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The First Amendment to the Constitution can be a tricky
affair, and especially in these days of high political trauma when the
media’s attention is focused on the various gutters in which the presidential
election campaigns are slogging about. Democrats complain about airwaves
dominated by corporate ownership and hence favorable to Bush, while
Republicans constantly denounce the ephemeral “liberal media.” Yet, the
message of the anti-Kerry Swift boaters, false though it may be, has found its
way to the voters, as have the suspect memos dealing with President Bush’s
Air National Guard service. With all this transpiring on the national level, you
would think that we here in our insulated patch of the world would be immune
from such free speech entanglements. We’re not. For it seems that the Kimball Theater has had the
audacity to book Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” This Bend-it-like-Beckham
move on the part of the Kimball has completely flummoxed those on the right
who thought they were out of the woods as a result of the Carmike’s dubious
decision to bypass the film. If their letters to the Gazette are any indication of
the psychic bent of the anti-Moore crowd, what seems to bother them is that
the film reeks of lies, distortions and half-truths. Furthermore, since the
documentary has already been shown nationwide, why inflict its anti-Bush
message on the good people of Williamsburg? If folks around here wanted to see the film, why didn’t they take
a delay-ridden, truck-infested ride down scenic Interstate 64 to Hampton? What’s so ironic about all this is that those who have
written to the Gazette or have called Colonial Williamsburg to protest the
film rarely, if ever, mention any specific lie, distortion or half-truth that
it contains. This is either because they haven’t seen the film and hence have
no knowledge of its contents, or because they have reached their conclusions
on the basis of some heavenly phantasm of truth that has wafted into their
brains and showered their processes of logic with unendurable righteousness. On the other hand, one assumes that the anti-Kimballites
are followers of President Bush and hence are well acquainted with
predications and distortions that make mincemeat out of reality. Most of them
have sent Bush’s promises of WMDs and al-Qaeda connections down their
esophageal and pancreatic channels to be digested and eventually ejected into
the cancerous bowels known as Iraq. This is the fatuous fiction that
nourishes their cause and empowers them with inestimable acuity when it comes
to ferreting out the countering lies of someone like Michael Moore. They are much like their counterparts at a Bush rally in
Hopewell, NJ, who shouted down a
mother whose son died in Iraq. She made the mistake of trying to ask Laura
Bush why her son had been sent there to be blown up by an Iraqi mine. For
this she was beset by a bunch of hooligans, handcuffed and charged with
trespassing by the police. Yet such reactions are not atypical. It would seem that
those on the rigid right are so intent on protecting us from distraught
mothers and satans like Moore that they would gladly violate the First
Amendment to the Constitution and, with threats against Colonial
Williamsburg, prohibit the showing of a film that dares to question the
honesty and credulity of a morally bankrupt administration. Then they peddle their own misinformation, including the
contention in one letter that the Kimball falls into the category of a
non-profit organization. It does not. Both the Kimball and CW’s rental
properties are for-profit operations with taxable incomes. The fact is
that, thanks to Mayor Jeanne Zeidler and her cohorts at CW, the Kimball is a
class act. Other than the Naro in Norfolk, there’s not another theater this
side of Washington, DC that has so devoted itself to showing films of high
artistic quality - many of them controversial - to audiences clamoring for
thought-provoking fare. Rather than attacking the folks who run the Kimball
for their devotion to the non-moronic, we should thank the gods of artistry
everywhere that the Kimball has contributed so much to the intellectual vigor
of our community. But what is even more important is the fact that we
simply cannot allow partisan political or religious fanatics of any ilk to
dictate to us what we can or cannot see, listen to or read whenever we wish.
There are those, for instance, who read anti-Semitic subtexts into Gibson’s
“Passion of the Christ” and hence argued that it should not be shown. We
should be thankful that they didn’t prevail. We unfortunately live in a nation in which only 23% of
the people have college degrees, and in which the percentage of high school
graduates has fallen below even that of the Czech Republic. While we ballyhoo
costly educational programs that seem to get us little more than the ability
to answer multiple choice questions, we are failing miserably in the battle
against intellectual desuetude, demagoguery and the infectious sound byte. This is all the more reason why we must be constantly
vigilant against those who would block off avenues of knowledge and
understanding. It is also the reason why we, living in an age of technology
that makes truth-twisting so viable, must constantly question the motives of
those who would flippantly declare that they, and only they, are in
possession of the truth. |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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