I am not a big fan of Michael Moore. Even less after I met him once at a conference I attended in Las Vegas. However, his 2002 film “Bowling for Columbine” did and still does evoke angry and frustrating emotions in me and whilst applauding him for making the movie he also distorts and leaves out pertinent facts thus weakening its impact.

The USA is notorious for its astronomical number of people killed by firearms for a developed nation without a civil war. Michael Moore’s movie explored the roots of this bloodshed. In doing so, we learn the conventional answers of easy availability of guns, violent national history, violent entertainment and even poverty is inadequate to explain this violence when other cultures share those same factors without the equivalent carnage. In order to arrive at a possible explanation, Michael Moore took on a deeper examination of America’s culture of fear, bigotry and violence in a nation with widespread gun ownership. Furthermore, he investigated and confronted the powerful elite political and corporate interests who are fanning this culture for their own unscrupulous gain.

Unfortunately, Moore treats us to a wonderful piece of hypocrisy when he mentions that on the day of the Columbine school massacre the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia reached its peak. You may remember that because the Serbs were engaged in a violent conflict against Islamic insurgents (America is doing something very similar today in Afghanistan) NATO decided to bomb the Serbs until they pulled their troops out of Kosovo.

There are some points made in the film that are valid. The USA has a gun-related homicide rate that is totally disproportionate to its population when compared to every other country in the world. Controversial American musician Marilyn Manson makes a good point in the film that there are certain businesses and politicians in the United States that capitalise on fear.

Why is it people will grab a gun to deal with what bothers them rather than use their intellect? We have to assume that these people do possess some form of cerebral activity, since they can identify and recognise whatever, or whom ever is the source of their aggravation. But they react accordingly in the simplest and most violent way possible. Again, why?

Is it because of the depressive news stories we hear every day? American and British soldiers being blown up fighting a war most of us don’t care about and believe we shouldn’t be fighting? Then the massive unemployment and the recession caused by people who get rewarded by obscene bonuses the majority of us couldn’t earn in a lifetime of hard work? This disgusting side of Capitalism that will probably bring its downfall.

Think about this: most newscasts feature “human interest stories.” Why then, are the stories that are, by definition, interesting to humans not shown at the top of the broadcast? Do the stories that are important to my dog take precedence over me? Are we living on the Planet of the Apes, therefore needing to wait until the simian population gets their news first?

What we are living in is a 24 hour news broadcast of perpetual despair and doom and gloom. Is not the most depressing show on television the evening news? Economic downtown, political scandal, violence, and murder.

Yes, I am talking of the American and British newscasts we watch on our local cable and/or satellite system. But have you been watching the local 6pm news bulletin on CITN-Cayman27. Have you been reading our local headlines in iNews Cayman?

Maybe we’re all voyeurs. Perhaps we want to see and read about the misery that other people go through, in order to feel better about ourselves. Could it be that when we see that automobile manufacturers’ stocks have dropped because their new minivan explodes when you start it, we need to go off on a rampage so as to show support with that poor soccer mom?

Bad news will always beget bad news. After Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV, nobody changed the channel because everyone was scared they might miss something.  We see violent things, we act violently, and then we watch and read the violent news to see if the violent thing we did will be on.

And I am not talking about the USA and Britain. It is happening here in Cayman.

Yes, the world is violent. Maybe all those angry teenagers have it right. Still, we can correct it. How about news and information that is good and useful? Today on Tania’s Kitchen she could show us how to make fat free chocolate. Wouldn’t that be preferable than a newsreader telling us, every person in the world is overweight? I think so. Every nightly newscast should be read by the Care Bears. iNews should be written in magic marker. And you can only watch Jamie Robertson with his depressive news and views on the world’s economy on BBC World or the anything but world news on “ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer” AFTER your bedtime story.