JuneauEmpire.com: Letters to the Editor: Parents should take teens to R-rated 'Fahrenheit 9/11' 07/15/04

JuneauEmpire.com: Letters to the Editor: Parents should take teens to R-rated 'Fahrenheit 9/11' 07/15/04: "I saw 'Fahrenheit 9/11' at the 20th Century. Many thanks to Eric Forst for taking a risk on a controversial documentary.
The film made me laugh aloud and shed a few quiet tears, but one detail struck a lingering bitter note: a young American soldier points out that a Haliburton contractor gets paid $10,000 a month for doing essentially the same work as he himself does for only two or three thousand. In addition, our soldiers risk their lives defending the Haliburton guy's life.

This is not even an equal pay for equal work issue. There is nothing patriotic about Haliburton business practices. The majority of Americans at home are working longer hours and producing more efficiently for less and less pay and fewer and fewer benefits. If you want an education, health care, a decent retirement, future job opportunities, job security, etc., don't look for it in the average American job or in our jobless recovery. Look for it in a war zone posting overseas where many local people want to kill you for being there. Furthermore, as Michael Moore illustrates through interviews with congressmen, your kids won't find your congressional delegation members' kids or grandkids with them on patrol.

Even more bitter is the R rating of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' High school kids, the main pool of recruits for sustaining the war in Iraq, are not permitted to see the film without a parent or guardian. Are we protecting them from a small sample of the language they can hear at school or in the street every day? Are we protecting them from seeing the American and Iraqi victims of everyday violence? Far more violence is seen on virtually dozens of TV channels or in the video games that kids have been encouraged to play."