les moonves tells "an absolute lie" about the reagans miniseries, by insisting that the reason he cancelled it has nothing to do with political pressure (how could anyone who turned on a tv in the last few weeks could believe that?). instead he claims it was "a moral decision", as though suddenly fictionalized biopics are suddenly supposed to be "accurate". (never mind that the movie was probably more accurate than anyone would admit; for example, while it's true that the gipper never said the much-cooed-about line in the script about AIDS patients ["they who live in sin die in sin"], as eric alterman and others point out, 'what Reagan really said was "maybe the Lord brought down this plague" because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."' yeah, that's not homophobic or unsympathetic to AIDS patients at all.)

of course, when you're right you're not always right... alterman still has some irrational seething grudge against ralph nader for allegedly ruining the 2000 election. as nader points out himself himself, the republicans were the ones who stole the election & the democrats made plenty mistakes there themselves; they didn't need nader's help to lose. sure, nader has his share of flaws but the facts remain that his crusade against corporate power was dead-on. i think michael moore said it best on the ill-fated donahue show, when donahue mentioned the allegation that nader ruined everything. to paraphrase: "everyone i talk to says 'man, you guys were right!'" (this was at the height of the enron story; nowadays the media has mostly forgotten about corporate scandals except for small stories in the business section about mutual funds.) gore would've been a better president than bush, sure, but "better" does not equal "good".

in other news (to follow up on another of my earlier rants), as usual pr watch has all the latest dirt on the jessica lynch story. just go to the spin of the day for november (specifically nov 10, 8, & 7) for a much better collection of lynch links than i could ever muster. god damn pr watch is a good site; i still need to finish their latest book, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq...

one last political bit, since it's veterans day. if you pause for a moment to think about our war veterans, don't forget that nobody else in recent memory more to fuck over our veterans than our current president, who sends our troops to be maimed & killed, while simultaneously slashing & mutilating military benefits.

anyway, that's enough political ranting for now... it's always possible i'll have more to rant about this afternoon. i do have a personal update in mind but this entry is so long i think i should just post it & maybe come back later. is this a political blog or a personal "boring minutia from my life" blog? i guess it's a bit of both, which means it won't be very good at either.