Of Truth and Light

As the release of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 draws nearer, conservatives and Bush supporters are scrambling to suppress the movie. Even the MPAA is working to limit the number of eyeballs in theatres by giving the film an R-rating.

Here’s a simple question to ask your conservative friends: “How can it possibly be helpful to suppress this movie?”

If its charges are true, shouldn’t Americans know about them?

And if its charges are false, exposing the film to public scrutiny becomes even more important. When Moore stretched the truth and fudged details in Bowling for Columbine, reporters identified these distortions and trumpeted them from the rooftops.

For the moment, Americans still enjoy access to a powerful, self-correcting system: a free press. If Moore’s movie is packed with factual errors, the press will identify them within minutes of the movie’s release. News stories will follow; as a filmmaker, Moore will be shortly discredited.

We don’t need conservative watchdogs to patrol our theatres and dictate what we are allowed to see. We don’t need Republican operatives to tell us whether or not a film like this should be screened in an election year.

Rather than squash the movie … why not drag it out into the open, and let us decide its veracity for ourselves?

As one of my former teachers once said, “You can’t hurt the Truth by exposing it to light.”

Note: as of today, the only Mississippi theatre managers with guts enough to show the film are at the Malco chain in Tupelo. Here in the state’s capitol city, not one single screen is scheduled to show the most important film of this year.

Meanwhile: Shrek 2 is being screened more than thirty times a day.