Fashioning a Pre-Determined Outcome

I couldn't bail out of town for the day without leaving behind a "weekend read" for the faithful. As per specifications, this weekend brings more humor. However, this week's installment, courtesy of Cap, comes from a source a bit more mainstream.

Morgan Spurlock, of "Super Size Me," fame, returns with a half-hour weekly "documentary" and this week's episode is a doozy. Mr. Stacy, the episode's main character, spends a month with a muslim family and deconstructs all of the stereotypes clung too desperately by ignorant Americans. We know this because the outcome of the episode was predetermined.

OpinionJournal's Debbie Schlussel thought that a peculiar quality for a documentary and inquired as to the irregularity.

I asked the show's executive producers--all of whom worked on "The Awful Truth With Michael Moore," a cable TV show--how this could be a documentary when they had decided the outcome in advance. Wasn't it possible that Mr. Stacy would come out seeing that there isn't Islamophobia to the extent that the Muslim community claims? Might he see that there is disturbingly strong support in the Detroit-area Islamic community for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah--a fact regularly documented even in the normally pliant Detroit media?

No, the producers told me. "Morgan wants the show to demonstrate to America that we are Islamophobic and that 9/11's biggest victims are Muslims."

Alrighty then, as long as we're coming at this thing from a place of honesty.

When a piece like this comes along and provides eight-by-ten glossies of the modern liberal train wreck, it is not suprising that Cap, with his penchant for rubber-necking leftist disaster areas, enjoyed it thoroughly. Enough, in fact, to send along some thoughts.

I had my suspicions about Sperlock of Thirty Days fame, especially after he bragged of his ACLU membership on his first show of the TV series.

On that episode he and his girl friend lived on minimum wage for thirty days and struggled mightily to make rent etc. They should have done what most minimum wage earners do and live with their parents while attending school and spend their money on gas and beer.

BTW I love the opinion and actions of the Imam at the end of the piece... Its probably the first time a Muslim has made me laugh.

If the excerpt I provided isn't enticement enough, or the curiosity of watching a show made by a man that once tried to kill himself with Big Mac's, certainly the rare promise of Islamic comedy will get you to read the whole thing.

Also posting: The Art of the Blog