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My name is Douglas Allen Puthoff. In less than four months--Lord willing--I’ll be forty-five years old. I am lazy. I am weak. I am wishy-washy. I am a bum. Only the grace of Almighty God has given me any redeeming virtues.
I procrastinate. My personal motto seems to be “Don’t do today what you can do tomorrow.” Or the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that. And if you can, postpone it indefinitely. When I procrastinate, I tell myself that I’ll do it sooner or later. Sometimes I never do it at all.
If I can get away with a half-baked job, I’ll do it. Most of the time I don’t care.
I like escaping--escaping to the past, escaping to the future, escaping to another world. When I was a child, I escaped to the world of Marvel Comics, the Fantastic Four in particular. The F.F. were a surrogate family to me. As I grew older, my favorite escape became such tabletop sports game as APBA and Strat-O-Matic. I played dream such dream match-ups as the 1927 New York Yankees and the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. Then I started playing video games and role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Sometimes these escapes cost me. I spent too much time playing video games that I almost flunked out of college. I still spend too much time playing games instead of working on this web homepage. I also have escaped through other methods, such as watching TV, reading fantasy novels, and surfing the Internet.
Why do I spend a good portion of my time trying to escape reality? Because I’m lazy. Because it’s the easy way out. Because I have no self-discipline.
Why don’t I have self-discipline? Maybe it’s because of the fact that, when I grew up, many things came easy to me, and many things came hard. If something was difficult, I said, “The heck with it” and concentrated on the easy things.
I still do it. Trying to create a plot for a novel and trying to write it seem hard. But writing at the top of my head, as I did during the first draft of this essay, seems easy.
Another reason I try to escape is because as a child I was teased. Many people in my hometown considered me mentally challenged (and I believe some people still do). I wanted to fight them and make them pay for their abuse. My mother, however, told me to ignore them. I didn’t want to. I wanted to see justice done. When I returned home from being teased at school, I escaped from the Real World into the world of fantasy, whether via TV, comic books, or games. I found it easier to deal with make-believe than to deal with reality.
But because it’s easier doesn’t mean it’s right, psychologically or morally. There’s the saying “No man is an island. But part of me wants to be one. Part of me wants to separate myself from the rest of the world. God, however, said it wasn’t right for man to be alone.
The why do I want to escape?
Because reality involves pain. And human beings seek pleasure and avoid pain. And I--rightly or wrongly--consider myself more human than most.
Jesus wanted to avoid pain. The night before His crucifixion He prayed to God not to let it happen. However, He also said, “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26:39b). He accepted suffering on the Cross so that we humans who believe in Him could be redeemed from sin.
Maybe that’s why I need to accept reality: to help people who hurt.
Copyright 2006 Douglas A. Putboff
Grace and Gratitude—Nov. 16, 2006
Yesterday I was looking through one of my old books, Discovering the Writer Within by Bruce Ballenger and Barry Lane, when I came across this, the first paragraph from John Fowles’ novel The Magus:
I was born in 1927, the only child of middle class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently enough to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I was sent to a public school, I wasted two years doing my national service, I went to Oxford; and there I began to discover I was not the person I wanted to be.
The paragraph stoned me, like reading Hardy’s "Darkling Thrush" for the first time. The last clause particularly struck me:
"I was not the person I wanted to be."
Was I ever the person I wanted to be?
Have I ever been the person I wanted to be?
I think I was, once, over two decades ago. In those days I held a job covering high school football and basketball games for my hometown newspaper, the Celina (Ohio) Daily Standard. I traveled to the game and wrote down descriptions of the game’s action. Afterward I picked up the statistics and interviewed the coaches. When I returned to the Standard offices I wrote a story about the game. To me it wasn’t a job. It was making something. Making something out of nothing. Filling up blank pieces of paper (and later on a blank computer screen) with words, sentences and paragraphs. There was something Godlike about it. It still sometimes gives me a thrill when I write in my journal.
Yet, the more I think about it, the more my idea of creating something out of nothing sounds arrogant. It may seem like, after writing something, as if I have made something out of nothing. But in reality I didn’t. I wasn’t born with a vocabulary, people—particularly my teachers and my parents—taught it to me. I wasn’t born knowing how to write. I need instruction—from learning my ABC’s to learning how to write sentences and paragraphs with grace and style.
