Praise For “Going Postal” Documentary: The Independent (UK) Calls It “Exemplary In Just About Every Way,” While The Times (UK) Gives It Four Stars…

Gloats / May 26, 2009

By Team eXiled

The first reviews of the “Going Postal” documentary, which aired last night on BBC2, are rolling in from the British press. The Independent praised the film’s “highly-talented” director Paul Tickell, and called the documentary “exemplary in just about every way”:

Where Going Postal scored heavily over similar documentaries was in Tickell’s pared-down style. There was no solemn narration, no fatuous mood music, just interview after interview with, in cases where they survived, the perpetrators and the victims, the shooters and the shot, plus assorted relatives and academics. Unlike Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, this was no anti-gun polemic; indeed, nobody even raised the subject of gun control and Tickell admirably resisted the temptation to flash US gun-owning statistics across the screen. What he did do was cut back repeatedly to his interview with the enthusiastic proprietor of a typical mid-American weapon store, allowing us to make the connection ourselves between indiscriminate shooting sprees and the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which enshrines the right of all citizens to keep and bear arms, and which instils in an alarming number of otherwise sensible Americans the same kind of teary-eyed pride as photographs of their grandchildren.

A review on SkyTV.com, the web site for Britain’s Sky TV, called the documentary “essential viewing” and singled out Mark Ames’ “terrifying” and “spine-chilling” analysis of the rampage shootings:

Going Postal examines five of these horrific shootings before consulting experts in the field and relatives close to the victims and attackers in a bid to ascertain what caused them in the first place.
Foremost amongst these is journalist Mark Ames, the author of the book Going Postal, which deconstructs these attacks in the context of Reaganomics.
Essentially, Ames argues that the US’ economic depression during the eighties caused many pensions and jobs to be lost, widening the gap between the well-paid and average worker, and contributing to societal fracturing and widespread, repressed discontent.
Most terrifying of all is Ames’ damning and spine-chilling assertion that although mental instability and regimes of medication certainly play a part in what makes a shooter, they are more often than not medically ‘sane’ and practically impossible to profile.
Heartbreaking, disconcerting and yet essential viewing.

Meanwhile, The Times (UK) gave “Going Postal” a 4-star rating, though the reviewer was oddly upset that the documentary didn’t explore the alleged “copycat effect” as a root cause of the killings–one of those cheap, meaningless explanations (or really evasions) that Ames already destroyed in the Guardian UK. Anyway, here’s The Times‘ 4-star review:

Going Postal
Lionel Shriver’s excellent novel We Need to Talk About Kevin propagated the bad seed view of high school massacres. Some kids were just born bad. Going Postal was a long, not entirely coherent documentary by Paul Tickell determined to look in another way at a phenomenon that started in the early Eighties when disgruntled postal workers started shooting at their colleagues and continued spraying blood into the commercial and educational worlds. It identified numerous triggers that could turn the mentally unstable into mass killers, among them the prevalence of guns, a culture where violence is celebrated, the rough justice of Reaganomics where more loyal workers lost their jobs with less compensation and static, insular communities – cosy if you fitted in to them, hellish if you failed to. What was not examined was the copy-cat effect generated by media attention. Although it was irresistibly interesting to hear Michael Carneal, the killer of three fellow students in 1997, describe what was passing through his addled mind at the time, you wondered if someone who had killed in a frantic search for status should later be rewarded by the sympathetic attentions of television. Carneal hoped this “life-defining moment” did not “define him”. Huh?

Yeah, well, no one ever said that TV critics draw the best and the brightest.

Lastly, so far, is this review from Metro (UK):

The truly chilling thing was you ended up not remotely surprised by these horrifying acts of violence – and it’s likely to get worse. The increasingly competitive brutality of the modern workplace runs counter to consumerist propaganda that wants us to believe life is getting better and better and we can have it all. That’s not going to change anytime soon and, with alienated ex-employees a sinister spin-off from the recession, the next massacre is a headline waiting to happen.

For those of you in America wondering when you can see Going Postal, all we can tell you is that this is all being discussed now. Ames has seen the original director’s cut, which he described as one of the goriest and most emotion film experiences in years–but a version like depends on who picks up the US rights to “Going Postal”, which is currently being negotiated.

