Evidently Disney wants to prevent distribution of Michael Moore’s film Farenheit 911, which is about Bush family ties to Saudi families, including, Ooops!, the Bin Ladins.
I expect that as this little imbroglio develops we may see a Sausage Factory story or two from Harold about it. In the meantime, I invite you to contemplate the irony of this film’s title — with its echoes of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, about the necessity of government censorship to keep people from being confused by the truth.
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I dont know what the quality of this documentary will be, but “Bowling for Columbine” was an excellent visual documentary. I was surprised by Moore found out. I thought it would be the gun bad, gun good etc. Instead the thesis tot he documentary was that it wasnt guns or gun ownership that was the issue, it was the culture of fear that was incited by the media.
Those that get upset about the documentary because it flipped some footage of Charlton Heston or has some errors in it are missing the point. The documentary ends up being a pro-gun-ownership film and an anti-media fear and violence film. By the end of the film we discover that “Marilyn Manson” was correct.
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Actually, this one was too easy a shot.
ABC, oddly enough, has been kinda odd man out on the media ownership stuff. They aren’t anywhere close to the ownership cap and don’t have any interest in acquiring newspapers. Look at the Nightline special, for example.
But Disney is a big media company and it needs favors from the administration. It needs the US Trade Representative to smack around developing nations until they adopt our copyright laws (DMCA, broadccast flag) regardless of their own decisions on what serves the interests of their citizens. So when the Bush Administration calls “here bitch,” Eisner says “bark bark bark.”
The ruthelessness of this administration in controlling media has been pretty blatant. May be too blatant. A year ago, most Americans never even thought about “media consolidation” or what it might mean. That’s changing.
Harold wrote;
>It needs the US Trade Representative to
>smack around developing nations until
>they adopt our copyright laws
>(DMCA, broadccast flag)
The managed trade agreement between the US and Australia has this;
“… each Party shall provide that any person who: (i) knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know, circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance or phonogram, or other subject matter; or ….. shall be liable and subject to the …… ”
from 17-8(i) at; http://www.dfat.gov.au/trad…
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I grew up on Orlando, and remember it in its agricultural county seat mode before Disney came. Nothing the Mouse does surprises me.
I endorse Carl Hiaasen’s long essay on Disney, <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/… Rodent: How Disney Devours the World</a>.
It’s interesting to me that the media hasn’t pointed out, through any of this, that Eisner is essentially a lame duck. I haven’t quite figured out what that means yet, either; I don’t have a problem imagining that Roy Disney, were he given control again, also would <em>not</em> want to distribute the film, but he’d also find a way to divest Miramax rather than hang on to a double standard.