I also didn’t make the pens and pencils I use to write these words. Other people made them. Other people made the paper I wrote them on. Other people also didn’t make the computer on which I’ll write the final draft of this essay and the Internet on which I’ll post it. If I possessed all the time in the world I could perhaps learn how to make pens, pencils, and computer, but I don’t. None of us do.
I can’t even claim to make myself. My parents, in an act of passion during the Fall of 1961, made me.
And last, but foremost. God, the almighty creator and rule of this world, continues to give me the grace to exist in it, though I don’t deserve it. None of us do.
I owe many people I debt a gratitude, many of them I don’t even know.
Thanks.
Copywright 2006 Douglas A. Puthoff
WHEN TITANS CLASH! Superman vs. Mr. Natural--Sept. 3, 2006.
Lately I've been thinking about the great underground cartoonist R. (short for Robert) Crumb, creator of Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and Angelfood McSpade, and other adult comic book creations. A few weeks ago I watched "Crumb," a documentary about his life. I've also been thumbing through The R. Crumb Handbook by Crumb and Peter Poplaski, a collection of his works along with a short autobiography.
Shortly after that I read part of a collect of the early issues of the Superman comic book. The Man of Steel and Crumb's creations floated through my brain, which couldn't help but to compare and contrast the early issue of Superman with Crumb's breakthrough works.
Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and Crumb all worked in the bastard child of the arts, the comic book. While there have been examples of excellent comics (Charles Schulz' Peanuts and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers spring to mind), the medium also contains its share of garbage. (Of course, one could say the same thing about other media.) On the surface the superheroics of Superman seem to possess little in common with Crumb's surrealistic, frequently pornograpic, comics. However, I opine that both Superman and Crumb represent the breaking down of barriers--especially the barrier of decent human behavior--best represented by the Freudian superego. Siegel and Shuster created Superman in the early 1930s, amid the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. During that time many people felt powerless against those two forces. Superman represented a sort of wish-fulfillment, a desire to straighten out the world of all its injustice. In the first story from the collection I read, Superman tries to stop the execution of a woman unjustly convicted of murder. He smashes his way through the governor's mansion. He ignores security guards who order him to stop and then fired their guns at him. The bullets ricochet off Superman's body. Our hero then tears open the steel door of the governor's bedroom.
In another story from the collection Superman goes after the corrupt owner of coal mine. A thrid story details the Man of Steel's attempt to persuade the owner of an American armament factory to stop supplying guns to a South American war. Frequently Superman goes beyond the law to achieve his ends. His attitude is similar to that of an Old West vigilante, transferred to 20th-Century America.
Crumb, on the other hand isn't so much worried about injustice as he is about his version of the truth, a version that collided with many people's definition of decent human behavior (and also what is appropriate for comic books, which are supposedly for kids). Crumbs work contains nudity, sex (including incest), and racial stereotypes (such as the aformention Angelfood McSpade). "Joe Blow," for example, begins sort of like a Blondie strip. By page three it turns into a incest fest. Crumb's work seems as if his superego had taken a vacation when he created it. And much of it is classic.
Siegel, Shuster, and Crumb, broke down barriers. And there may be no telling how many more barriers will be broken--for good or for bad.
Copyright 2006 Douglas A. Puthoff
A poem--Sept. 2, 2006
The Seeker
for Natalie Goldberg
I am a seeker
I roam from place to place,
Thought to thought,
Time to time,
Truth to truth,
Reality to dream,
and dream back to reality.
I sometimes visit the same place
Over and over again.
I have never been able to arrive
At one place
And stay there.
Copyright 2006 Douglas A. Puthoff
Holy Counterculture, Batman!--Jan. 29, 2006
The Batman television series debuted forty years ago this month. It grabbed my imagination and, though my childhood, never let it go. It was run, re-run, and re-re-run throughout my childhood and my early teenage years.
At first I took the show with all the seriousness of a dog gnawing on a bone. I lacked the maturity to realized that the series was never meant to be taken seriously. It wasn't until I was thirteen years old that I understood that fact. Knowing it was camp probably made me enjoy the show more.
And it sure beat the snot out of The Six Million Dollar Man.
Many comic book fans, however, hated the show. They thought it made their heroes, Batman and Robin, look like a pair of clowns.
As my adolescene turned into my adulthood, I began to discover other aspects of the Batman television series, aspects that seem a casue of concern now, and probably should have back in the 1960s when it was first broadcast.
