Current TV revisits Michael Moore's 'Bowling for Columbine'

[alp227]

It has been more than a dozen years since the killings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo, which should have been a wake-up call for America's obsession with guns. Instead, more violence has unfolded, up to and including last week's horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. With more gun violence as the backdrop, Current revisits Michael Moore's award-winning documentary, "Bowling for Columbine."

(Current will show the movie on Friday night 6pm ET/5 CT/3 PT.)

[DeSwiss]

1. K&R

MICHAEL MOORE: I think we’re a very frightened people. I think we’ve been frightened ever since we landed on these shores. We were frightened of the native people.; we were frightened of the slaves we brought over, as we should have been. And those in power have known how to manipulate us with fear. And we’ve started wars over being told lies about, you know — whether it was in the Spanish-American War, the Mexican-American War.

You can go through so many of these wars we’ve been in throughout history — right up through the Iraq War — where we’re just lied to because those in power knew if they just put enough fear out there. And the best kind of fear is the one that has the kernel of truth, so you have 9/11 happened — that’s a real incident, nearly 3,000 people lose their lives. Very easy at that point to use that fact in a way to tell a fiction.

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And I was fascinated in that subject when making ‘Bowling for Columbine,’ of how fear is used to the point where everybody feels like they’ve got to have a gun in the house. Now, not every house has a gun but we’ve got over a quarter-billion guns in people’s homes. And they’re mostly in the suburbs and rural areas where there is virtually no crime and no murder.

So why is that? What are they really afraid of? What do they think of — who’s going to break into the house? Do they think it’s little freckled-face Jimmy down the street? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s who they’re afraid of. And it cuts down to the heart of our race problem that we still haven’t resolved. And I thought it would be interesting to take a look at that in the movie. (source: Current TV)

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- In a nutshell, they're all scared shitless......

[tclambert]

2. Michael Moore is a little like Cassandra, the Trojan prophetess cursed to never be believed.

He gets these predictions right, but so few listen to him. It must be very disheartening.

In Roger and Me, he showed what happened in Flint and predicted corporate attitudes toward labor would lead to more of it. Flint has lost even more GM jobs since the time of that movie. In Bowling for Columbine, he essentially predicted that our love and guns and our craziness would lead to more school shootings.

What have we done to address the problems he raised? Essentially nothing. In some ways, we've made it easier for these problems to get worse.

[drynberg]

3. Ole MM is indeed a fine predictor, however...

Now, maybe, more will listen to him and ACT. As terrible as Newtown is and was, perhaps those babies didn't all die in vain, perhaps their senseless murder will get us moving towards "regulating our militia", to coin a phrase...