"We have to have our minds clear. We can't let people play on our emotions. If we're going to fight an enemy, we need to know who the enemy really is." Consider that quote as is, context-less. It is a call to arms, to awakening. In its context, it refers to the Bush Administration and the War on Terror. But it is tempting to take it out of context. It could apply to nearly any situation, the urge to make it fit whatever argument that needs to be made. It would be so simple to take change who the enemy is, and who is duping "us;" to make the statement a clarion call for the American people to scrutinize the American media.

America is a country divided. The past two presidential elections have been several of the closest in the country's history, both coming down to a single state's electoral vote. Some would consider that a reason to look at how the electoral process functions in the United States, that maybe it should change. Others see it as a reason for activism, to make sure that their side wins next time, that their side keeps winning, or that perceived injustices in the process are sorted out. Still, others want to find the source of the problem of the increasingly divided America. Leading up to the 2000 election, there emerged new sources of information- more twenty-four hour news channels to join C-SPAN and CNN, including MSNBC and Fox News, an increased internet presence of not just newspapers running stories concurrently online and in print, news wire services such as Yahoo!, and blogs, a general term for websites that offer personal analysis, aggregate newslinks, or feature journal type entries for a person or organization. The basic functioning of the twenty-four hour news channels and blogs lends easily to propagating opinions and debasing ideas with oversimplification, leading to a hostile, partisan atmosphere. As the oversimplified beliefs were broadcast over and over to an increasingly larger number of people, issues were dumbed down at each step, made into matters of black and white, and no issue is that simple that there are just two positions, but two positions were adopted by many people, providing a less than stellar lead-in to the 2000 election where George Bush won the electoral vote, Al Gore won the popular vote, and the state of Florida decided what voter intentions were with the infamous hanging chads. Politics, and the media, became more partisan following that, as newspapers sharply criticized the job the Bush Administration was doing in office, satirists had a field day with Bush, and a host of news and opinion outlets claimed louder than before that America was under siege by the liberal news media. And then, just eight months into his presidency, Bush found himself with an approval rating that matched and was better than his father's during the Gulf Storm as he was able to get the American press and people to rally around him, the strong and self described "war president" after the terrorist attack of 9/11. Suspending criticism of the president after the crisis was both a smart move and the worst possible move as it would bring about a more dividing, harsh partisanship that would last for the rest of Bush's first term.



Michael Moore knows how hard it is to get a controversial work to the public- twice his publishers and distributors have tried to stop two of his projects from reaching the public, first the book Stupid White Men in 2001, and then the film Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. Blocked by the terrorist attack from being distributed, lest Regan Books have people think they were being un-American, the cutting Stupid White Men found its way out of warehouses after a grassroots campaign by librarians on behalf of free speech. The book dominated the New York Times Best Seller List and the sales chart of the internet retailer Amazon. The book and its author were savaged by harsh commentaries by Bush supporters on the twenty-four hour news stations.

For the purpose of ease, groups and individuals such as Michael Moore will be labeled as "leftist," "the left," "liberal," or "the liberal media." These phrases universally cover Democrats, anarchists, socialists, pinko-commies, red-commies, the French, pro-choicers (read: they hate babies), feminists, gays, activist judges and the ACLU. The opposition can be labeled "right-wingers," "the right," "conservative," or "fair and balanced." People and organizations under this category include Republicans, the Reverend Jerry Fallwell, L. Brent Bozell, the third, the NRA, libertarians, pro-lifers (read: they hate women), neoconservatives, proponents of family values, and nutjobs like Barry Goldwater.

