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Michael Moore is a documentarian in about the same way that Rush Limbaugh is a journalist.

They’re comedians. Just like documentarians and journalists, they work with facts. But Moore and Limbaugh each have a target market. Facts are something to be carefully selected, pruned, clipped, twisted and distorted, if necessary, to make that target audience laugh, clap, cheer, and feel good about themselves and their prejudices. Neither is interested in getting to the bottom of things. Neither wants to dig out the real truth. It’s just not their job.

Still, I’m sorry to see the Walt Disney Co. blocking the release of Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Coming right on the heels of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s blackout of ABC News’ Nightline program last week, I’m starting to worry about giant corporations playing nanny, and deciding which facts or ideas we’re permitted to hear.

It worries me. Even if Michael Moore is a clown.

Thirty-four years ago today, I was a senior in high school. It was a Monday.

The Vietnam War was in full swing. I was not yet eligible for the military draft, but that day was fast approaching. My own opinion of the war was still in flux. A year or two earlier I had forcefully told a friend that we should never settle for anything less than total victory in Vietnam, and that I would never change my mind about that. But in the meantime I had read a couple books about the history of Vietnam and our involvement in the war there. I was no longer full of certainty. I had felt a little queasy the previous Thursday evening, when President Nixon went on television to announce that he was sending U.S. troops into Cambodia, asserting that “This is not an invasion of Cambodia.”

The day after Nixon’s speech, a wave of anti-war protests began on college campuses around the country. On Friday night, an anti-war rally at Kent State University devolved into a small-scale riot, with a number of windows broken in businesses near campus. Peaceful and violent protests were breaking out all over. On Saturday night, during an anti-war rally at Kent State, the old ROTC building was set afire. Firemen responding to the fire were attacked by some in the crowd. It was one of many such incidents nationwide.

I had no affection whatever for rioters or antiwar protesters who called policemen “pigs” and soldiers returning from Vietnam “baby-killers.” I still approved of President Nixon’s call in his 1969 Inaugural Address that we must “lower our voices” in order to “surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.”

On Sunday, Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes called out the National Guard at Kent State. In a speech, he said of anti-war organizers:

They’re worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They’re the worst type of people we harbor in America.

There was a primary election scheduled for Tuesday, May 5. Governor Rhodes was seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. He probably thought that stirring up some righteous hatred in a fiercely divided electorate couldn’t hurt his chances. (A few weeks earlier, California Governor Ronald Reagan had said of campus protests, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.”)

Thirty-four years ago today, at about noon, the National Guard fixed bayonets and fired tear gas to break up a peaceful anti-war rally on a large grassy area on the Kent State campus known as the Commons. Marching up a hill named Blanket Hill (for the student custom of spreading out blankets there to enjoy a fine spring day), the Guard cleared the Commons. The protestors scattered, some to the veranda of Taylor Hall, which straddled Blanket Hill, and some to a parking lot separated from the Commons by Taylor Hall and Blanket Hill.

General Robert Canterbury concluded that the crowd had been dispersed, and ordered the Guardsmen back to the Commons. At about 12:24 PM, about a dozen withdrawing Guardsmen near the top of Blanket Hill turned in unison, aimed, and fired into the crowd in the parking lot. They fired 67 shots in 13 seconds, and hit 13 people, all Kent State students.

The two closest victims were on the Taylor Hall veranda, 71 feet and 110 feet from the gunmen. The next closest victim was 200 feet away.

Four of the thirteen victims were killed. Jeffrey Miller, 265 feet away, took a bullet in the face. Allison Krause, 343 feet away, was hit in the side, and did not immediately realize she had been shot. William Schroeder, 382 feet away, was an ROTC student who had probably come to witness the anti-war rally out of curiosity. Sandra Scheuer, 390 feet away, was probably on her way to class, and not a participant in the anti-war rally at all.

On May 4, 1970, my views about the Vietnam War were in flux. They gelled very soon thereafter. My opinions were fixed less by the shootings themselves than by the way pro-war politicians ignored, excused or even celebrated the bloodshed.

Starting thirty-four years ago today, I chose sides.

Bit by bit, imperceptibly, we are constantly entering the amazing World of the Future.

The BBC reports on research to develop living replacement teeth.

Tonight the ABC News program “Nightline” will show photographs of all the U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war, while Ted Koppel reads their names.

I won’t be able to see it. Here in Columbus, Ohio, the local ABC affiliate won’t be airing the program, on orders from station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group.

It appears that some desk jockey decided it would be “contrary to public interest” to recognize the men and women who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in this war. They fear that viewers will be less enthusiastic about the war if they recieve information about the lives lost fighting it.

They may be right. In fact, it seems to me that any information about the cost of the war, in lives or money, is apt to sap our enthusiasm for this war. Any information that suggests that Iraqis feel anything but undying gratitude for liberating the country may have the same effect. Likewise, any story that suggests that relations with some of our long-time allies have been strained. We can’t have that.

In light of Sinclair’s insight, it seems obvious that the “public interest” requires an end to reporting anything that might be interpreted as “bad news” about the Iraq war. I’ll bet there are folks in the Pentagon and the White House who would be glad to let the news media know which stories they can carry, and which stories the public interest requires be stifled.

