TheMillerCircle.org

Over the weekend of June 6-8, 2008 the National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) was held at the Minneapolis Convention center in downtown Minneapolis. This is a group that is committed to media reform and has an organizational scheme to recover our once "free press" as an institution of objective journalism. This was the fourth annual meeting organized by FreePress.net and was attended by about 3500 people from many walks of life, but mostly by those associated with some aspect of journalism or activism. FreePress itself is a relatively new organization, but has had impressive leadership during its short existence. The emphasis for this movement has come about during the GW Bush presidency and is directed towards reshaping American political journalism and especially broadcast journalism which has gotten off the beaten path as almost everyone can attest. In general, this is a very progressive liberal movement. But, as Arianna Huffington emphasized, "we are not the left, we are mainstream. Every major issue we are emphasizing about the war, our health care system and the direction our country is going is supported by 60-80% of Americans."

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In the documentary film “Jesus Camp” by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, one sees an alarming side of radical Christian fundamentalism. Children, at very young ages (below 13 and preferably between 7 and 9), are taken to evangelical summer camps (the documentary shows a camp in North Dakota) where they are exposed to an intense form of indoctrination to ward off society’s evil secular influence and produce young people better prepared to live a life committed to Christ and the word of God, as given to us from the Bible, but strictly interpreted by the evangelicals: it is a Christian madrassa. “ “Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots,” declares Pastor Becky Fischer with jovial satisfaction in the riveting documentary.” I would say any Democrat or any other Christian would be concerned about the kind of indoctrination you see in these camps, aimed at producing “God’s Army” for the future takeover of America. It is alarming if for no other reason than the fact that they idolize G.W. Bush as a president who is out to fulfill their destiny to make the United States a nation living under the evangelical banner. A super life-sized cardboard image of GW is presented, prayed to and thanked for bringing their quest into a form of political reality. Special inspirational sessions are given on the pure evil of abortion and the children get introduced to other true evils of the world, which is just about everything else not emphasized in the camp. It is an inoculation program to protect the Jesus Camp children from falling victim to the devil that is trying to consume the world.

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In quick succession, two giants of film, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died at ages 89 and 94 respectively. If you came out of the resonating generation, you had to be impacted by their movies. When I saw Bergman’s “Seventh Seal” in the late 1950s, it changed forever the view that I had about movies as art, as all of his movies seem to beg the question about urging his viewers to search a little deeper into your life for meaning. But, I was quite blown-away by Antonioni’s movie “Blowup” which was his most successful film and which, for many, many years was my favorite. Not long ago, I got a chance to watch it again and didn’t feel quite as passionate about it, as I did in the 1960s, but then, during that period, when we were all caught up in the intellectual period of film-making and film as art, the transition from John Wayne to “Blowup” made John Wayne never seem quite the same. Then of course when I learned about John Wayne being the prince of right-wing, anticommunist actors on a rather large scale, on seeing “True Grit” I thought that some good hearted liberal had poked his eye out.

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