So I'm just going to pirate both.

So Jayson Blair's new book Burning Down My Masters' House is out and reviewed in this week's New Yorker (which has been on fire lately). I don't want to read it, didn't want to read it before I'd read the review, and don't want to read it even more after reading the review. But, there's something about having all the evidence before writing someone off forever that makes the book slightly appealing, in much the same way that The Passion of the Christ is. Torture isn't really my bag, but I feel like I should see it before writing Mel Gibson off as an anti-Semitic, religious zealot.
The fact that I'm interested in either at all means a critic's word isn't really good enough for me to be the last word about important matters. Sure, it can keep me away from Eurotrip (though not from the equally bad The Perfect Score), but a dozen reviews of The Passion calling it violent, unhopeful, and intentionally or unintentionally anti-Semitic, to zero reviews praising it, still haven't quite convinced me it's okay just to skip it. And I don't know if this is a good thing, in an innocent-'til-proven-guilty, see-it-to-believe-it way, or a bad thing, in an I-want-to-be-a-critic-when-I-grow-up, but-what's-the-point way.
Yet I still can't quite bring myself to pay for either, because as soon as I do I am contributing both to their financial success and the sense that they are well liked. When listening to, again, critics and writers talk about The Passion, all anyone can talk about is what a success the film was, both monetarily and in terms of its general popularity. The Passion's box office take is understood as representing a grassroots outpouring of support for the film. Sure, a ton of people went to see The Passion, but that doesn't mean they thought it was any good (certainly, some people must have, but it's not a given that they liked it just because they saw it). Granted I don't live in the "religious heartland" of America, but I know a lot of people who saw it, and not many of them liked it. But what they, or anybody else, thinks about the film after seeing it is irrelevant: if they paid for it, they must have liked it. And that seems really wrong. Shouldn't the debate about this film have happened after we'd all seen it, and not before, when we were relying on hearsay? But that hasn't happened because no distinction is being made between consumption and satisfaction. Going to see The Passion isn't just putting $10 in Mel Gibson's pocket, it's also saying I'm cool with his kind of fanaticism, it's not just giving Jayson Blair $20, but also saying I forgive him for shitting all over journalistic ethics, my favorite newspaper, and screwing up a dream job.