Buy Mark Ames’ book Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.

Click the cover & buy the book!

41 Comments

Add your own

1. foo | May 26th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
post it to google video or something
2. rick | May 26th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
DON’T BELIEVE AMES’ JEWLIES! READ! KNOW! 75% OF SCHOOLSHOOTERS ARE 100^ JEWWWWWWW!
LEARN! KNOW!
READ ABOUT SCHEMING JEWS CURING POLIO HERE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
3. Castor | May 26th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Congratulations to Mark.
4. Jay | May 27th, 2009 at 3:32 am
You want a book to buy about the Paducah shooting – Missy Jenkins, who is in this documentary and was paralyzed by Carneal has written I Choose to be Happy at http://www.missyjenkins.com. It’s an unbelievable read
5. SweetLeftFoot | May 27th, 2009 at 4:32 am
Saw it on BBC2 iPlayer on demand – tax pounds actually being used on something good for once – last.
Absolute quality. Couldn’t recommend enough.
Though it could have done with more on Ames and his economic theories.
Some of the video footage is amazing – the home video of a kid who shot a Cali school being bullied by his ‘friends’, police videos on the actual scene of workplace shootings.
And manages to avoid the snooty tone towards the filthy backward Yanks that the Beeb so often inulges in.
6. John Jacob | May 27th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Wow…Rick has some issues. And here’s a thought on distro. Put it up here. For free. Why compromise on the content to satisfy censors?
7. Frank | May 27th, 2009 at 6:05 am
I just watched the documentary in the BBC’s iPlayer, and thought the documentary was fairly good, maybe a bit too long, but definitely much more impartial than Michael Moore’s documentaries. Impartiality is, in my view, one of the greatest qualities of this documentary. Having said that, I can understand you guys being disgruntled with the review from The Times, but they do make a very coherent point about putting Carneal at the spotlight, and your ad hominem attack here was really uncalled for.
8. Bardamu | May 27th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Yes, of course Ames’ nuanced and carefully presented thesis, which defies simplification and really demands further research into a widespread phenomenon, reduces to ‘dem Jooz’.
Oh that life were as simple as you, rick.
9. Tam | May 27th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Cherish all that prestigious critical acclaim from that SkyTV.com review guys. You maybe don’t realise it, but that’s the British equivalent of The New Yorker.
Thought the documentary was okay although nearly not as interesting or wide-ranging as the book although I suspect those observations of the similarities between modern management books and slave management techniques would’ve been too controversial even for a show like that one.
By the way, this all reminds me of one of the exile’s finer hours…
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8452&IBLOCK_ID=35
10. Patricio | May 27th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Well, its about time! I hope you make a million bucks off of this, Mark. Plus, I agree with you 100 fucking percent. Way to go.
11. rick | May 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Go to Youtube, or check out the torrent sites and you’ll see huge discourse communities degenerating into the most idiotic strains of anti-semitism. There’s some widely distributed movie, no shit, like “THE JEWISH MENACE: Historians said Jews eat Christian babies. IN FACT IT IS TRUE!” That’s a documentary probably hundreds of thousands of idiots downloaded. You actually have to read some of the asshole conservatives like Daniel Pipes to get a sense of how fucked up the Middle-East (and almost everywhere in the world) is, conspiracy-theory and anti-semitism-wise. Since it’d introduce that tragic and painful cognitive dissonance to the simple-minded liberals, you don’t hear much interesting analysis–at all. And at root, conservatives are worse than liberals. Ames’ analysis is anathema to conservatives, absolutely unthinkable: our Western, capitalistic methods of social organization are inherently grotesque and inhuman, resulting in some of the sickest inversions of intuitive human emotional life outside traditional torture chambers. Only it’s a lot slower and duller, more insidious and dead.
Some imbecile on the other post starting bringing up Jews and Columbine. Do not suffer idiots gladly. I like this publication precisely because insights and analysis are largely untethered from moral blinders and degenerate political narratives. Editorial standards mixed with populism are a noxious mix. Walking through the bookstore today, almost all historical and contemporary worldly accounts have a profoundly retarding “angle.” Almost nothing’s readable, just cause you can already envision the uplifting or “constructive” boxes authors necessarily have to cram this disordered and sick world into.