The controversy created by Stupid White Men would not be as intense as Moore's next book, 2003's Dude, Where's My Country?. Released during the same time period as Carl Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud, acclaimed journalist Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, and former Bush Administration counter-terrorist czar (his official job title) Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies. What is interesting to note is that the first chapter of Dude was published in Rolling Stone magazine. The first chapter is quite enticing. It offers few potshots at the president, instead condescendingly asking him questions that Moore feels have not been answered. Backed up by footnotes, it seems like a well researched essay, and it is quite researched. In the anti-war climate of the fall 2003, Moore's main question, and the general point of the book, is why are we at war with the wrong nation? He wonders in print why we didn't go to war with Saudi Arabia, backing it up with as much research as it shows the Bush Administration did before going before the UN with their reasoning for military action in Iraq. A brilliant piece of advertising- nowhere in the article did it mention that this was the first chapter of the book the magazine tells you to go out and buy, just the implication that Michael Moore has the answers in his book. The Stone is still an influential magazine with youth, and its continuing obsession with left politics is a legacy of its original ties with the counter culture, a slick package for getting a message across to impressionable young voters. After the book was released, a sort of cottage industry sprang up to discredit and personally attack Moore, who had angered the right not just with Stupid White Men, but his 2002 movie about gun control in America that features Charlton Heston, then president of the National Rifle Association, blaming gun deaths in America on minority populations. Probably the most well researched and pious book is Michael Moore is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, published in 2004, ironically by Moore's former publisher Regan Books. However, Dude, Where's My Country had little effect compared to Woodward's account of the Bush Administration rushing to war with Iraq, Clarke's account of the Bush Administration rushing to war with Iraq, or Unger's book about the financial and personal ties of the Bush family and their associates with the Saudi ruling family, the bin Sultans, all of which seemed more important concerning that the Keane Commission, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was hearing testimony by members of the Bush Administration, including National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Moore's next project would create his biggest controversy yet. In fact, Fahrenheit 9/11 had people angry before it was ever screened. Disney, who owns Miramax, the company that funded and planned on distributing the film, handed down a notice to not release the film. Moore latched onto this and created press, generating buzz before the Cannes Film Festival, where it won Best Film. According to Quentin Tarintino, a Cannes judge and the award presenter, Moore told him, "If I wanted to make political statements I would run for office. I want to make movies."

This is dangerous thinking- if Moore truly believes he is not making a political statement then he is as big of an idiot as his detractors claim. First off, his past two books and last movie dealt exclusively with national politics. The movie was marketed and hyped as something that voters would need to see before they voted. Michael Moore should know this- it's all covered in the featurette documentary Release of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is a bonus feature on his DVD. The documentary has such notables as Julian Bond and Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP talking about the importance of the movie for the election year; Moore is seen at a Congressional Black Caucus press conference where representatives talk about how important the movie is for voters to see. Moore is seen greeting politicians as they leave a screening of the movie. There is footage of a press conference that features a Marine who served in Iraq saying that every politician should see it because the movie "shows what it's like to be in Iraq," a 9/11 survivor saying the movie is factual, and a mother who's son served in Iraq saying that the film "gives this country permission to talk about things that this administration does not want us to talk about...have the dialogue [with them]." With a statement like the one made at Cannes, Moore fails to see the consequences of his movies and books. It trickles down. Not only does the featurette on the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD show the movie was hyped as a political statement, but it shows the reactions of theater-goers, including an unnamed black minor. She spoke fast, as if out of breath or in a hurry, saying "it makes you wanna hurry up and turn 18 so you can get down to the registration booths and go ahead and change how things are." Clearly this is not a simple film. It is a political statement. Moore disregards that, fostering his image as an everyman- "No, it's just a movie for the common person to see, not a political statement, not at all. I'm on your side."

