Friday Fun Links

Matt Welch | October 15, 2004

Well, "fun" may be the wrong word for a Schoolhouse Rock take-off "inspired by the writings of Noam Chomsky" ... but if you'd rather see a send-up of how Michael Moore would have documentarized The Lord of the Rings, there's always this. (Both links stolen from Dr. Frank.)

Comments

|10.15.04 @ 2:54PM|#

Ha! That was great! I loved Schoolhouse Rock. I guess I have the same pavlovian response to it that just about everyone my age who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons does. We're suckers for shit like this.

|10.15.04 @ 3:06PM|#

Or, to put the two together, there's this:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html

UNUSED AUDIO COMMENTARY BY HOWARD ZINN AND NOAM CHOMSKY, RECORDED SUMMER 2002, FOR THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (PLATINUM SERIES EXTENDED EDITION) DVD, PART ONE.

I might have first seen this from Hit & Run. Then again, maybe not. So here it is. :-D

|10.15.04 @ 3:07PM|#

Are you listening, Bush and Kerry ad men?

"Energy, we gotta stop using it up...."

KipEsquire|10.15.04 @ 3:18PM|#

"I'm just a fraud. Yes I'm only a fraud..."

|10.15.04 @ 3:28PM|#

Sort of amusing how something like that could have a message that a libertarian could love. Pirates and emperors, indeed.

Warren|10.15.04 @ 4:13PM|#

Yeah, pretty funny, except where they try to portray the sandinistas as a bunch of swell guys.

jonthegm|10.15.04 @ 4:32PM|#

Man, I miss those nutty sandinistas.

Good times... Good times...

|10.15.04 @ 5:10PM|#

I can't stand that Aragorn and his puppeteer, Gandalf the Grey (or White or whatever color he is this week). What did Sauron ever do to them? Poor orcs.

|10.15.04 @ 5:17PM|#

I thought Fellowship 9/11 was a riot. Thanks for the link, too.

Nathan|10.15.04 @ 5:30PM|#

Pro Libertate reminds me of a critique of the Lord of the Ring by David Brin:

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/

|10.15.04 @ 6:54PM|#

The LotR spoof could have been done so much better. I did love the orcs at the park, flying kites and such.

|10.15.04 @ 7:29PM|#

I don't think they were portraying the Sandanistas as nice guys, they were just pointing out that the US funded a bunch of terrorists in the Contras.

|10.16.04 @ 5:55PM|#

Fellowship 9/11 was pretty funny, but Moore is wearing the WRONG HAT in the movie. Senor Inaccurate Corpulency wears State hats. Don't sully UM's reputation.

|10.16.04 @ 6:57PM|#

Great concept. If only they had been able to make it look like The Holy Grail instead of a LARP meet.

|10.16.04 @ 10:07PM|#

I apologize if I offended any overweight people with my last post. It was supposed to read "worthless fat fuck".

"worthless" is the key derrogative word. "fat" is just a descriptive incidental (incase someone momentarily forgets who I am talking about, while they are reading).

|10.16.04 @ 11:42PM|#

Don`t be so hard on Michael Moore. He does a wonderful job of preaching to the choir. The only reason why people get upset is because his last two films were hits. His next film about health care is sure to be box office death. His new fans don`t really care about the issues. They just want to play at bit being sandinstas or Che or whatever it is that pinky brains like to do.

|10.17.04 @ 2:29AM|#

At iFilm they had an interesting video entitled Jon Stewart's Brutal Exchange with CNN Host - at one point he referrs to Tucker Carlson as a "Dick".

I've never watched Crossfire myself as I don't have cable - but it seemed interesting that John Stewart repeatedly cowered in his "I'm a comedian - don't take me seriously" shell while continually sucker punching the Crossfire hosts.

Kind of like the thugs in elementary school who, when questioned by a teacher for beating other kids would respond "We were just playin'!".

With Johnny, it's all dead-serious - unless you point out the hypocracy of his comments - then it's just comedy.

...similar to Al Franken's MO - though in the few cases where I've heard him make a factual mistake (like when he said that Kerry used a 50mm machine gun in Vietnam) he at least corrected his misstatement a few days later in the same time slot.

I haven't noticed any Republicans that rant about stuff and then assert that the parts that were refuted or otherwise in doubt were just "jokes", but I figure it won't be long until Republican comedians adopt the same tactics.

Maybe there are no Republican comedians?

|10.17.04 @ 1:19PM|#

Jon Stewart: thug? Hmmm... I think Stewart was being a little hypocrital, but ultimately, The Daily Show IS a comedy program on Comedy Central, while Crossfire is supposedly a "news analysis" show on CNN. The former's job is to make us laugh and the latter's is to make us think. The former succeeds and the latter fails spectacularly (maybe even deliberately).

This isn't meant to defend those who make serious arguments and then hide behind the "comedy" screen. Moore does that far too often, but I've never seen Franken (or Mahr or Miller) do it. I disagree with Franken on many issues, but I think he's got a lot of integrity. And he is a goddamned funny man.

Brian Doss|10.18.04 @ 1:56PM|#

The portrayal of Nicaragua was of happy little "indigenous" folks chopping down the client state pole that Uncle Sam put in there, overlaid with a line talking about the people & self determination, etc. Then, its mean old (nay, evil) Uncle Sam hiring thugs & murderers to teach those happy-go-lucky indigenouses the price of rebellion against the Emperor, which made everything sad and yucky.

Now, how exactly is that *not* a whitewash of Sandinista brutality? The reality on the ground was almost 180-degrees different from the cartoon's portrayal (nothing about the disappeared political opponents, massacres of natives, neighborhood spying, institutionalized prison torture, 'nationalizing' industry that happened to line Ortega et al.'s pockets, for example...). The Sandinistas were lefty statists nursing a grudge for 40 years; just another set of pigs to take over the farmhouse in the end.

And never mind the fact that the Sandinista regime was every bit the 'imperial client state' for the USSR as the Somoza regime was for the US.

The irony is that they commit the fallacy that they're railing against- the Sandinistas were as bloody-minded as the Contras but the cartoon gives 'em a pass because they're bigger/the state... (or maybe because they're 'for the people,' thus they can get away with mass murder of The People for the greater good.)