StarSuckers

Starsuckers is a feature documentary about the celebrity obsessed media, that uncovers the real reasons behind our addiction to fame and blows the lid on the corporations and individuals who profit from it. Made completely independently over 2 years in secret, the film journeys through the dark underbelly of the modern media. Using a combination of never before seen footage, undercover reporting, stunts and animation, the film reveals the toxic effect the media is having on us all and especially our children. Chris Atkins presents Starsuckers as a series of five lessons on fame in the modern world: how children are persuaded that fame is something they want, how television and the media reinforces the importance of celebrity and the efforts to attain it, how the mind and body reinforces our need to follow the activities of well-known people and strive to join their number, how the press became addicted to celebrity coverage, and how the art of promoting fame has led to celebrities and their handlers controlling the press instead of the press having say. Along the way, Atkins demonstrates how celebrity news with no basis in fact gets into print, why newspapers will run press releases almost verbatim, how parents will eagerly sign away the image rights to their kids, how certain mass scale charity events end up helping the performers far more than the causes they designed to support, and how publicists keep accurate but unflattering stories out of the news.

Monday, January 19, 2009

ND School Board Bans Popular Book

Orwellian Times

Jan 18 2009 11:54AM
Associated Press
Eds: APNewsNow.

Beulah, N.D. (AP) The Beulah School Board has voted to ban the book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," a Best Seller about a Savannah, Georgia murder, from the high school library.

The board voted 4-3 Thursday to remove the copy of the 1994 book by John Berendt, which was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. The story involves four murder trials and an assortment of characters, including a voodoo priestess and a transvestite.

Beulah vocational Agriculture teacher Keith Bohn and Kathy Bohn, a school janitor, asked the school to remove the book after their son brought it home.

Keith Bohn said he did not read the entire book, but he read enough to decide it did not belong in school.

Superintendent Rob Lech said a school review committee unanimously recommended the book stay in the library. That decision was appealed to the School Board.

Information from: Bismarck Tribune, http://www.bismarcktribune.com

http://www.kxnet.com/getArticle.asp?l_s=dailyemail&ArticleId=321440
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