One aspect of the series that concerns me was the portrayal of professional law enforcement officials. By watching the show on a regular basis, one got the feeling that Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City police department couldn't write a parking ticket without the help of a man dressed as a giant purple bat.
No wonder how much of the late '60s featured so much disrespect for the police. They were treated with direspect on TV.
Another aspect of the show that should have raised concerns centers around the portrayal of the villains. The bad guys are portrayed with a sense of joy about them. Meanwhile, Adam West and Burt Ward played Batman and Robin like a witless pair of party-poopers. The villains were much more interesting than the heroes. This had to have sent a disturbing message to the burgeoning teenage population: It's square to behave like a hero, but it's cool to behave like the Joker and Catwoman. This was another contribution the series made to the counterculture.
Some people may believe I'm reading too much into the series, and it was just a dumb TV program. And dumb TV programs don't affect real people. But if TV doesn't affect people, then why do corporations spend billions in advertising?
Idol Garbage--Jan. 30, 2005
It's official: American Idol has become the worst show in TV history.
This is a major accomplishment, considering it the competition it was up against: Joe Millionaire, America's Most Wanted, and Cops--and that's just from Fox, the network that broadcasts Idol.
An incident from the first week of this season's episodes gave it the dubious honor. It featured an eightteen-year-old womanchild. Someone she managed to make it through the preliminary judging and earned in audition for the show's main judges, including Simon Cowell, who makes Don Rickles look like Mother Teresa. From clips I've seen, her perfomance was lacking--in about everything. After the judges gave their honest opinions, she is seen crying her eyes out and babbling incoherently.
The more I think about this incident, the more it makes me ill.
For one, why was this woman allowed to perform for the main judges when she should have been disqualified earlier. Their can be no reason for her to appear in front of them except for the fact that it gave Cowell a chance to injected some rude remarks and give her the chance to perform and embarrass herself on national TV. And showing her breaking down after the performance was sadistic and voyeuristic...
Unless, as some people have speculated, she was just acting, pretending to have a nervous breakdown so that she could appear on TV. If that be the case, then her hysterics should not have been broadcast. If so-called "reality TV" is faked, then it shouldn't be on a realtiy TV show, or it shouldn't be called "reality TV"
Of course, most reality TV is--to paraphrase Harvey Pekar of American Splendor--bull. Contestants on reality shows are put through various contrived situations, as character on make-believe TV shows are.
The worst part of this American Idol travesty is that the young woman will probably receive more publicity than the competition's eventually winner. William Hung, the off-key warbler from last season's competition, received more press than its winner.
Perhaps the time has come for Fox to let American Idol die.Gorilla Celebration--Jan. 30, 2005
Tomorrow (Jan. 31), we celebrate a major holiday.
That's right. It's National Gorilla Suit Day.
This holiday was created in the early 1960s by Mad magazine artistic genius Don Martin (not, as some believe, by the gorilla suit companies). It encourages all Americans of every shape, size, and stripe to forget their differences, wear gorilla suits, and walk down their neighborhoods.
(But I guess you non-Americans can take part in it, too.)
But what if you can afford to buy or to rent a Gorilla suit, or if all the gorilla suits in your area have already been rented?
Fear not, as a public service of this webpage, we--well, I--will give alternatives so that you needn't miss out on all the fun of National Gorilla Suit Day (Henceforth known as NGSD).
1) Buy a DVD copy of the movie "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" and watch it. I bought one at a discount store for eighty-eight cents--a bargain at one-eighty-eighty the cost.
2) Watch the M*A*S*H episode wherein Major Burns needs a hernia operation and tries to talk Hawkeye and Trapper John into it.
3)Try to find a copy of "George of the Jungle", the 1997 movie featuring Brendan Fraser as Jay Ward's Tarzan takeoff. It's almost as good as the cartoon version (although, being a cartoon, there are no guys in gorilla suits).
4)See if the "Noggin" cable channel is showing an episode of The Electric Company. If you're lucky, it will have a "Jane of the Jungle" sketech featuring somebody in a gorilla suit. If it doesn't, maybe you'll luck out a see a skit wherein Rita Moreno yells, "HEY YOU GUYS!!" If you're really, really lucky, you'll see both.
