How to use tragedy to make a name for yourself

Google just makes so many cool things possible.  Like Montage-a-Google, a new tool made possible by the Google API.

I heard of Montage-A-Google through my fellow blogger The Unpopulist who used it to create a 9/11 montage.  Hit his site to see the image he made.  Notice who is prominently featured?  Our good friend Mikey.  That got me thinking…

9/11 is one of those events that will live forever in American minds.  Almost everyone who was exposed to Pearl Harbor is dead or close to it, yet Pearl Harbor remains one of thelandmark moments in American history.  9/11 will be remembered the same way.  In fact, there may be more people (percentage-wise, adjusting for population) who keep the memory of 9/11 alive because we have so much documentation in today’s modern world.  Millions of photos, hundreds of hours of video footage and a world-wide distribution network with which to share it.  While the Internet may not be here in 50 years, something will.  And photos will still be shared, as they have been since the invention of the process.

So who gets to piggyback all of that and keep his name out there?  SpongeMike Sweatpants, the sweatpantsiest director in Hollywood.  There was no real relation to Fahrenheit 451 and Moore’s film.  Moore’s film, as we all know by now, was part misdirection and part made-up lies.  The only similarity I can thnk of is that Moore knwingly burned the truth and Captain Beatty read books but disliked and did not trust anoyone else who did. 

Mikey wanted the title because it fit in with his trick of naming books and films satirically, and he could use the 451 and reference 9/11 easily, thereby making both his own. Another co-opting successfully completed, eh Mikey?  Hope you’re proud that children looking for online information on one of the best Sci-Fi writers to ever live, or alternately one of the worst attacks on American civilians, can’t find it now without wading through your garbage.

But then, he would be proud of that, wouldn’t he?  Anyway, I digress.

Can you imagine someone saying to you “Here’s twelve million dollars, make a film about 9/11.” What would you do?  I would make part of the movie about one or two of the familes that were most affected by 9/11.  I would specifically look for people who did blue collar jobs in order to demonstrate the truth of that day to people who say things like ”little Eichmanns." I would make part of the film about how 9/11 affected NYC, then part of the film about how it affected the nation.  I would interview people who crawled through the wreckage to rescue trapped workers, then stayed to help find body parts.  I would spend some time with the rescue people that are suffering because of the toxicity of Ground Zero, most of whom say they’d do it again even knowing the problems they now face.

If I was going to try to attach myself to 9/11 and get filthy stinking rich doing it, at least my film would be something people could respect.  I wouldn’t fake headlines, lie about pipelines and edit things so out of context as to make them lies.

But not our boy Mikey.  High Road?  Hell no.  He won’t get his ass in the van to drive over to the on-ramp for the high road much less actually *take* it.

Lastly, if you’re not regularly reading The Unpopulist, you should.  Smart, often funny with a sharp tongue, always on the right side of an issue in my opinion.  And I don’t mean “red-state” right, I mean right right.