Nostalgia
Color My World? Please Don't.
by Susie Duncan Sexton
Michael Moore's most recent film, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, successfully informed, enlightened, provoked debate and promoted his own brand of propaganda.
Currently, assuming a solitary, independent-minded and thoughtful stance, whether on film or via broadcasting or in print, conjures up the obsolete, extinct DODO bird. Impressions gained through living life, and rubbing shoulders with others, are colored by biases which stick to us on this journey. We see "through a glass darkly" (I CORINTHIANS 13:12) or sometimes "through rose-colored glasses". So, undoubtedly, nobody nowhere and at no time possesses an uncluttered handle on providing solutions to troubling, divisive problems.
"Barbarians at the Gate", often pajama-clad and comparable to rabid watch-dogs, pounce from the blackness. Everybody's a blogging expert on the ways and wonders of this world of ours. Fine. Consider some flexibility though? Listening and learning always admirable. Let's not shut each other down through either thuggery or duplicitous, soft-spoken, condescending "double-speak". Both of those beasts roam amongst us now.
Particularly alarming for those of us raised to read newspapers, a marked trend astounds any honest subscriber each morning and evening. Whoever provides the advertising dollars appears to be in silent partnership with the "rags". Rather than fair reporting of current events and humanity's victories and struggles, constant editorializing insinuates itself onto nearly every page. Better then that crinkly, inked up, "pulp-fiction" periodicals bite the dust and die a natural death than to sell themselves to the highest right-wing, or left-wing, corporate bidders. Operating according to the principles of "beholden to special interests" or "the squeaking wheel gets the most oil" simply not patriotic!
An intellectual West Coast friend advocates "purple people", neither extreme of "red" or "blue". A swell proposal...although whoever or whatever planted this "bullies in the school-yard " dissension in the first place cleverly set the stage so that even moderates are viewed suspiciously, for example Hoosier Evan Bayh. Thus, we view our map of America as all chopped up and primed for another Civil War.
Frightening as HELL itself. Home-grown terrorism and mob mentality cropping up once again, dear readers or viewers. Accurate descriptions of motivations for such horrendous and uncivilized activities alter according to which moguls own our media outlets. Please? Do not tell us what we WANT to hear; rather, tell us what we NEED to hear. Back to Michael Moore.
If documentarian Moore remembers what prompted his fame, as well as ceases his own subliminal messaging (Rent the film, and you'll see that he panders here and there.) in order to generate top dollar at the box office and through DVD sales and rentals, I suggest he "cover the waterfront" of the news industry next go-'round. Investigate its inevitable demise...or far more crucial for our democracy, expose its abominable and damnable "auctioning off" of our right to know the truth, whether we inhabit fancy Blue states or "shack up" on those narrow, little Red Main Streets across the U.S.A.
Susie Duncan Sexton graduated the MOST OUTSTANDING SENIOR EVER (JOHN R. EMENS AWARD...DAVID LETTERMAN AND JIM DAVIS AND GARFIELD MY CLASS-MATES, TOO! HA!) from Ball State University, became a speech and language arts teacher and has occasionally taught literature/public speaking on the college level. She has performed in several theatrical productions and commercials. Also among her credits is museum curator, health center lecturer, and publicist.
"Mostly, I exist as a free-spirited, animal activist independent thinker!" she says.
To read more of Sexton's writing, please visit www.talkofthetownwc.com/oldtypewriter, and, if you like what you read there, please become a fan of 'Old Type Writer' on facebook by typing 'fans of Susie Duncan Sexton's Old Type Writer' in facebook's search function. On that fan page, you will find nostalgic photos, pithy musings, zippy political commentary and more.
© 2009 Moronic Ox Literary Journal - Escape Media Publishers / Open Books
About the author: A native of Nacala, Mozambique, Susie Duncan Sexton ponders how animals think, where does music come from, why do authors drink, why have we not fully evolved by now, is it really more fun at the top? A graduate of Ball State University and the University of Chicago, she enjoys the literature of Dickinson and Millay and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's husband and Shakespeare and Nash and Dorothy Parker.
"THAT'S (my) LIFE...a Sinatra parody! I've been a boomer, a teacher, a wife, and a clown.
I've been a poet, a mom, a child, in a small town.I've been up, down, around Ball State University.
Each instance, whatever occurred, I still emerged ME!"
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