So we finally got around to watching Bowling for Columbine last night. Yeah, it's a Michael Moore movie alright. He's tendentious and sometimes annoying. But to all the people who try to deny the film's importance by pointing to gaffes like the phony funding-the-Taliban stat Moore uses, I want to say: answer the freaking question Moore asks in the movie. Why do Americans kill each other so damn often with guns?
(Full disclosure: I like guns and just signed up to go on the shooting trip with Elijah's Boy Scout troop.)
The reaction to the movie reminds me of many of the critiques I read of Paul Krugman, focusing on this thing he got wrong or that rhetorical overkill in which he indulged -- those would-be Fiskings leave me wondering, yeah, OK, you don't like Krugman, you just scored a point on him...but answer the freaking question he asks over and over again: is the US in serious trouble if we continue with our current economic policies?
(Search here for "Columbine" and "Krugman.")
Killing the messenger is what people do when they can't handle the message. Sometimes the messenger is obnoxious. But now you've put him in his place, what about the message?
[EdCone.com]
Sunday, October 26, 2003