5) Watch the "Boomerang" cable channel to see if it is showing The Banana Splits Show. One of the costumed splits wears something like a gorilla suit, though possibly closer to an orangatan. Whatever, I will guarantee that watching this show will make "The Tra-La-La Song" stick in head for a week.
6)Go to the library, or log onto the Internet (which you probably are if you're reading this article) and do research to see in which movie Marlene Dietrich wore a Gorilla suit--I'm not kidding. I read this fact in the New York Times, and we know that nobody from this august body of journalism would ever make stuff up.
7)Read up on the history of NGSD. The first place to begin should be Scott Shaw!'s (sic) Oddball comics column:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/oddball/
Not only will you receive a brief history of this holiday, but you will also learn more than probably ever wanted to know about comic legend Jerry Lewis and comic book legend Neal Adams.
8) Work on the creating the NGSD Foundation. When I was "Googling" recently, I was extremely disappointed to discover no such organization exists. We desparately need someone to correct this oversight. Then we need to hire a celebrity spokesman. Arbor Day didn't take off until The Arbor Day Foundation employed Eddie Albert as a celebrity spokesman. Maybe we can get Wayne Rogers, who played Trapper John on the aforementioned M*A*S*H episode, to do the honors.
9) Finally, make plans for NGSD 2010. Reserve your gorilla suit now, or start saving for it. Then, when that great and glorious day arrives, you can walk around the neighbor and tell anyone who asks that you're with the Census Bureau.
(Note 2010 is when the next United States census will be taken. Residents of other countries are advised to find out when their next census takes place. I can't do everything!)
Holdiay Traditions--Dec. 25, 2004
From 10 p.m. Christmas Eve until 7 a.m. Christmas Morning, Channel 7 here in Evansville showed, instead of its regular programming, a videotape of a Yule Log burning in a fireplace nonstop, accompanied by Christmas music from a local radio station. I think they did this becasue they wanted to give some members of the staff the night off. From what I understand, this holdiay tradition of using a Yule Log tape during Christmas was first used by WPIX in New York, which showed the Yule Log Burning from 1966 to 1989. After a hiatus of nearly a decade. WPIX returned the Log to its airwaves in 2001. Since its return, the Log has won the local ratings for its time slot. (Heck it's more entertaining than Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) This year, besides Evansville and New York, WGN in Chicago and a station in Minnepolis are also showing the Log, and maybe others I don't know about.
Yesterday I took part in another Holiday tradition: I watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for the umpteenth time. I think by now I have memorized all of the program's dialogue and could probably perform it as a one-man show a la Patrick Stewart's version of "A Christmas Carol". But I still find the Peanuts gang's misadventures comforting in reassuring. Especially in such troubled times as these.
Whatever one belives in about Christmas, it's a holdiay about traditions. I get the feeling that the human race finds its confort in traditions such as the TV Yule Log and "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Nowadays we can use all the comfort we can get.
(Reminds me Christmas 2001, when the Yule Log returned to WPIX, was the first Christmas after 9-11.)
The October Surprise--Oct 22, 2004
As of this writing, the price of a barrel of oil stood at $54.47. The price of a gallon of gasoline here in Evansville is now over two dollars a gallon.
Earlier this year some people predicted that the price of gasoline would actually drop before the Presidential election November 2. However, the opposite seems to be happening.
Why?
My theory is that the Arab States don't want the price of gas to fall. They want it high in order to try to run President Bush out of office.
Why?
My theory is that Arab leaders are seeing what is happening in Iraq. President Bush is trying to introduce democracy in that country. So far his efforts have resulted in the destabilization of that country. I belive that Arab leaders worried that this state of destablization will spread to the rest of the Middle East. The Arab leaders may be looking at their fall from power. And if Bush's attempt at democracy eventually succeeds, that may also mean Arab leaders' fall from power. Perhaps the Arab leader believe that by keeping oil prices high, they might upset the American public enough that they replace Bush with John Kerry. They hope that Kerry will grow tired of America playing International Cop in Iraq the way Bill Clinton grew tired of playing that game in Somalia. Kerry may decide to withdraw American forces to stem the tides of casualities.
To me it's all a bit scary that the Arab's could influence the American Presidential election this way.
