Noonan made many good points in her column about Clooney and Hollywood today, "Boy in a Bubble." Here's a key point - and where she went a little wrong - IMHO:
The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they've experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven't experienced life; they've experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.
Most Americans aren't leading media, they're leading lives. It would be nice to see a new respect in Hollywood for the lives they live.
YES: most of us lead REAL lives; most of us are not living in a Hollywood millionaire's bubble. BUT: I think that many MANY Americans are under-educated - ESPECIALLY about history. And I think that this makes them ESPECIALLY susceptible to Left-wing BS, and very PRONE to being swept up into facile explanatory templates - the type of thing that the Left seems to specialize in:
If MORE Americans knew history better then they wouldn't be at all suceptible to the propaganda people like Clooney churn out.
If they knew that McCarthy was finished BEFORE Murrow said "boo!", and if they knew that the CIA agent Bob Baer - who wrote the book which Syriana was based on - was a hawk who wanted us to get TOUGHER on Hizballah (IOW: THE OPPOSITE OF HOW CLOONEY CHOSE TO PORTRAY HIM!), and if they knew that Saddam was a client of the USSR, and if they knew that the MOSSAD assassinated the terrorists who murdered the Jewish Olympic atheletes they made future attacks less likely because (at the veryt least) these perps would NEVER attack again, and if they knew that and so much else... THEN THE SUPERFICIAL LEFTWING PROPAGANDA WHICH POSES AS ENTERTAINMENT WOULD DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY.
And guys like Clooney would stick to re-making movies about casino heists and sinking fishing boats, and guys like Moore would be out-of-business.
And Hollywood Box Office receipts would probably GO UP! HEY: It's a win-win!
MORE HERE.
Bush knew about 9/11; Bush lied about WMD; Saddam and Bin Laden are products of American hegemony coming back to bite us; global-warming is man-made - and it's especially the fault of us over-consuming Americans - our greed and gluttony and selfishness; Big Oil is evil; and the overt reasons people do things are never the REAL reasons - to discover the REAL reasons you must see the conspiracies beneath the surface; and Israelis and Arabs are equally to blame for the violence in the Middle East. And so on...I think that whether or not people lead REAL lives, or live in a bubble has NOTHING to do with whether they are suceptible to these LIES. I think EDUCATION - or lack thereof- does.
If MORE Americans knew history better then they wouldn't be at all suceptible to the propaganda people like Clooney churn out.
If they knew that McCarthy was finished BEFORE Murrow said "boo!", and if they knew that the CIA agent Bob Baer - who wrote the book which Syriana was based on - was a hawk who wanted us to get TOUGHER on Hizballah (IOW: THE OPPOSITE OF HOW CLOONEY CHOSE TO PORTRAY HIM!), and if they knew that Saddam was a client of the USSR, and if they knew that the MOSSAD assassinated the terrorists who murdered the Jewish Olympic atheletes they made future attacks less likely because (at the veryt least) these perps would NEVER attack again, and if they knew that and so much else... THEN THE SUPERFICIAL LEFTWING PROPAGANDA WHICH POSES AS ENTERTAINMENT WOULD DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY.
And guys like Clooney would stick to re-making movies about casino heists and sinking fishing boats, and guys like Moore would be out-of-business.
And Hollywood Box Office receipts would probably GO UP! HEY: It's a win-win!
MORE HERE.
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