of manipulation and power that most of us are not supposed to know about.

A listing of a few of the more entertaining ones can be found below:

Zietgiest: Question everything you have been taught, with a bit of paranoia thrown in. Excellent propaganda. The "Triumph of the Will" of our time. Download it for free and watch it here.

Who Killed The Electric Car: Long before $4 a gallon gas, Detroit built the ideal commuter vehicle. Everyone loved it, except for big oil, so they killed it. Thanks Exxon/Mobil.

Bush's Brain: The story of Karl Rove and the making of the President ("W"). Talk about a puppet-master!

Jesus Camp: Making warriors for God in the upper mid-west. Nothing like teaching 9 year olds to speak in tongues and showing them what an aborted fetus looks like. These are the folks that will be voting for Sarah Palin in mass.

Lake of Fire: The extreme Evangelical Right-Wing and the issue of abortion in the Midwest. Residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles will think that mindless space zombies populate North and South Dakota after watching this.

Holes In Heaven: Ever hear of H.A.A.R.P.? Probably not, the government doesn't want you to. The old saying was "It isn't nice to fool with Mother Nature". Governments never got this message and they are fooling around big time.

The Fog of War: The memoirs of Robert McNamara and the horror of the Military Industrial Complex, recounted by the man that lead it for almost 8 years.

There are others, but the list goes on and on. After watching these films, I am amazed that nothing even remotely close to them appears on broadcast or cable television. The fact that 99.8% of the population will tune in to "Two and a Half Men" and "America's Got Talent" and only .02% of the population even know that these documentaries exist is one of the saddest thing I have had to come to grips with. We are all headed toward a mass grave with a Twinkie in one hand and a Remote Control in the other, and we are smiling all the way.