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Now Blogging Afresh at Ad Orientem 西儒 - The Western Confucian



Thursday, September 15, 2005

An Antiwar Movie
A "war indictment every bit as moving and powerful as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" without the divisive politics and snide jokes": 'I Know I'm Not Alone'

It was precisely "the divisive politics and snide jokes" that weakened Mr. Moore's film. Had he played it straight, people outside the hard-core Left might have listened to him. "I Know I'm Not Alone" looks to be a far better film.

I recognized director and star Michael Franti's name from two 80s/90s acts that I listened to when I could stomach such genres as hardcore punk and hip-hop: The Beatnigs and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. I saw the former in 1988 with perhaps a dozen people in a small Buffalo, NY club called "The Pipe Dragon" that catered to the Straight edge* crowd. Their intelligent music epitomized the best and worst of the Left, striking a true note with songs like "Television: The Drug of the Nation" but going astray with a pro-gay, pro-abortion agenda.

*How dark indeed must 1970s mainstream culture have been to have produced a "no drugs, no alcohol, no sex" counter-cultural movement?