*Nothing But The Truth, Maybe -The Film Version

Click On Title To Link To Trailer For Film "Nothing But The Truth".

DVD Review

Nothing But The Truth, starring Kate Bakendale, 2009

In the normal course of my work in this space I don’t generally review current commercial films, except when they provide some kind of political or social comment that is in line with my aims. Or I have an ax to grind. The latter turns out to be the case here. The plot of this film revolves around a First Amendment freedom of the press question of a high profile, Type-A newspaper women protecting a source at least that is the way it unfolds, although it is done in a somewhat ham-handed and obviously benignly liberal way.

On the face of it, a film about the praiseworthy efforts of a doggedly determined print reporter bound, seemingly beyond reason, to protect her source of knowledge about why the President of the United States called in a patently erroneous retaliatory strike on Venezuela (you can see where the problem is already, I assume) seem to be tailor –made for praise from this reviewer. Except everything is wrong here. That includes everything, from the source the reporter is protecting to her refusal to divulge her source under very trying circumstances, to say the least, (I won’t give that source up here either. I am not tattle-tale and moreover that revelation provided the only real twist in this whole sorry plot line.) to the nasty twist and turns of the federal special prosecutor who is trying to nail her in the interest of “national security”.

Don’t get me wrong, or at only get me wrong a little. We better fight tooth and nail to maintain a free press and other forms of expression against governmental interference. But one must pick and choose one’s battles. Off of this plot line and off the moral dilemmas the reporter willingly placed herself in there is certainly a question about her political acumen, to say nothing of her common sense.

But the real issue here, aside from the liberal bend of putting up the good fight to maintain the free press that drives the film, is that the vaunted “forth estate”, of late, has been pretty sorry in real life when it comes to opposing the American government’s propaganda lines. A medium that was asleep at the wheel, in many cases willingly so, during the lead up to the Bush portion of the Iraq War, and for a long time after, is hardly worthy, as the people associated with this production seem to think, of positive treatment, even when one could admire the tenacity if not the common sense of the reporter in this drama. While we desperately need to protect free expression this film did not add much to our real life knowledge about how to defend it. Certainly not the way it played out in this film, that is for sure.

REINSTATE WARD CHURCHILL

COMMENTARY

CONTROVERSIAL PROFESSOR FIRED BY COLORADO REGENTS

Well, they finally got controversial University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill. This week the Colorado Board of Regents acting on a recommendation by the school voted 8-1 to fire him. Ostensibly, as always, it was for some academic infractions but we know the real reason. After 9/11 Professor Churchill had the ‘gall’ to express his opinion in an article that those killed in the World Trade Center attack, as agents of American imperialism and part of the technological infrastructure that drives the machine, were essentially fair game for attack. I will make a brief comment on that analysis below. What is important here is that speech, academic speech in this case, is really what drove the Regents’ decision. That is the real issue and the one that all militants, leftists, and just plain old ordinary garden variety democrats should be howling to the rooftops over. One does not have to be in political agreement with the good professor to know that the whole point of the vaunted freedom of expression that we are desperately trying to defend against the yahoos only works when controversial expression is safeguarded. Otherwise it is just something nice for the bourgeois democrats to point to in their constitution.

As for Professor Churchill’s thesis. Hell, it is so wrong politically it is hard to believe that one who fancies himself a progressive would write it. Let us get this straight-the Al Qaeda actions in New York were not acts of anti-imperialism. They were crimes. Moreover, as I have stated before on other occasions, we are in a life and death struggle against Islamic fundamentalism to win the Islamic masses for socialism. Make no mistake about that. The way to defeat imperialism is not to arbitrarily and indiscriminately blow up civilian targets no matter how symbolic but by painstakingly political organizing to overthrow that system and replace it with a socialist one. In the meantime ordinary people have a right to go about their lives. To compare them to Nazis is over the top. Our fight is elsewhere. And that is the point. These criminal actions were manna from heaven for the imperialists wedding the mass of Americans to Bush and Company. But enough of this. The fight right now is –Reinstate Professor Churchill. Send messages of protest and solidarity with Professor Churchill to the University of Colorado Regents.