Moveon.org Celebrity PSA

I was amused by this PSA that Will Ferrell and other celebrities did for MoveOn.org. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it first before watching the response by a group called Catholic Vote Action.



And the response:



I always have a hard time taking movie and TV stars seriously when they try to endorse a poltical belief. This particular ad didn't seem very effective, not what I saw anyway. Not only the response by CVA, but lots of people groaned and rolled their eyes at it.
Here's another one:



I think celebrity ads are past effective, especially a political ad. I have my own brain, and it always seems hypocritical to me that the same people who have private jets and 4 houses in Beverly Hills are the ones telling other people what to do with their money.

Propaganda: Is it Useful?

Well-known propaganda machine Michael Moore recently released a new film called Capitalism: A Love Story. I watched the trailer and I think it makes this movie look like a comedy and almost Jackass-esque. This is the trailer.
I have to admit, I cracked up at him standing outside a bank with a huge bag demanding the "American people's money back". It seems like he has to make a fool of himself to get people to look at him.
I have only seen one of his movies, Farenheit 9/11. I was young at the time, and my soft college-freshman brain was a clean slate for people to write in what they wanted me to think. Since then, I have developed my own opinions, and I am not so susceptible to propaganda. Still, I try to avoid it, because I find it mostly useless. I don't like conspiracy theories; that is what a lot of propaganda is, as far as I've seen.
Even as I try to avoid them, I have since seen other propaganda films. One was called Wal-Mart: High Cost of Low Prices. It was awhile ago, but one thing that stuck out to me was a chart of statistics showing the number of assaults and murders occurring in Wal-Mart parking lots because of the lack of lights and security. Something I immediately noticed was that Wal-Mart was the only store shown with these kinds of statistics. There was no comparison of assaults happening in other parking lots, which they obviously do. Parking lots are big dark places at night, and assaults can and do happen anywhere. That is what I thought of when I saw the statistics. I just kind of went, "So?" But that is what propaganda is. It preys on people like my tender, naive freshman self with no real opinions of their own by manipulating facts and presenting things the way they want the rest of the world to see them. And someone who is clueless about whatever particular issue is being shown, will immediately swallow it and accept it at face-value.
But does it have another purpose? Are there things we can learn from propoganda?
Here is a link to the Wal-Mart documentary if you are interested in watching it.

A side note, if you're going to put yourself in the spotlight to whine about how selfish people are, you might want to first make sure you don't weigh 400 pounds.