In the movie, Moore picks apart America after the terrorist attack. He shows the actual attack in a more compassionate way than his detractors give him credit for, probably in a more fitting way than the news coverage of that day, where the first plane hitting the first tower was looped over and over again. After bringing to the big screen his question of "Why wasn't Saudi Arabia blamed for 9/11?" Moore quickly segues into the drive for war with Iraq, and the effects of that. The film's interviews with soldiers on the ground in Iraq is eerily reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket- soldiers talking directly to the camera, some of them boasting, others expressing regret, doubt. The shots of Iraqis coping with dead civilians, including children adds another dimension to what is presented, nearly immediately juxtaposed with the citizens of Fallujah horrifically defiling the burned corpses of American contractors. The film is an accomplishment in cinema, taking the narrative driven style of Moore's other works and applying heavy doses of non-Moore sources that is truly slick. Brick by brick, Moore lays the foundation of a solid argument, a house that a viewer may not be aware he is buying. The conclusion of the film is that the Bush Administration is out to screw the American people- one of the primary reasons for going into Afghanistan was because it was obvious that al Qaeda was behind the terrorist attack; that the administration is ignoring Usama bin Laden and the Saudi threat; that the administration had a goal before going into the White House of removing Saddam Hussein from power; that the Iraqi and American lives being lost in Iraq is negligible; and most importantly that every move the administration makes is to benefit the Carlyle Group, Saudi investors, Halliburton, and the various and sundry other contributors to campaign and business related to George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfield. That is not only a political statement, but it's a statement designed to affect change in the world. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a passive movie; it's a wrenching experience full of moral outrage, war dead, and smirking politicians.

Disney still wouldn't touch the movie after Cannes, so Lions Gate Films moved to get the rights for the movie that wanted to change an election. The work was met with a huge discrepancy in audience reaction. They either came out of the theater, determined to unseat Bush, or they stormed out, muttering about the fat liar. Nearly immediately, the right sprang into action, determined to discredit the movie. Besides taking time out of the busy newsday on the twenty four hour networks for conservative pundits to denounce the movie, there was another attack. Within months, work was started and finished on the movie Fahrenhype 9/11. This monumental piece of cinema's history set out to completely destroy the arguments made by Michael Moore in Heit with expert witnesses such as Dick Morris, a former Clinton advisor, people who feel they were manipulated by Michael Moore in his film, former New York City mayor Ed Koch, and incisive commentary from Ron Silver. Oh, the actor Ron Silver. The film mainly relies on Morris to make the big points of why Moore is only telling the half truth. And Morris works for the camera, it seems he has a fundamental belief in America and that he's helping his country with his words. He has energy and emotion, and he's credible. He also helped write the movie. There were two other writers, and maybe they just didn't carry their weight. The problem with Hype is that, compared to the movie it has some success in discrediting, it can not stand apart from its message- the narrative makes no sense, the cinematography is horrendous- everything that made Heit so easy to swallow was missing from this film. There was no way it could be wide released in theaters. Luckily, it wasn't bound for that. There was already a built in audience who would pay even more than the price of a movie ticket. The autumn of 2004, war had been declared by Trinity Home Entertainment, and that war was on the television set of any poor sap who happened to have one of the twenty-four hour news stations on. The commercials for the movie, available on DVD, were on every commercial break, sometimes twice or running back-to-back. And now the conflict wasn't Moore's "us versus them"- the American people and the Bush Administration, it was "wacko liberal versus us"- sharp lines had been drawn and partisan discourse was sharper. Because of Moore's movie, America had something new to divide itself over, and going into the election, it looked like it could be as close, or closer, than the 2000 election.



That's one of the problems of twenty four hour news channels. They only have so much content, so commercial breaks are fairly frequent. Over and over, a viewer is exposed to the same commercials, they hardly differ from CNN to Fox News to MSNBC. Look, there's the commercial for The Space Saver system of plastic bowls. There's the one for Fahrenhype 9/11. A workout video! The Space Saver...again. Once CNN figured out that they couldn't run news stories the entire day, they decided that running shows featuring a charismatic host discussing the hot button issues of the day would do just as well- opinions are the new reporting, after all. Soon, two archetypes of this kind of show arose- the first where a host debates or moderates a debate and always gets the last word, and the second where two hosts debate things among themselves. Unfortunately, those are the ideal descriptions of the two shows, as inevitably, the debates devolve into arguments, and with some luck, shouting matches. These types of shows are like NASCAR for the middle class- instead of car wrecks being the attraction, it's a pundit letting go of himself and yelling like a third grader or a member of Britain's Parliament. In much the same way as Moore's films and books, the programs polarize the situations and the audience.

