I had a strange experience when I watched "Fahrenheit 9/11" last week, and it keeps getting stranger the more I think about it. I'd heard the movie was supposed to be disturbing -- the title sort of says it all to begin with -- yet I left the theatre wondering what exactly the movie was: a factual documentary, a propagandistic piece, or a comedy.

As I made my way to the exit at the end of the film, I heard people clapping, people cheering, and saw people smiling.

I just didn't understand that.

There were so many things in Fahrenheit that -- if they're true -- I feel Americans should really be ashamed of. They have a president whom the movie depicts as shady, dishonest, lazy, and, well, a big dummy. The movie discusses the horrors of war and the trauma it's caused both here and in Iraq. It explains how the U.S. government is scaring us for no apparent reason. And it basically tells us that our country sucks a fat one and has sucked a fat one since Bush became president.

Ha ha ha. That's funny, right?

Come on. These are the things you wanna hide from people, that you should be embarrassed about. They're not knee-slappers, and they're definitely not things we should be proud of. Even if Moore's claims in the movie are true, the situation isn't something to smile about or discuss with your head held high.

(This is why I can't stand political affiliations. It's like Chris Rock says in his latest HBO special: Be a freakin person before you call yourself a republican or democrat.)

Then again, laughter is sort of an appropriate response to a lot of the film, because Moore deals with most of the film's issues in a somewhat impish manner (the segment on the Coalition of the Willing comes to mind). He makes his points, supports it with some facts (well....), and in between, he throws in unnecessary insults and jokes at Bush -- as if Americans haven't heard enough jokes about him. He also cuts and pastes audio/video-clips of republicans to make fools of them and uses pop songs as background music to ideas and events that, in the context of the movie, are supposed to appall us.

Ha ha.

I guess that's Michael Moore for you, though, and I guess that's America.

BTW: I forgot to mention this yesterday, but the New York Post went New York Post on New Yorkers yesterday and "scooped" a story claiming John Kerry had picked Richard Gephardt as his running mate.

Obviously, and not really surprisingly, they were wrong, and the Post's competitors were all over it this morning. The Daily News's front-page headline today was "Kerry's Real Choice" (with 'Real' underlined), mocking the Post's headline yesterday, "Kerry's Choice".

Sigh. Freakin New Yorkers.

An interesting note about the Post's story yesterday: There was no byline, just a box that said "EXCLUSIVE". Kinda fishy. You figure if a reporter scooped a story, he'd wanna take credit for it, no?

Not this one. All I can say is it must suck to be the editor of the NY Post right now.

Also, this doesn't add up: the Post wasn't confident enough in the story to give the story a byline, yet apparently they had enough faith in it to put it on the cover.

Good one.