War Made Easy Held Over @ NWFF

Despite being narrated by Sean Penn, it's fairly lo-fi -- a cool-headed interview with media critic Norman Solomon intercut with film and video footage to illustrate salient points on how gullible/acquiescent the American public is when it comes to run-ups to war and how supine the media generally is until after the fact, when lone, contrarian voices are celebrated as if "we knew it all along."

For the record, the Iraq Resolution passed both the House and Senate with around 75% of our elected officials thinking this was the right thing to do.

If there's nothing all that earthshaking to tell at this point, it's remarkable how pornographic television's Iraq War graphics look on the big screen, accompanied by martial drumbeats. And the part about the Donahue show being canceled prior to the Iraq War's start (because NBC worried they'd look "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity") reminded us of when another talk show host, Nebraskan radical Dick Cavett, was an enemy of our great nation:

Nixon: So what is Cavett?
Haldeman: He’s…Oh, Christ, he’s…God, he’s..
Nixon: He’s terrible?
Haldeman: He’s impossible. He loads every program…automatically he’ll…
Nixon: Nothing you can do about it, obviously?
Haldeman: We’ve complained bitterly about the Cavett shows.
Nixon: Well, well is there any way we can screw him? That’s what I mean. There must be ways.
Haldeman: We’ve been trying to.