Bill O'Reilly is a fairly smart man. Aside from writing bestselling books, including a children's book, and hosting a radio talk show, he is also the loud host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. The show is Fox News's top draw, and also the number one rated cable news channel program. It follows the first archetype, of a single host who engages in debate and also moderates debate. And O'Reilly is not afraid to bring his name calling, yelling, dismissive, and manipulative style of debate to anyone- he's done it all, from Catholic priests to shock rocker Marilyn Manson to a teenager kicked out of the Boy Scouts for being atheist. And if O'Reilly can't talk over someone who's making a point, he simply cuts their microphone. He's a gracious host. He's also a perpetuator of the dangerous, distilled kind of political atmosphere that is hurting America. A recent edition of The Factor is a perfect example of how dangerous putting issues into stark black and white terms and making sweeping generalizations are- the problem isn't with Bill O'Reilly being a dismissive, loud, obnoxious host, it's that he's a dismissive, loud, obnoxious host who takes complicated issues and twists them into unspecific terms or statements that can't be disagreed with. That's a disservice to the American public, as bad as Michael Moore taking the complicated decision of making war on Iraq and turning it into a business decision on the part of the Bush Administration. It's simply irresponsible for members of the media to lead the public to false conclusions. This exchange O'Reilly had with Father James Martin, the associate editor of America Magazine is a perfect example of distillation thinking.

O'Reilly: Terror is evil, do we all agree on it?

Martin: Yes-

O'Reilly: We have to confront evil.

The conclusion that is reached in those three lines seems like a logical thing- terror is evil, therefore we confront it. The issue of confronting terror is far more nuanced than that- at what point does a country that is waging war on terror ignore national boundaries and sovereign states to confront terrorism; at what point are civil liberties suspended to confront terrorism? The questions raised by the issue are ignored by O'Reilly and his conclusion, ruled negligible. O'Reilly is the most watched political commentator in the nation, and there are more people watching because they agree with him than because they want to shout at their teevee. What he says becomes national news, from having the University of Colorado launch an investigation into professor Ward Churchill to his frivolous lawsuit targeting satirist Al Franken. Bill O'Reilly affects what people talk about- he influences the talk around the water cooler at work, so to speak. He has influence over how the nation talks about issues and how the nation thinks and it is simply wrong and hurtful to the nation to take an issue as complex as the war on terror and boil it down, as if explaining it to a child. His viewing audience is not children, and he, as a broadcast journalist, holds a responsibility to not treat his audience like children and to not manipulate them. It is not just how he couches his words, but the message- concerning an email he received from the University of Colorado about Churchill, O'Reilly said, "We finally got a statement...free speech, free speech, free speech." The implication is that the university is hiding behind the First Amendment. Hiding behind their civil liberties. As if it were a crime to exercise free speech. During the segment with Father Martin, O'Reilly pounced on the priest for saying that it "isn't up to the pope to offer solutions [in Iraq]." The host's response was "If it's not up to the pope to offer solutions, can he oppose it?" With that statement, O'Reilly degrades his entire audience- as common citizens, the undercurrent is that common citizens can't oppose the action in Iraq, or any decision made by the country's leaders since it is not up to them to offer solutions. Of course, any citizen can offer a solution to any problem, and there are quite a few who do. Easily the most frightening thing about the views that O'Reilly spouts is the extreme nature they take, especially the statement that "It's our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins." What the most watched political commentator is saying is that it is not right for a citizen to question or criticize his government, completely undermining the principles that stand behind the American democracy. These views disseminate to the general public, and David Brock, president/CEO of Media Matters for America explains that, "Often there's an echo effect off places like cable and like radio. And those [media distortions] are repeated and repeated. By the time it reaches me, I don't even know what the source was. This is the environment we're living in. It's fundamentally undermining democracy which is based on knowing some good and solid information so I can make an informed choice."