http://bit.ly/BXfrC
12. Dago Red | May 27th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
This totally sucks! Some of Ames’s best stuff are his rants against the Brits – now he’s probably going to go easy on them in gratitude.
13. booltox | May 27th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
so this is where Marks message gets co-opted. His next book, written from his Manhattan penthouse, will have us consider the case that the shooters are deranged loners after all.
14. Tam | May 28th, 2009 at 12:31 am
@11
You’re right about today’s books but I suspect that’s the way it always was, with publishers cravenly and unimaginatively follwing the trends of the day, with only genre fiction like science fiction and fantasy providing alternative, potentially useful ways of understanding the world.
But who needs these new books anyway? The interesting thing is that these trends always change so you can get a wider perspective just by visiting junk shops and buying and reading older, mostly forgotten books.
I realise you probably know this already…
15. mechagodzilla | May 28th, 2009 at 6:16 am
are you guys sure the jew dude wasn’t just trolling? I mean, of all the forums on the internet, I’d have thought this one was the sharpest about catching on to that.
Anyway, great job, Mr. Ames. You are now a rockstar of tellin’ it like it is. Man, that is so cool.
16. Chema Pino Suarez | May 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am
The flabby potato-shaped goons at the BBC only allow Brits to use there Iplayer. Fuck them.
We want Matlock! Woops. We want torrents!
google video will suffice.
17. james | May 28th, 2009 at 10:19 am
@rick
That imbecile was me son and I was just stating a fact about Columbine I didn’t mention the other shootings don’t even know about them.
But it is an undeniable fact the Jews yield tremendous power in western media, government and finance.
“Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” – Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001
Is it just a coincidence that 8 out of 9 of the oligarchs who ruled and plundered Russia during the 90’s just happened to be Jewish?
The same can be said of oligarch that controls Ukraine.
18. Pimpycakes | May 28th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
http://www.tiny.cc/P4OvS
19. Doom | May 28th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Not to mention 9/11 happened on a Tuesday…
OR SHOULD I SAY JEWSDAY?!!?!
20. rick | May 28th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
@ James
No, it’s no coincidence. Pay attention to life a little, you might learn something.
For whatever absolutely 100% cultural reason Jews are 40% of Nobel Prize winners, presumably because they are 100% culturally prone to shit like curing polio and being smart enough to exploit idiots and situations to make money. Probably a conspiracy! Culture is amazing shit. They also do stuff like write The Trial, direct 2001: A Space Odyssey, and invent the eXile.
Does Jewishness cause a specie of clannishness? You bet, and I share it, as I’d racistly expect a Jewish person to be (culturally) more competent than average. What completely insane folly I intuitively indulge.
As we can all see and are contractually forced to say, the Jewish culture is quite vital and produces unique, intelligent individuals, essentially cognitively identical to white Anglo-saxons, and not genetically “better,” as that is not an allowable thought. Despite the consistent skull-crushing obviousness everywhere you care to look. Let’s all think the good thoughts and look toward the future!
21. Tam | May 29th, 2009 at 12:25 am
@Rick
Winning a Nobel prize has at least as much to do with how a scientist promotes themselves and networks with colleagues as the originality or the perceptiveness of their insights.
Make of that what you will…
22. FOARP | May 29th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Just one thing that nobody ever mentions about these cases but which probably needs to be said: Mark Ames is wrong when he says that these killers have no common features. There is one feature which they all share – they are all male. I cannot find even one example of a female workplace/school killer. Obviously women in general are much less likely to kill or commit crime, but the total absence of a woman engaging in such an act is striking.
23. Ilona | May 29th, 2009 at 2:41 am
Great!
Congratulations! It’s about frigging high time some “higher” instance gets your message seriously.
I’m sick of hearing always the same mindless babble by privat citizens and authorities about these incidents: “He was such a nice guy. Quit, polite, helpfull and always behaving in the best possible manner. I can’t comprehend how he could have done such terrible atrocities. I dunno… Maybe something just snapped in his head.”
Go Mark go!
24. FOARP | May 29th, 2009 at 2:48 am
