I finally got around to watching the recent Bill Moyers special, Buying the War, which is about how the Iraq War was "sold" to the American people, how the press went along with it and how even a lot of prominent Democrats fell right in line with the narrative.
A lot of pro-Bush folks are quite upset at this show…and I suppose that if one is still clinging to the idea that our leaders did everything right, I understand that. I can also understand why newsfolks and pundits whose faulty predictions and disproven "facts" are reaired would be upset. (Nothing seems to upset Bill O'Reilly more than having someone haul out his old words.) I'm not sure though why anyone who can get past the "our team" mentality is bothered by anything other than the long, sad litany of how our leaders — Republican and Democrat, in the press and out — screwed up. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine who's still gung ho and supportive of the Iraq War urged me to watch Buying the War. He thinks the U.S. did the right thing to take out Hussein but is mad that it was justified with fibs and incompetent reporting.
You can decide for yourself since the whole thing can be watched online at this site. You can also watch Moyers' weekly show online on this page. He has a nice interview up with Jon Stewart, which includes the host of The Daily Show reflecting on his recent, contentious interview with John McCain. You might also enjoy Moyers' interview with Joshua Micah Marshall, the Master Blogger I quoted here the other day. I don't know how long these videos will be up but last night here, I told you about a program called Orbit Downloader which can be used to capture the video clip to your harddisk for later viewing.
Nothing above, by the way, should be taken to infer that I've changed my view that public money should not be used for television programming. I watch a lot of things on PBS but I still don't agree with the idea of government funding of the arts.