A YouTube Video Makes Me Question College Classes

In college I took my share of Socialist...I mean Sociology Classes. I didn't realize really until now though how anti-capitalistic some of those classes were.

Kind of sad that even with as educated as I've become I was still under the impression that my education was relatively socialism free. I remember thinking it was a treat when my Sociology Class screened Roger and Me, a Michael Moore film. And I remember thinking, I'm going to take this with a grain of salt, since I already knew that Michael Moore films weren't really the most unbiased documentaries. Even when my super-Obama-loving documentary film class Professor refused to show Michael Moore films, I didn't realize just how corrupt his movies are. It took a comedian's YouTube video for me to realize something interesting about Moore's films and in the bigger picture...my college experience.



If you had a chance to watch the video above you heard the "interviewer" ask "Michael Moore" why he choose not to include the interview with "Roger" in Roger and Me. If you haven't been "fortunate" enough to see Roger and Me let me fill you in. Basically, Michael Moore spends the entire documentary trying to get an interview with then GM CEO, Roger Smith, who had closed several plants in Flint, Michigan, which "devastated" the city economically. Well, since the whole premise was based on the the fact that Moore couldn't get an interview with the big bad corporation, you would think this movie would be totally discredited and ignored when you find out that he actually did get the interview.

But I NEVER heard that from any of my liberal college professors in all of the 3 classes where that film was shown. They failed to mention, discuss or analyze the film with that information. This film has been shown to hundreds of students year after year in every Intro to Sociology class at my college at least. How many of them have heard the truth? I emailed an old friend of mine from college who was a sociology major to see if she ever heard about this. I've yet to hear back from her. (But she bathed in the kool-aid right after we graduated so I don't know if its that shes ignoring me, the message or just busy.)

Moving on...There was one class in specific that I remember watching this film in, American Contemporary Society. I hated that class with all the fiber of my being. There was always something very disturbing and annoying about class and now I realize that we spent an entire semester focusing on anti-capitalist topics.

We spent an extra long time on one topic in particular; the "Great American Streetcar Disaster". We spent weeks talking about the big bad car companies that bought out all the streetcar companies and destroyed them by creating a monopoly that has ruined our worlds environment and devastated the infrastructure for future America.

Of course I wiki-ed this topic to see if I could remember more about it and this is the article that appeared: Great American Streetcar Scandal
The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy in which streetcar in the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943).

Now, I was amazed at first to think maybe I was wrong. Maybe this wasn't some anti-capitalism, anti-corporation Professor skewing her class in the direction she wanted. But upon close inspection of the wiki article I notices something else. A closer look at the page reveals a disclaimer :
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (August 2009)

It is just hysterical to me that I was almost fooled again! Neutrality, such a simple word and yet it is so often ignored. This was for me a lesson to be a little more careful about what I'm reading, hearing and taking in. During college I was obviously being informed and attempted to be molded by the professor that I had, but now, in the real world there are just as many liberal influences that we need to wary of.

I've spent a lot of time talking about the influences of left-leaning ideals in schools across the country, but I'm only just now realizing that simply because we've left the halls of our alma maters doesn't mean that we are free from misinformation and left-leaning biases. We must always be vigilant about the neutrality of even the most seemingly benign sources.