Back in the Bad Ol' Days--Oct. 15, 2004
For about three months in 1978 I was living on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, across the street from the Atlantic Ocean, with my mother, my stepmother, and my younger brother. I remember during that Holiday season, right after Thanksgiving, seeing this commercial for Estee Lauder Fragrances. Usually I saw it during the five o'clock, when I was watching Carol Burnett and Friends. It feature an attractive brown-haired woman in white--in her late 40's, I'd guesstimate. She made a pitch for Estee Lauder products. At the the end of the sport she faced the camera and said to the audience in an upper-class accent, "Have a happy, happy, Holiday season. By late November darkness had already fallen upon the Outer Banks. And it was also the 1970s, a dark decade of energy shortages, inflation, and other various and sundry crises. By the smile on that woman, and the way she said "Have a happy, happy, Holdiay season," could have lit up the entire East Coast.
I wonder what happened to that woman. I wonder where she is right now. Is she still alive? Does she still possess that charisma. Or have the sands of time buried it? Is she still working in the TV industry, or has she gone on to another profession. Has she become a millionaire? Or a bag lady?
There was this other commercial broadcast during the 1978 Holdiay season. It sold "Sprite". The jingle used in that sport was to the tune of "Good King Wenceslas". In the last scene an attracitve blonde of about thiry blows senuously into a party favor and unfurls it. Next she takes it out of her mouth and smiles a toothy smile. I wonder if she is still alive. I wonder if she remembers that commercial. I wonder if she realizes that somebody else remembers it.
I always have to laugh at 1970s nostalgia. Why would anyone feel nostalgic about that dark decade? Most of the decade was bad--inflation, engergy shortages, bad fashion, bad TV, bad music. Bad, bad, bad, bad. Thanks goodness to these two women who lit up--if only for a few seconds--the darkness.
Review: "The Passion of the Christ"-- Sept. 10, 2004
Mel Gibson's movie about the hours before Jesus Christ's crucifixion is glorious, perhaps the best movie I have ever seen. My only issue with it is whenever Gibson and his fellow screenwriter augment the Gospels. For example, in none of the four Gospels will one find a dialogue between Satan and Jesus in the garden before Judas Iscariot's betrayal, as there was in the film's opening scenes. Also, none of the Gospels say anything about a pack of youths chasing Judas around before he hangs himself.
The movie is also violent. Extremely violent, physically and emotionally violent. But not unremittingly violet, as some of its critics have claimed. Gibson mixes in non-violent flashsbacks between scenes of Jesus' scourging and crucifixion. But neither is this a VeggieTales video. I would want any of my preteen nieces and nephews viewing it.
The movie doesn't go that much into Jesus' teaching, but it does cover its most important points: Love your neighbor, Pray for your enemies and forgive them. And--most importantly--that He died for a purpoese. He died for our sins. And in believing that fact, we are granted eternal life.
The greatest thing I took away from the movie is the extent to which Jesus suffered for our--and my--sins. Compared to what Jesus went through, my lifetime of suffering is microscopically minuscule.
Eating, Shooting, & Leaving--July 20, 2004
A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves, her compact volume about of punctuation, its rules, and their abuse by the English-writing peoples (not "people's") of the world. It's an interesting book, though I do disagree with some of her rules of punctuation. I think what Truss is trying to say is that the most important thing in communications is making yourself understood by the person you wish to communicate with. Failure to do so could bring about consequences.
I'm reminded of the story of the battleship that spotted a light dead ahead of it. The ship's captain believed that light was coming from another ship, so he ordered his signalman to send a message instructing the other ship to change course twenty degrees. The signalman did so and recevied a reply requesting that the battleship move twenty degrees.
The captain ordered the signalman to send another message saying, "I'm a captain, change course twenty degrees."
The reply: "I'm a seaman second class. You had better change course twenty degrees."
The captain, who was by then mad, told the signalman to send out another message, "I'm a battleship. Change course twenty degrees."
The reply: "This is a lighthouse."
Guess who changed course.
I've always thought there was something wrong with that exchange. I've always believed that the seaman should have acknowledged that he was signalling from a lighthouse with his first message instead of waiting a few messages. That would have saved much frustration on the captain's part.
The goal of communication is to make yourself understood to the people to who you are trying to communicate. Perhaps, if we all learn this fact, we can learn how to get along with each other in the world. Or, failing to do so (as we inevitably do), at least we can make the other side understand why we don't agree with him.
