Channeling the nonexistent

From Agence France Presse via Expatica:

Unhappy, alienated America on view at film fest

«DEAUVILLE, France, Sept 9 (AFP) - If movies coming out of a country speak to the fears and aspirations of its people, then Americans must be feeling very much strangers in a strange land right now, judging from the Deauville Festival of American Film.»

It seems that the less the European social-political elite understand about a place, or feel unable to control it, the more nervous they get. They appear to be continuing to express these feelings not just in their endless yackity-yack, but in film festivals, which to them might seem like the height of human decisiveness and social action.

«Brosnan, an Irish actor living in the United States, went further and laid bare Hollywood's general disdain for the man in the White House.

"This man called President Bush has a lot to answer for," he said at the start of the festival. "I don't know if this man is really taking care of America."

The reflection of US society in its celluloid mirror will be brought into even sharper focus with the speeches at the close of the Deauville festival on Sunday -- the day America commemorates the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.»

Now that sure took a great deal of grace, didn’t it? Short of making the nodding and wise film-fest organizers, speakers, the press road-show, and attendees look nodding and wise, it makes them look like resentful whiners who simply don’t understand the rest of the world.

Then too, the predictability of their press release comes at so little of a surprise, I wonder why a news outfit would even carry it. It’s not like we wont be able to hear the exact same thing again in about a month or so, and it’s not like any of their predictions of doom and darkness have ever actually materialized.

Whether they’re “nodding and wise” Stepford-child-like poseurs or zit-faced twits sitting around in their Spiderman undies and beating off makes no difference – they don’t actually DO anything, and they are nothing more that a sideshow trying to wield more influence than they deserve as a sort of lesser tribe of the trazi guilt-trip circuit.

Far from being ignored, it’s probably not a bad idea to see just who it is that admires them. Whatever they do, be wary of it and look into the reasons to pursue the opposite course. In the past they haven’t been right about much of anything. They make an excellent contrarian guide.

So by all means CARRY ON Pierce, show us the way! In fact show EVERYONE the way, even Doctors, Lawyers, relief organizers, and people with PhDs in International relations. We know you’re an authority - after all you have all that experience in the “law enforcement look” that’s so ‘mid-90s’, and your stand-in can sight a pistol, pilot a plane, and apparently disarm a warhead and de-orbit a flight vehicle… Wow, what a CV! Tremendous for a man that didn’t get past high school.

In fact the over-reported cultural festivals of France are turning into a kind of social policy think-tank which is so ineffectual that they’re easily outdone by Loyal order of Moose in their ability to advance humanitarian causes and goals – without all the negativity, cognitive dissonance, and self-loathing that comes with being a wealthy socialist.