The most recent Time Magazine cover story, “Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?”, asks us to ponder a question that I believe any rational person with an ear to the American political arena has already answered. The real question then becomes, is it good for rational America to pay any attention?

Glenn Beck has a built a career around being hated. He portrays himself as the underdog, the outcast of the liberal media machine. In truth, though, the mainstream media loves him, and I don't just mean Fox News. Without using Glenn Beck as the grading curve for honesty and ethics in journalism, most mainstream journalists look pretty bad. Before him that responsibility fell on the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his slightly less abrasive cousin, Bill O'Reilly. But after awhile even their rhetoric gets old, and you have to find someone louder, angrier, and quicker to pull the race card out of his bag of tricks.

After his 9/12 rally in D.C. I really started to notice the hype surrounding Glenn Beck, where before I only listened with passing amusement. Like when he said that global warming wasn't just a lie, but the greatest scam in history. Since then he has claimed that Barack Obama "has a deep seated hatred for white people," and that Cash for Clunkers was really just a ploy to gain access to your computer so the government can spy on you.

The problem with giving such madness any sort of scrutiny is, in a way, enabling it to continue. You don't give a lighter to a pyromaniac.

I've read a lot of articles, op-eds, and blogs about Glenn Beck lately, mostly discounting him as as a money-hungry hack pretending to be a newscaster, but most are unfairly dismissive of him. He's nothing if not a force to be reckoned with, a powerful messianic figure aimed to drill into the reserves of social unrest and the fear that the American racial hierarchy is turning upside-down. The angry mobs that crowded the D.C. Mall are proof that at least a few thousand are swallowing everything he has to say, poised and ready to take up arms at his whim.

The comparison made by some to the ranting newscaster with a Messiah complex, Howard Beale, of the prophetic 1976 film “Network” is not unfair. I also believe it wouldn't be insulting to Beck, who seems to have taken his character straight from Beale's play book. The difference between Beck and Beale is, however, that Beale's fears were not unfounded. He was scared that the whole world was becoming a consumer, that television was taking the place of reality, and that there is “an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube!”

Which is what makes Glenn Beck's brand of hysteria that much more dangerous. He's a charismatic, if unbalanced showman, and for those who follow him blindly, he is the Messiah. If we are silent to his ravings, while keeping a watchful eye on his followers, we will do better to extinguish the fire. I just hope those affected by his fear-mongering are done protesting, and go back to sitting idly by the tube. Otherwise, Glenn Beck will not only be bad for America, he will be bad for the world.

Toronto Film Fest Muddies the Waters with Michael Moore

The Toronto International Film Festival has recently become a forum not just for critics of film, but critics of journalistic ethics as well. With activist-film darling Michael Moore's recent debut and unexpected government officials present, the festival events Sunday became fraught with politics.

A recent New York Times article aimed to shed light on the (perhaps) criminal underbelly of documentary filmmaking. Many, including Moore, have been less than honest with us in trying to accomplish a social or political goal, distorting and often completely ignoring the truth.

After the screening of Michael Moore's latest offering, "Capitalism: A Love Story," a panel of filmmakers, producers, and others, met to discuss honesty in documentary filmmaking. Adding to the theatrics, government film commissioner and national chairperson of the Film Board of Canada, Tom Perlmutter, showed up out of the blue to put his own two cents in.

Focusing on a recent report from the Center for Social Media at American University, titled “Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work”, the panel debated what alterations of the truth were allowable, if any. Some nasty revelations were made in the report, concluding that many documentary filmmakers will draw upon impact over honesty in revealing the film's "higher truth."

An unflattering parallel could be drawn to the techniques employed by exploitation filmmakers and one documentarian, who when interviewed admitted to telling crew members to break the legs of rabbits "in order to get better shots of animals being hunted by others in the wild." The only comparison in recent history as gruesome as this can be found in the controversial 1980 film "Cannibal Holocaust" which was banned in over 50 countries, partly for its real on-camera depiction of animal cruelty.

So, can these documentarians be blamed for their morally corrupt techniques? Should we ban these practices, or do the ends justify the means? I hope these filmmakers can find a way to promote social justice without degrading it in the process.

All's Fair in War and Journalism

In a media landscape that's so overly saturated with round-the-clock cable news updates and commentary, streaming video coverage, and the latest headlines being pushed to your smart phone, it's amazing that anything of public interest could be left out of the mix.

So, how does a story get swept under the floorboards? More often than not the answer is politics. Take for example the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under pressure from government propagandists, most media outlets have often shied a way from hard hitting news stories on the brutal realities of war. Sure they'll give you the numbers and pundit-driven policy debate, but when it comes to actual coverage the mainstream media has done a piss-poor job of giving it to us straight.

In a marked shift from its usual lack of gusto, the media can be proud of one of its own. The Associated Press has come under fire recently for releasing a photo of a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan who was fatally wounded in combat. Despite a lot of pressure from government officials, the reporter who took the photo, Julie Jacobson, and the AP have stood their ground.

The picture shows the soldier bleeding from a wound in his leg with his fellow Marines crouched around him offering support. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has begged that the photo not be released, calling it "a matter of common decency," but AP senior managing editor, John Daniszewski, fought back. "We felt that the picture told a story that people needed to see and be aware of."

For most Americans the wars seem very far away. It's difficult to understand the consequences of these wars, and the numbers aren't enough to drive the point home. Ours is an image driven culture, yet we have so little to show for so many casualties. If the Department of Defense is scared that a photo will weaken public support, so be it. I was under the impression that the media's role was to empower the public to make informed decisions, not just give us continuous coverage of celebrity deaths.

Radio Canada

Have you got some Canadian envy? Yet more evidence showing our neighbors to the north somehow grew bigger brains than us.

My first blog! It feels so wrong it must be right

Hello world!