Fahrenhype 911?

So tonight Michael Moore's much-discussed "documentary" comes out. I will be among those in line to see it. I'm more than a little interested to see if it lives up to the hype--both good and bad.

I'm definitely a fan of Moore's', and I tend to agree with him more than I disagree with him. But I'm worried. I've heard a few disturbing things about the way this film is structured--that it leaves out a lot, that it takes things out of context, etc. I'm certainly not upset that it's one-sided. That's the whole damn point! As Moore himself has said, enough people have reported about the evils of Sadaam Hussein, the evils of terrorism, the evils of the Middle East in general. He's trying to show something else, something the media isn't terribly inclined to show--a critical view of a man who too many people take for granted as the Messiah of Judeo-Christian society. What I'm a bit concerned about is Moore's tendency to take too many sides, as long as it's a side against Bush. I'm worried that by making attacks that are based on actions and comments taken out of context or twisted around, we're going to end up undermining ourselves. I don't want to see the liberal-progressive movement damaged by someone whose intentions are good, but whose methods might not have been the best. Christopher Hitchens' article on Slate makes a decent case. I'm planning to go see it with an open mind--not accepting everything Moore says as the gospel truth (after all, if we do that, are we any better than the legions of Bush-worshippers?) but rather watching and listening, and maybe doing a little amateur fact-checking when I get home.

As for the other, non-political areas of my life: friends are good, family is good, guy-i'm-talking-to-but-haven't-really-met-yet is still a mystery, The Boy continues to fade out of my conscious mind but make surprise appearances in my dreams just to remind me that he's NOT really gone yet, and work is still quiet and boring and, in its own way, exhausting.

I have an idea for a new blog, not yet sure if I'm going to go ahead with it. One of my favorite books in the world is "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. A social comedy that is sort of like the "Sex and the City" for early 19th century England, it begins with the line "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in posession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." I started thinking about the "universally acknowledged truths" that rule our lives every day--as women, as SINGLE women, as students, as Americans, as quasi-intellectuals, as people sharing the planet. So many of these UAT's are absolute bullshit. I thought, wouldn't it be fun to sit down and pick a few of them apart? Wouldn't that make a good book? Well, the book idea is a bit epic for me, I can't even finish an essay or come to a logical conclusion on some of these blog entries. But maybe a blog might be fun. If I thought anybody would actually read it, I'd try it out.

This post is getting long, so it's time to go. The weekend promises to be anti-climactic, but I'm sure I will have plenty to say after I've seen the movie. Tootles...
-pg