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“if teachers are going to use the film an inconvenient truth in the classroom, they should also have access to another documentary which challenges the academy-award winning movie’s premise, says a local school trustee.”
this, my friends, we can find under the heading “school trustee demands ‘balance’ over gore movie use”.
right.
let me get this off my political chest right away: these are the same people who weren’t that hot for balance when it came to balancing out the school library, to include among the 99.9% heterosexual books a few that also talk about same sex couples.
so this is me getting self-righteous. (and i feel pretty good about it! nothing as invigorating as a good dose of self-righteousness, says my daughter’s partner, ray)
but – whenever i get self righteous, there’s this little part of me that says, ok, you’re accusing someone (of hypocrisy, delusion and sheer stupidity, for starters), then you might as well take that as an opportunity to see where you’re not perfect. whoever throws the first stone and all that.
as painful as it is, yes, i have to admit that i’m not perfect. i’m not always congruent, and i bet that sometimes looks like hypocrisy to others. there are moments when i don’t like looking a particular truth in the eye, and that leads me to self-delusion. sometimes i’m straight-out dumb (like yesterday, when i just wouldn’t admit to my friend ava that her boyfriend’s and her ages, with him being 7 years older than her 52, do indeed add up to 111. “2 and 7 is 9, not 11!” i said to her. oh, get a grip, isabella).
it’s like driving. when you run a yellow light, you probably say, “oh good, i made it!”. the guy behind you, on the other hand, may see you as yet another example of bad driving in vancouver and natter about it all day.
our behaviour usually makes sense to us; to others, they’re often transgressions to get self-righteous over. it’s all a matter of perspective.
sometimes. maybe even often.
but i sure hope that if i ever do something as hypocritical, deluded, and sheer stupid as using the word “balance” to justify my political agenda, there will be someone out there to set me straight!
isabella mori
moritherapy
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p.s. there is an update to this here at de smog blog.
4 responses so far ↓
1 When Do Our Children Need to See Both Sides? | DarrenBarefoot.com // May 15, 2007 at 12:44 pm
[…] If you read on in that post (or this one or this one), you’ll see that Ms. Stillwell fancies the contrarian limelight (would that be the lemon light?). And why do all the conservative nutters seem to live in Surrey? Hmm…in truth, I guess there are a few in my childhood home of West Vancouver, too. […]
2 Robert McLendon // May 16, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I like your honest and self-effacing take on this. Don’t worry too much about being consistent. As the great German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder liked to say, “What do I care about the stupid things I said yesterday?” I’m suspicious of people who’s ideology is so airtight that all their opinions fit together neatly like the panels of a coat of armor. Reality is BIG and COMPLEX and our minds are TINY, so contradicting yourself is actually more truthful (in my view). After all, contradiction is built into the basic functioning of science.
You’ve distilled the extreme-conservative hypocrisy well. They make a show of being about balance. To them, balance means being taught what you already believe, rather than being challenged. A film that willfully misunderstands the facts about global warming, and willfully misconstrues the argument in order to create confusion, and to create in the minds of its viewers the illusion that the science regarding global warming is a hoax, is not a viewpoint worthy of equal time. It is a lie. To claim otherwise is to fundamentally mistrust the entire scientific process — the very process that is unfolding for us a magnificent understanding of the universe.
3 therapydoc // May 16, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Don’t worry, friend. You’ll be set straight. You’re a blogger. They love to roast us when we’re wrong. As they should, of course.
4 Pamm // May 16, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Sometimes being self aware just takes so much fun out of a good rant, yes?
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