Monday, October 18, 2004

Meta-Reporting

Headline on CNN.com: "Bush, Kerry win newspaper endorsements". I realize this isn't the first time that a news organization has reported on what other news organizations are doing, but this did strike me as one of the most useless, content-free headlines in journalistic history.

Meanwhile, Brenda & I did go see Team America: World Police. Yes, we laughed mightily. The biggest criticism I think I have would be that they recycled one of the songs ("It's a Montage") from an episode of South Park.

Also, just to continue a bit from my last post, now that I've seen the film and watched the episode of "Ebert & Roeper" where they review it, and that TV review makes it clear what Ebert's objection to the film actually is: He's upset that it makes fun of Hollywood celebrities. Either that, or he's feigning offense so that all the stars skewered in the movie will still talk to him.

The problem is that the film's criticism of celebrity activism is entirely valid: Movie stars, due to their fame, are granted the means to express their opinions to the masses, but this does not also bestow upon them any special insight into global politics. Much of the time, what they say is not an informed opinion, but a knee-jerk liberal response. That's just as deserving of ridicule as an uninformed, knee-jerk conservative response, but among celebrities, you generally only get those from marginal country/western musicians.

1 comment:

Kwik2Jujj said...

Everyone in our movie group looked at me quizzically (nay, skeptically) when I insisted that I had heard that "Montage" song before. It was suggested that I just remembered the tune, perhaps derived from Rocky, but I said "No, no, the lyrics. I've heard them before." Back home, I was able to dredge up which South Park episode it was ("Asspen"). Someday, I'll be able to point to this incident as a formative experience toward becoming an Evil Overlord (oh, how they laughed....).