Communication is a two-way street. Besides trying to make ourselves understoon, we also need to try to understand the other person. There was a situation I had with the people who cleaned the store where I work. A week ago I was trying to push some shopping carts to their proper place. However, the shortest path between the two points was taped off so the cleaning crew could wax the floor. I tried to get some the cleaning crew to remove the tape. Unfortunately for me, all of the ones I talked to knew little or no English, since they came from Eastern Europe. Perhaps, if I had wanted to speak to them, I should learn their language.
I always say, if you're going to war, make sure you and your country's citizens know why you are fighting, and that they other country knows why you are fighting it. War is very costly--in terms of life, limb, and physical destruction.
Are superhero comics emotional pornography?
In my local newspaper the other day there appeared an Op-Ed piece by Danny Fingeroth, former editor of Marvel's Spider-Man comic books. He wrote that the hero represented heart, while Superman represented hope and Batman revenge.
I believe Fingeroth over intellectualizes in his piece. Ninety-five perecent of all superhero comics are nothing but emotional pornography. They are like Playboy and Penthouse, with violence replacing nudity. Superhero comics represent wish fulfillment for its reader, most of whom are adolescents--sometimes physical, always emotional. They perceive themselves powerless in changing the world, so their live their lives through costumed heroes, who possess superpowers and super-weapons and are quite capable of changing the world.
While reading Fingeroth's piece I was reminded of an article about Frank Miller, the writer and artist of The Dark Knight Returns, perhaps the definitive superhero comic. He said that many superheroes, including Batman and Superman, were created during the Great Depression and the eve of World War II. They were a response to the sense of powerlessness their creators felt at the time. Many of their readers also felt that way. Those who read how Superman was able to bring about justice felt a sense of vicarious joy, smiliar to the way a picture of a naked woman brings joy to other people.
The problem comes when poeple look at the world of comic books, where the heroes always win, and compare it to the real world, where the heroes often lose--and sometimes it often becomes difficult to tell the heroes from the villians. This leads to a sense of dissatisfaction with the real world and an increasing anger towards it. The person demands that things go his way. When they inevitably don't, he becomes angry.
The key to happiness is found in the book of Proverbs in the Bible. Chapter 23, verse 7 says, "As he thinks in his heart, so is he." (NKJV) You may not be able to control many things about your world, but you can control you response to them.
And that's the greatest superpower anyone can have.
Movie Review: "Bowling for Columbine"
Monday I watched "Bolwing for Columbine", Michael Moore's documentary about the Columbine High School shootings and American's seeming obsession with guns. The major problem with this movie is that Moore, instead of relying on a logical arguement to support tighter gun control laws, makes a two-hour feelie, substituting emotions instead of logic for his arguement.
This technique reaches its aceme in the movie's final vignette, wherein moore visits Actor and National Rifle Association President Charton Heston's house to argue for gun control. Heston puts up a weak defense. At the end of their conversation, Moore wants the actor to view a photo of a six-year-old girl shot to death by a six-year-old boy. Heston refuses, and he returns to his house. Afterwards Moore lays the photo in front of Heston's house. It's a touching scene, and that is the problem. Moore spends the whole movie using emotions instead of trying to build up and argument against guns.
Part of the problem is, of course, the medium Moore uses. Film is more conducive to the use of emotion than the written word, while the written page is more conducive to logic. In cinema it is easier to win people using emotion than it is to use logic.
Ironically, one of Moore's arguements is that the American news media manipulate people by using fear to get them to watch the evening use. Moore sets himself up as a hypocrite.
I also take issue with a scene wherein Moore travels to "K-Mart" to try to return some ammunition used in the Columbine shootings. The ammo is still in two of the shooting's survivors, who accompany Moore on the trip. Moore seems to imply that it is the store is to blame for the Columbine shootings by selling the bullets used in that attack. If Moore had been around Jerusalem in A.D. 33. He probably would have blamed the Jesus' crucifixion on whoever sold the Romans the nails they hammered into Jesus' body.
The most frustrating aspect of the movie is that Moore comes close--very close--to the reason for Americans' violent tendencies. However, he doesn't quite arrive there. People's attitude toward their fellow people is the reason why they are violent. It's the emotions that cause violence, whether through guns, through knives, through emotional violence or economic violence. Proverbs 23:7 says, "...as a man thinks in his heart, so he is." (NKJV). The first step toward changing our violent behavior is to change our attiudes.
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