Tempest in a Teapot

I had to chuckle when I read this from the SL Trib's Rolly and Wells:

"On second thought: Before the Utah Valley State College Student Council invited Michael Moore to speak, several others were contacted first. One was Sean Hannity, but his price, as quoted by his agency to the council, was more than $80,000, nearly twice what the council could afford.

"So, said student President Jim Bassi, the council settled on Moore. It was then that Hannity offered to speak for free and save Utah County from the voice of a liberal."

This is so funny on so many levels.

For those not in Utah, not following Utah events, or that simply don't care about Michael Moore, let me set you up. There has been quite a fuss here lately over a decision of a small school in Utah County to invite Michael Moore to speak. Much of Utah county (the heart of Mormondom, really) is up in arms that the school would pay so much money to bring in such a lying scum as him. There have been protest rallies (attended by few) and protest protest rallies (attended by even fewer) and a lot of media coverage.

Funny thing #1: There has been so much media coverage of the controversy, in fact, that it has had the impact of selling out the tickets to the lecture.

Funny thing #2: A large part of the hue and cry was that it cost so much money to bring in Moore. There has been an indignation expressed along the lines of, "Why should we pay $50,000 for some guy to stand up and talk for an hour or two?" Nobody deserves that much money to sweep in for a day. Hmmmm. Don't the Stones get a couple of hundred thousand? And their promoters charge $80 to $100 a ticket, not the five bucks that the Moore show is getting.

Wake up. That's what you pay speakers these days.

Funny thing #3: I'm just laughing my head off that the great and noble Hannity's first offer wansn't the generous price of "Free", but actually beat Moore's price by over $30,000! It was only when he heard of the controversy and saw the opportunity for big publicity that he became so giving.

I haven't seen "Farenheit 9/11". I've heard some really credible voices saying that it's not a credible film. If that's so, then in the long run, Moore could well do more long-term harm to the Democrats than short-term good. The republicans might do well to simply let him.

MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com