Kneejerks, Straw Men and the attack of the blindly devoted

[davemarc]

>From MantaRay
> 
> I still haven't changed my mind that you knee-jerked, even with the good
> numbers you put up. 
> Look, I'm happy that Spielberg is doing so much for this
> project, but this doesn not take away the crap he's foisting with
DreamWorks
> or the crap he's foisted upon us in the past. Why isn't this ever talked
> about? Because it would be, conveniently, like condemning Schindler for
> helping the many he did. I put out the Oscar/Oskar Spielberg/Schindler
joke
> for a reason: Spielberg is covering his blatant corporatist tracks with
this
> project and this movie, and I'm sick of it. You should be, too, my man. 
> 
I got pissed, but I wouldn't call it a knee-jerk (and so what if it was?). 
Jeffrey St. Clair and I have communicated on this subject before on this
list, though you wouldn't know he already knew about Shoah from his
davemarc-baiting post.  

Why isn't *what* ever talked about?  My take is that the *prevailing*
cliche on this list is that Schindler's List is horrible, and that
Spielberg's an unredeemably horrible person for putting it out.  Period. 
I'm the only person who bothers to point out the good work he's doing with
the Shoah Project, and I've typically had to type my fingers off (bloody
mess!) to get that point across.  Re crap:  no one on this list, since I've
been on it at least, has ever claimed that Spielberg's one of the great
directors.  Jeffrey St. Clair's brought up the DreamWorks issue before, and
it's being covered extensively in various media.  Yes, in the offline world
Spielberg gets praise for his movies and Shoah, but he also gets plenty of
criticism--from lots of different segments of the population.  

I've been sick of the hype over Spielberg for years.  But the Shoah Project
isn't crap.  It's not going to save the world, but it's good.  It's exactly
what MantaRay and Jeffrey St. Clair were saying Spielberg ought to do. 
He's doing it.  That's a fact.  

If the guy's showing some progress, give it some acknowledgment, why
doncha?  Not everyone's perfect as P.

davemarc