It would be interesting also to see whether the same companies/schools in which the shootings took place saw a higher than usual level of suicide.
25. Ilona | May 29th, 2009 at 2:54 am
And the official storyline by privat citizens and authorities continues: “It’s a total mystery.”
26. Nicolai Ceske | May 29th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Congrats Ames. When are Whore-r Stories going to be made into a full length feature film?
27. Tamerlan | May 29th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Hitler.
28. De composer | May 29th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Mark will be the next Tarantino sitting with the Weinsteins and Yasha Levine the next Roger Avery righting the next . damn already used the word ‘next’ three times..what
29. james | May 29th, 2009 at 7:03 am
@jack
That’s good when they do good things and there achievements commendable but they should also be criticised when they do bad things like there creation and control of Communism where out of 556 important functionaries of the Bolshevik State in 1918-19 457 were Jews but only 17 ethnic Russians.
Or how they dominated the African slave trade or our Rothschild controlled banking financial system that is falling apart.
Or international Jewish groups and senior US politicians and media pundits supporting Islamic militants in Bosnia who were trying to wipe out the Serbs in Bosnia and KLA terrorists while calling Serbs genocidal Nazis.
30. james | May 29th, 2009 at 7:05 am
@rick
That’s good when they do good things and there achievements commendable but they should also be criticised when they do bad things like there creation and control of Communism where out of 556 important functionaries of the Bolshevik State in 1918-19 457 were Jews but only 17 ethnic Russians.
Or how they dominated the African slave trade or our Rothschild controlled banking financial system that is falling apart.
Or international Jewish groups and senior US politicians and media pundits supporting Islamic militants in Bosnia who were trying to wipe out the Serbs in Bosnia and KLA terrorists while calling Serbs genocidal Nazis.
31. Doom | May 29th, 2009 at 10:25 am
@FOARM: there have been at least two female school shooters. Here’s a link to one of them:
http://asumag.com/dailynews/louisianatechnicalshooting0208/
32. Ilona | May 29th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Rick,
Oh dear! You are so hot! I want to have Aryan babies with you. You think just like me about nearly every vital issue.
BTW. Do you know THE fact that in the Finnish Continuation War the jews where personally honored with Iron Crosses – not for eating babies, but fighting for the sound reasons against the Soviet Russia – by the polite Nazi-Germans themselves? Cute.
How do like them apples?
33. FOARP | May 30th, 2009 at 5:01 am
@Doom – I genuinely didn’t know about that case. It definitely deserves looking into with greater detail.
As for The Times complaint about the documentary lacking ‘coherence’, I would say that that is a very appropriate way of presenting a phenomenon which is actually little understood and which commenters are too hasty to cover over with glib explanations. Each person was allowed to have their say, with the viewer left to decide between them. The effect was refreshing and revealing.
34. internal exile | May 30th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Just saw it…the secret to understanding this documentary is that it is most certainly NOT about how Reaganomics led to workplace/school shooters. In fact, as this engrossing documentary shows, it was Jesus who done the dirty deed.
35. Natedogg | May 31st, 2009 at 8:28 am
Really would like someone to post a torrent of this.
Excited to watch.
36. Natedogg | May 31st, 2009 at 8:34 am
Can find a torrent here:
http://www.blackdickswithwhitechicks.com
Have to register first.
37. Anton Lucii | June 1st, 2009 at 8:46 am
I’m gravely afraid the film as good as it (i didn’t watch it yet) could be used as an excuse and a showcase of Ames’es ‘access’ to any
media outside the circle of loyal internet followers. The idea that Reagan, a 33rd degree mason buried in vertical position in his garden is in fact a dictator whose actions started an epidemic of suicidal murders…
38. Anton Lucii | June 1st, 2009 at 8:49 am
correction: the film as good as it is.
***
Also if you check (you may google it) there’s is a small owl on 1-dollar bills.
39. Tom | June 1st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Is this available in Australia by any chance?
40. i got the hook up | June 13th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Found a torrent here:
http://tracker.btarena.org/torrents-details.php?id=20322
…as linked from here:
http://www.btarena.org/tv/going-postal-ws-pdtv-xvid-barge
Looks legit, but it’s poorly seeded.
41. i got the hook up | June 13th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Also, buy his fucking book, will ya