I kept thinking of FDR, who made a stirring speech without resorting to overblown (and simultaneously reductive, picayune) language about "Evildoers." Stone actually makes Bush look good, and doesn't show how he went AWOL for most of the day, or how, when he did finally appear, he looked like a scared rodent in the headlights. If this was indeed a modern Pearl Harbor moment, we failed miserably in our response. I think history will show that the World's Only Superpower's overriding reaction of "Why us?" (going beyond righteous grief and shock and anger to a protracted and unseemly wallow in self-pity, as if we had the corner on victimization in the world) was one of our most shameful hours as a nation, and was, as we witnessed at the time, part of what sparked an anti-American backlash in record time of only a few weeks. I have to say I agree with Stone on this. But those are only my opinions as John Q. We didn't need more and more terror, Constitutional breakdowns and more pain. We had a right to pursue those murderers. "All I can say is that we had the sympathy of the world on that day. But it plunged us into this homeland security state of mind. "I've been through many disasters in my life. "At the time, I thought we were overreacting," he says. Stone himself is quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times, sounding very political indeed: But it's about 9/11, and no contemporary event has been more politicized - beginning within moments of the attacks themselves. Two Men Saw Something Else"), and that it's not political at all. The studio's official line is that it's an inspirational and healing movie ("The World Saw Evil That Day. That's a question everyone who sees Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie will have to answer for him- or herself. It gets pretty ugly, but it's fascinating - because the comics, the critics and the hecklers are so much alike that it's no wonder each finds the others so infuriating.ĩ/11 is in the eye of the beholder: Michael Pena (center) in "WTC." Some of the critics are actually interested in analysis some are just insult comics who are using the Internet as their open mic. At first the bile is aimed at hecklers in club audiences (with some particularly nasty invective for loudmouthed drunken women), then it shifts to "critics" - broadly defined as anybody who says something negative about a figure whose work appears before a paying public. "Heckler" (I accidentally called it "Harangue" just now) is an 80-minute howl of fury and anguish in which Kennedy and a host of other well-known and not-well-known showbiz people tell oft-told tales of triumphant comebacks and humiliating disasters, freely venting their spleens at those who have spoken unkindly of them. or, perhaps, slighted him in on the playground or at a party or over the phone or online. The movie is his revenge fantasy against anyone who has ever heckled him on stage, or written a negative review. (I believe George Carlin had a routine about the use of violent metaphors directed at the audience in comedy: "Knock 'em dead!" "I killed!") In the documentary "Heckler" (now on Showtime and DVD) comedian Jamie Kennedy, as himself, plays both roles with ferocious intensity. Stand-up comedy, on the other hand, is rage turned back outward again. Psychologists say that depression is rage turned inward.
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