Hey. Here's something I just posted for film class.

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Team America: World Police raises a lot of issues. Some of theses issues are political, others cultural. On the political side, we see Team America blindly destroy cities and kill innocent civilians during the course of their heroic missions, which of course brings to mind the destruction wrought on urban areas and civilians around the world during the course of war. (One could easily argue that this is pointed squarely and obviously at the United States war on terror, but I’ll leave that alone this time.) On the cultural side, we clearly see a skewering of our society’s celebrity-obsessed, media-saturated culture, and we also have a thorough ripping of lame Hollywood action-movie conventions.

You know, I think Team America: World Police is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. I just want to say that up front. My friends and I laughed so hard in the theater that I couldn’t hear half the movie and had to go back and watch it again just to get the full picture of what was going on.But, hilarious as the film is, it raises an issue which really chaps my ass. I may go off the deep end here, so please forgive me if it gets ugly. But, really, this whole movement to mock the Martin Sheens and George Clooneys of the world -- the tendency to dismiss celebrities’ views as somehow uninformed or unimportant and generally unworthy of the public’s attention -- is a movement that is sheer laziness at best and downright dangerous censorship at worst. Really, I just want someone to tell me -- why is Martin Sheen’s opinion so unimportant? Or George Clooney’s? Or Alec Baldwin’s? Or Sean Penn’s? Why are these opinions less valuable than, say, Rush Limbaugh’s? Or Shawn Hannity’s? Was Ann Coulter born with some sort of righteous red-white-and-blue stick up her ass that makes her inherently more knowledgeable than any other person who actually takes the time to study the newspapers or history books? (And just what history book is Ms. Coulter reading, anyway? The one where Joe McCarthy was a patriot and a hero, right? Oh, right.)

This may not be the most popular idea in the world these days, but let me just say that in the sad frame of our society, where more and more young people get their news from the The Daily Show and SNL’S “Weekend Update” than from daily newspapers, I think that informed celebrity opinions do have value. No one can argue that our world is consumed by celebrity. We’ve talked about it before. The market for celebrity “news” is gigantic and is not going away any time soon. So, if society places these people on a pedestal -- right or wrong -- isn’t it almost a necessity that these celebrities use their place on that pedestal to speak to their audience? Don’t they owe that to us? Liberal, conservative, whatever, if celebrities are given a voice of power it is incumbent upon them to speak with that voice. Does that mean that everything they say is the gospel truth? No. But is everything George Bush says the gospel truth? No. Is everything Jesse Jackson says the gospel truth? No. If George Clooney wants to speak his mind and raise issues to his audience that said audience might not otherwise hear, then he should do that. And as his audience, we should determine for ourselves whether his ideas have merit. And that determination can only be made by arming ourselves with our own information -- real information, facts and history from all angles. You can’t say George Clooney’s movie is bullshit just because Ann Coulter thinks Joe McCarthy is a patriot and she thinks George Clooney's movie is bullshit.

It really saddens me that so many people are so quick to disregard the opinions of others. Is it easier to swallow the party line, and look only at the thin layer of “news” the media hands us, and not explore the issues to the full extent they deserve? Sure it is. Is it easier to sit around the house with your bros, watchin’ CSI and chuggin’ Natty Light, rather than taking a few minutes out of the day to actually pay attention to the world around you? You bet. Is it ore fun to play Star Wars Galaxies for days on end, rather than take a few minutes out of each day to actually use the internet for something halfway constructive, like reading a newspaper or two from somewhere outside your hometown? Gosh, I guess so. Is it easier to make fun of somebody’s hairdo rather than actually think about the difficult issue they just raised? Well, yeah. Of course it’s easier. It's easier to do nothing all day than to do something for just one minute. But is it right? Is it better? I doubt it.