The non-lefty lefty movie that's not nuetral but is unbiased.

The New York Times has a tortured account of the newest bit of sure-to-be documentary agitprop from Robert “Wal-Mart Makes Me C-R-A-Z-Y” Greenwald. Greenwald is releasing the film under his lefty Brave New Films imprint, but it was made by two independent documentarians named Birnbaum and Schermbeck from Texas. The problems arise when the Times tries to parse out the inevitable issue of bias.

Mr. Birnbaum and Mr. Schermbeck insist that Mr. Earle had shared no secrets with them, and that they acted and were treated no differently from any journalists covering the case.

[snip]Now, of course, the two Texans' supposedly balanced movie is being distributed by the man behind "Outfoxed," a stalwart of the partisan left. Yet they say the net effect will be negligible.

"With Tom DeLay you're either in his camp or you're not," Mr. Schermbeck said. "It wouldn't matter what distributor we chose. You could broadcast this on 'Masterpiece Theater,' and we'd still be Satan's messengers to Tom DeLay and his friends."

Mr. Schermbeck insisted the documentary was fair to Mr. DeLay; it includes comments by three of the congressman's lawyers and some of Mr. DeLay's Republican allies, for example. But he made clear he had no pretensions to neutrality.

Like Austin Kelly's utterly inexplicable case both for and against the conservatism of Metropolitan, no one seems to be able to really figure out what's going on. Or what anyone means at all.

Let me see if I can make anything of it: The filmmakers treated Delay like “journalists covering a case,” which we can presume to be intended to suggest “unbiased.” (Whether it does or not is not an open question today.) Then the directors are claiming to be not biased (though later they, um, admit to bias). And though it's true that they’re shacking up on Greenwald’s openly partisan Brave New Films, the Times then tries mitigate this by saying they claim the effect of the leftwing distributor will be negligible. To provide evidence of the negligible effect, they quote a director… attacking Delay? And admitting “no pretensions to neutrality”? Excuse me—what? Was this penned by the writing staff of 24?

Isn’t that a lot like writing “Peter Suderman is suspicious of the free market,” and then following it up with a quote from me saying “The free market rules, man! Yeah!” Which I would totally say, by the way. To a New York Times reporter.

Really, though—what’s going on here? The article, along with the film’s directors, tries to explain how the film is unbiased. But not. Or it’s not, but the film’s creators are, and they want you to know. While watching the film. Which isn’t biased. Suddenly I feel like I’m in a David Mamet movie—everyone speaks in opaque pronouncements weighed down by uncertainty and contradiction. Maybe it’s just an outtake from Twin Peaks. I think Greenwald is the freaky midget. Maybe now I know how Greenwald feels about Wal-Mart; this article sure makes me C-R-A-Z-Y.