Thought for the Day, 21 May 2004

John Bell

The other day I was on the phone to an American college student at whose graduation a Republican Senator was extolling the virtues of the Iraq war.

'Did he say that he had stopped reading the papers, like Donald Rumsfeld?' I asked. Andrew, the student, a worldly aware US Democrat, was puzzled by this allusion to what the Defence Secretary had said recently on his surprise visit to Baghdad. 'I don't think we've heard about that here', he said.

'So, if the news doesn't tell you the news,' I asked, 'who does?' And, then, I suppose I must have sounded like my grandfather as I alluded to how during the Vietnam War and its aftermath, there were singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez who, in popular culture, protested against the war and debunked the myths of Western superiority.

'I don't think we've anyone like that at the moment' he replied, except Bono, who we've imported from Ireland, and maybe Michael Moore.

Now there's a force to be reckoned with.

Michael Moore is the film producer whose most recent production, Fahrenheit 9/11 has been lauded at Cannes, but is the subject of cinematographic intrigue in the USA. It seems that Disney, who control the distribution rights, don't want to handle a film which might compromise their privileged position vis-a-vis Jeb Bush, the president's brother and governor of Florida.

That, for me at least, suggests that there might be something of the prophet in Moore.

Normally the word prophet is associated with names like Mohammed, Jeremiah or, for new age enthusiasts, Kahlil Gibran.

In the biblical tradition, a prophet is not a fortune-teller, but someone who sees the bigger picture which the national leadership is avoiding, someone whose loyalty - not hatred - but whose loyalty to his or her nation leads to perceptions being made which may be at odds with current political wisdom; someone who believes that things can change and who, for their efforts, may be labelled subversive, eccentric or deranged.

Whether or not Moore can lay claim to the prophet's mantle may be disputed. He has, after all, a personal agenda to unseat the president. But in an era when popular music and the populist media have more to do with hedonism than altruism, it is surely important that there are people not in the pay of any political party, who offer alternative perspectives.

I suggest this because the witness of the Bible is that the centre can only get it right when the periphery is providing a vision.