hmmmmm, populism!

i finally saw the trailer yesterday. with my ancient, snail-like dial-up at home, and the constantly flipping computer currently without audio, i watched it at the laundromat, with headphones. several times in a row, actually.
it indeed is, like a dailykos post yesterday called it the best-anti-bush-ad, ever.

wow.

priceless imagery, priceless soundbites ("i call you my base", "now watch this drive", "bad for the people, good for business"), fantastic editing. knowing michael moore, i am sure there is better yet to come and we've seen nothing yet with this little trailer.
and how i love his populism! "let me read to you the patriot act!". i'd never think i'd like populism, but facing this kind of a situation, it's direly needed to wake people from their collective consumerist stupor: time to show them the real bush behind the marketing. - or at least shake up their image a little bit.
i am, in all honesty, counting down the days till the documentary reaches the screens and will pre-order tickets for opening night, as soon as possible.

i was laughing hard and getting really excited, freaking off an american woman (who happened to get some things faxed by dieter as i was watching the trailer again and again) in the process. she was there with her daughter, and when dieter chit-chatted with her, asking whether they were on holidays, she tried to explain something in german about her daughter, the air force and boot purchasing for the army. it was a lil' puzzling, indeed.
it felt like she didn't want to elaborate the matter with us rampaging anti-american leftists, and i didn't feel like trying to uncover what she actually meant either. strange situation.

another fantastic anti-bush ad: reagan's speech at the 40th anniversary of d-day intercut with dubya's shabby speech on sunday.
while i reckon that reagan was not much brighter than dubya, he could at least deliver the lines written for him.
sure, it must be a substantial loss for his family, even though i guess (from personal experience) that after ten years with alzheimer's, it was on many levels a relief for him and them as well. i can't, however, get over the amount of history re-writing that's currently happening because of his death, at least in the non-european media i get to see round here. sure, funerals are a time when people tend to look at the good things to remember and gloss over the bad things about the deceased, but good lord, what are they doing these days?

from what i've seen on the non-european telly these past days, reagan not only ended the cold war, no, he was also the first to "care" about the us's neighbours in middle america (how many innocent people died because of his politics in el salvador, honduras, guatemala? - all i say is outside, it's america. outside, it's america.). i haven't heard anyone mention the disasterous foreign politics (anyone realised yet, that supporting islamic fundamentalists to counter soviet communism was a bad idea back then, and one of the reasons for the current shit we're all up to our necks in?) or the toll his interior politics took on the already poor.
i will always remember him as the president who failed to act during the aids crisis. i will remember him photoshopped with kaposi sarkoma lesions all over his face in colors magazine.
on the weekend, i saw a memorial docu on him, which featured a musical evening at the white house which culminated in nancy and him singing with the actors. - all that (apparently) during the iran contra affair. good grace. it made me cringe. and cringe. and cringe some more. almost as much as dubya playing golf.

on a nicer political note, i went to see joschka, our foreign minister, last thursday. what fun!
they hauled him down here as part of the green european election campaign, and it totally paid off. somehow i had never realised what an exceptional spontaneous speaker he is: a full-blown, die-hard politician, awfully quick-tongued and spontaenous.
there was lots of shouting from the audience, as customary at green party events, and joschka took the time to discuss things in detail with the shouthers. perfect opportunity for him to show off, and fun to watch as well.
the most notorious shouters belonged to a group of anti-globalist anarchists, who kept shouting things about leaving nato, dissolving all borders and joschka having sold out on his firm belief in socialism. they actually accused him off dropping his radical beliefs "in order to become foreign minister" to which he just joked that yeah, when he figured out in 1982 that party-politics was the way to achieve something and joined the early greens, he had done so because he knew that 16 years down the road, he'd be in a ruling coalition and foreign minister. yeah.
some moments were thought provoking. he actually got me to re-evaluate my stand on the eu and turkey and after a shout regarding iraq, he asked the audience to imagine what our current situation would have been like if the spd/gruene coalition had not been re-elected: stoiber would have surely send german troops to iraq, german soldiers would be dead now, and a madrid-style attack on german soil not exactly unlikely, too.
overall, the evening just confirmed my decision to vote green in the european elections, even though their stand on ip issues sucks, big time. fact is, when it comes down to it, i simply care more about our european constitution, a ban on gm-food and cloning , sound environemental standards and guidelines and other typically european issues than about ip. bad ip lawyer-to-be, me.

lastly: how good americans care so much about the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.