O'Reilly knows what he's doing though- he boasts about it. In one of his opening "Talking Point Memos", the graphic to the right of his head read "Angers Left-Wing Media that Factor can influence national discourse". O'Reilly, elaborating, said, "to the left-wing media, this is about power, and the left-wing media hates—hates that Fox has power." He knows that his polarization of the issues is part of the reason that America is divided over ideology, and he's proud of it. He's proud that the left-wing media doesn't have the power he has. Of course, the left-wing media actually exists. There are leftist leaning newspapers, blogs, commentators, television programs. Of course, there's also right leaning newspapers, blogs, commentators, television programs, radio programs. It's not so simple cut and dry as there being a "liberal media" and then the rest of the media as commentators like O'Reilly would like America to believe. Once again, the media presents a simplified version of the truth that is more of a distortion or outright lie than anything else. There are viewers of Fox News channel who watch the mainly right wing commentators and jingoistic reporting reminiscent of Hearst starting the Spanish-American War, then complain about the liberal media, despite them never actually encountering this supposedly all encompassing viewpoint. And then came Robert Greenwald's film Outfoxed, a documentary out to discredit Fox News, largely using former Fox employees and independent media analysts such as FAIR and Media Matters for America. The documentary largely succeeds in its goal, especially during a segment detailing O'Reilly and how his show is run. Focusing mainly on O'Reilly's confrontation with Jeremy Glick, it sickens the viewer to the attack dog style of rhetoric that is the main weapon of punditry. Glick, who's father died in the World Trade Center, was one of the backers of a newspaper ad that featured the names of victims of the terrorist attack, and over that, a plea not to go to war with Afghanistan, and agreed to go on the show after many calls by Fox News. In the documentary, Glick relates how he would time how long O'Reilly would let a guest with differing views speak before cutting the feed of their microphone in the broadcast, and that he had prepared himself to say one thing. And he did, making an articulate statement that violence would beget more violence and that it is his belief that the terrorist attack happened as a result of the US training and funding of Afghani mujadeen fighters. O'Reilly became irate, yelling at Glick, invoking his dead father and widow mother, and declaring that Glick's opinion was "A load of crap." He would not let Glick respond to his explosive personal attacks, yelling over Glick, and ended up cutting Glick's microphone after yelling for Glick to shut up several times. The show went to commercial, where O'Reilly told Glick something to the effect of "Get out of my studio before I f---ing tear you to pieces." Later, O'Reilly misrepresented Glick's view by stating that Glick "came on this show and accused President Bush of knowing about 9/11 before it happened and murdering his only father." Irresponsible and dangerous journalism in the form of misrepresentation, spin, or just lying.

Imagine a show featuring two O'Reillys- the second debate show archetype on twenty four hour news networks is the two hosts representing two different sides, being the left and the right, yell at each other and guests. The shows feature biting one-liners delivered as if for points. The two most popular and well known are Fox News's Hannity and Colmes, featuring a slovenly liberal and a fastidious conservative who just can't get along, and CNN's Crossfire, with a rotating slot of hosts including commentators Paul Begala, Tucker Carlson, former Clinton campaign manager James Carville, and the Reverend Jerry Fallwell. A recent edition of the show had Begala saying that Condoleezza Rice lied to the American public, which Fallwell countered by saying that Clinton lied, but Begala fired back by saying Clinton lied about a girlfriend, Rice lied about a war. Ding! Begala scored a point! Fallwell later evened the score by sarcastically telling guest Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) that she was the first Democrat to say the election in Iraq was a good thing. The show always features this kind of partisan banter that limits actual debate and exacerbates the differences between conservatives and liberals.