The Washington Post reports that secrecy rules in the USA Patriot Act prevented the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from revealing that they had filed a suit challenging that law. From the article:

“It is remarkable that a gag provision in the Patriot Act kept the public in the dark about the mere fact that a constitutional challenge had been filed in court,” Ann Beeson, the ACLU’s associate legal director, said in a statement. “President Bush can talk about extending the life of the Patriot Act, but the ACLU is still gagged from discussing details of our challenge to it.”

This reminds me of an old Wizard of Id cartoon: The king is showing a visiting dignitary around the kingdom. The dignitary asks a passing peasant, “How’s it going?”

“Oh, I can’t complain,” the peasant says.

“Why do you say that?” the dignitary asks.

“It is forbidden,” the peasant replies.

(By the way, I discovered this story by way of Dan Gillmor’s weblog.)

In his weblog, Aaron Swartz is running a disturbingly insightful satire on the way the political name-calling game operates.

As I write this, the current QuickVote poll at CNN’s website asks:

Do you want to see images of caskets arriving from Iraq?

There seems to be a lot of spin on that question. If I say “No,” will they interpret my answer as support for Pentagon censorship of news coverage of the cost of this war? If they do, they will be wrong.

Several years ago, I decided to scratch out a few words and make use of some of the web space that came with my internet service.

It was more than a little embarrassing to lay my massive ego out there for all to see, and more than a little discouraging that almost nobody came to see it. Inexplicably, I didn’t receive a single offer of fame and/or fortune as a professional writer.

So my little corner of the world wide web languished. The most recent update was made on April 14, 2000, which qualifies my pathetic pages as a true “cobweb” site. Are there any government grants available for preserving historical relics like that?

I recently retired after working thirty years at the Ohio State University. Suddenly, I’m reading the newspaper every day, watching movies, and listening to music. For the first time in fifteen years, I’m reading books for pleasure. I find that I want to grab total strangers and tell them all about some of the wonderful things I’m discovering. And I find that most total strangers aren’t terrifically enthusiastic about that method of discourse. So, the pathetic old website may get some updates again.

This weblog will be the new “news” page for my site. Short comments will exist only in the weblog. If I write anything longer, it will be added to the main website and noted in an entry in the blog.

I had to work on New Year’s Eve, 1999. I work with computers. Like many other people where I work, I was expected to be on-site in case of Y2K problems.

We had done extensive testing and preparation in advance, and nobody was very worried about any significant problems cropping up. So we had a sort of party, up in a conference room. We ate, and drank soft drinks, and flipped the channels on a small TV, watching the major networks’ coverage of the long-awaited dawning of the year 2000.

Someone expressed a wish for cable TV, so we could watch something other than this boring New Year’s Eve stuff. We told him it would be the same thing on all 200 cable channels.

“Oh? What about Cartoon Network?” he said.

“Even Cartoon Network. They’ll be running a Jetsons marathon — live!”

If you don’t believe we’re living in the amazing world of the future, consider this: today is Louise Brown’s 25th birthday.

Simon and Garfunkel may be touring again soon.

What a team! Together and separately, they’ve made a lot of wonderful music. They’re still making it.

Twenty years ago today, I saw Simon and Garfunkel in concert at the Akron Rubber Bowl. It was a long show, with three encores. Each of the singers had several solo turns, performing songs from their independent careers. As the evening drew on, almost every song was received with a sense of warm familiarity, and a growing astonishment at just how much those two fellas had up their sleeves.

Twenty years ago. It was a nostalgia show, even then. Akron was the first stop in the duo’s first U. S. concert tour since 1970. There was an energy and an innocence to some of the earlier songs that was exhilarating and embarrassing at the same time. Feeling groovy?

Someone threw love beads onto the stage. Art Garfunkel picked them up and said, “What is this, the Sixties?”

There was a tinge of sadness, too, for everything lost in the years since the previous tour. Paul Simon’s solo song, The Late Great Johnny Ace, was all about loss — particularly the death of John Lennon, still sharp in everyone’s memory twenty years ago.

There was a new verse for The Boxer, too:

Now the years are rolling by me,
They are rocking evenly.
I am older than I once was,
Younger than I’ll be,
That’s not unusual.
No, it isn’t strange,
After changes upon changes,
We are more or less the same.

After changes we are more or less the same.

Twenty years ago. Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.

On July 2, 1776, representatives of 13 British colonies met in Philadelphia as the Second Continental Congress and declared their independence from England.

So why do Americans celebrate Independence Day on the 4^th of July?

On July 4, the Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. They knew that they were taking a large and dangerous step, splitting from the mother country. They felt that they should justify their actions.

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another… a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

In explaining themselves, they laid a foundation for a new kind of nation — based not on territory or ethnicity, but on an idea:

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…

Nowadays in Washington, D.C., “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” appears to be a sign of weakness. Here’s what President Bush said in an interview in the Washington Post on November 18, 2002:

I’m the commander. See, I don’t need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.

Compare and contrast.