According to the NY Times Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has rejected Oscar winning filmaker Oliver Stone’s offer to make him the subject of a documentary. The Associated Press reported that Mehdi Kalhor, media adviser to the president said he had sent a “negative answer to Mr. Stone.” “It is right that this person is considered part of the opposition in the U.S., but opposition in the U.S. is part of the Great Satan,” Mr. Kalhor said, adding, “We believe the American cinema lacks culture and art.”

A publicity representative for Stone responded by saying: “I have been called a lot of things, but never a great satan. I wish the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours.”

A friend of mine has been sober for a couple of years now but back when she was struggling with her drinking she also ran up some debt. She told me that she started taking out loans at the payday lending stores that are on every corner in South Carolina, a recent report puts the number at 1,200. Pretty soon she was taking out loans to pay the interest on her existing loans. After she got sober it took her over a year to pay off her debt. Some of her interest rates were in the triple digits. My friend isn’t alone. Payday lenders are virtually unregulated in South Carolina. Other states including neighboring North Carolina have begun cracking down on these legal loan-sharks that prey on the poor and our military families but as usual South Carolina lags behind the rest of the nation and has let the payday lenders ring up big profits at the expense of hardworking folks living paycheck to paycheck.

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On Sunday I sat inside the small theatre at Coffee Underground in Downtown Greenville beside my husband and a group of twenty or so friends and friendly strangers and for the second time watched Al Gore’s Academy Award winning documentary about global warming “An Inconvenient Truth.” The screening was part of Open Forum a group that meets regularly to screen films, host discussions and get informed about topical issues. Along about the middle of the film a wave of sadness swept over me and tears stung my eyes. I was filled with a sense of grief and sadness for my country when I thought about all the tragedy that might have been averted if only this man had been allowed to lead our nation. I realized that I along with the rest of the country had been misled and manipulated by the mass media and Karl Rove and all the consultants and masters of spin into believing that this fine, good hearted and intelligent man was thick, and selfish, too wooden and too judgmental and just didn’t have the “right” stuff to be our president. Until I saw this film I had been angry at Gore over the 2000 presidential election and somehow blamed him for his own defeat. I finally understood that the man the media portrayed in their election coverage was some sort of made up caricature and had no relationship to the man that Gore really was all along.

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