Orwell Rolls in His Grave

"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality...and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening." So wrote George Orwell, in his classic novel 1984, about the world's Big Brother-manipulated people, and the observation bears a striking similarity to our current sorry state of civic clueless-ness. A breathtaking, take-no-prisoners documentary, filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas' Orwell Rolls in His Grave is about the rampant corruption in mainstream American media, coupled with decades-long complicity in political abuse and fraud. From the early 1980s New York Post headlines whipping up panic over "gas shortages" to the stunning conviction, held by an enormous segment of the American public and fostered by a press that did little to refute it, that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pappas documents how corporate-owned media with "enormous conflicts of interest" turn lies into truth and generate huge private profits on the public airways that they monopolize while simultaneously failing to serve the public interest. None of this will be news to anyone who's really been listening, but seeing it laid out so bare--and watching the shamelessness of the mainstream media pimping the "official" version--is infuriating. A very timely look, especially in light of the recent Big Brother-like revelations that the Bush administration has been delivering federally-produced prepackaged "news" stories (featuring reporters with fake names) to TV stations. Highly recommended. (M. Johanson)