Hope comes in strange forms sometimes. C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 feature endless footage of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and various political functions. Neither channel is known to push the envelope or be cutting edge in its coverage. This all changed when C-SPAN2 covered a reading of America the Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction at the New York Public Library in New York City as part of its BookTV series. The normally sedate, sedative, channel became quite lively as the authors of America stopped reading from the book, styled as a high school textbook, and decided to field questions and talk about what they wanted in general. Profanities were dropped from every mouth, and sophomoric humor replaced debate on budget bills. The next day, Jon Stewart, one of the authors of America, went on Crossfire to promote the book. What happened next became one of the most widely circulated videos on the internet, and quite possibly one of the most blogged incidents of 2004, eclipsed only by the tsunami, the Red Sox series win, and the election. Stewart ripped into hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson for being "disingenuous"- that by having partisan arguments they were hurting the democratic process. Carlson immediately engaged Stewart in something that had never been seen much on Crossfire- a more or less civil discussion. The comedian, host of Comedy Central's mock news program The Daily Show which has given voice to the 18-34 year old college educated disaffected set, elaborated on his position that shows like Crossfire which feature the two accepted sides, left and right, having "knee-jerk arguments" only make things worse because they don't enlighten, they don't report, they just reinforce partisan sentiment. The civility ended when Carlson told Stewart he wasn't being funny, to which the fake newsman replied, "No, I'm not being funny- I won't be your monkey." Later in the show, Carlson said Stewart was funnier on The Daily Show than on Crossfire- Stewart told Carlson that he was being a "bigger dick on [his] show than on anyone's show."

The remarkable thing isn't that CNN didn't censor Stewart's comments, or that all three men were smiling as the broadcast signed off, but what happened within twenty four hours of the broadcast beginning- the appearance was all over the blogosphere, the term used to describe the general network of blogs, newsgroups, news aggregators, and personal opinion websites, and along with that, viewers of Crossfire utilized new technology to distribute Stewart's segment to a conservatively estimated hundreds of thousands computers during that time period alone. Over the weeks following the broadcast, 2.3 million people watched the clip on iFilm.com. Taking a recording of the show, most likely captured by TiVo, the clip was ripped onto computer, then converted to a torrent- a type of file shared by the program BitTorrent. Roughly a third of all internet traffic is because of trading on BT, and with the buzz generated around the clip- influential blog BoingBoing made a post including links to downloadable torrents of the incident less than a half hour after the program ended. The following Monday, Stewart opened The Daily Show with a bit of a recap of his CNN appearance, telling his viewers that he told Tucker Carlson that "I know I'm not being funny, but tomorrow I'll go back to being funny and your show, Crossfire, will still blow." That clip has just under a million views on iFilm.com, and is the second most viewed comedy video on the site, behind Stewart's actual Crossfire appearance. This distribution made it hard for the twenty four hour news channels not to cover it, and beyond CNN, Fox News and MSNBC talked about the incident. And apparently, there are people behind the scenes who believe that journalists do hold a responsibility to the public- Crossfire is not being renewed this year, and the CNN program director issued a statement saying that he is "in Stewart's camp" regarding the role that journalism should play in America. They also decided not to renew Tucker Carlson's individual contract with the network.



So, the hope of the Fourth Estate- an independent, critical media- is a foul-mouthed fake news anchor who's openly partisan. But in some respects, it would be good for more people in the media to follow Jon Stewart's lead and to denounce the partisan hackery and black-and-white rhetoric that the media spouts without thinking of the consequence on national discourse, or politics. They reinforce politicians creating a larger gap in the ideology of the common people, making every public policy issue a conflict and making elections too close to accurately call so there is more controversy and strife. The Bill O'Reillys, Michael Moores, and Tucker Carlsons of the media know the consequence of their actions and still act recklessly, ignoring the damage they are making to America. By paying attention to what is actually being said by these people, by scrutinizing and inspecting what the media reports, if we have our minds clear and know that the enemy is a manipulative media who are little more than political tools, then discourse in America just may become more civilized and the dangerous partisanship and distilled arguments may very well prove ineffective.