Alan Moore, who helped to transform the comic book into modern literature, has an interview on Salon.com. If there was ever a paranoid schizophrenic author that got it right, he'd be as close to the mark as any. I definitely suggest reading the whole interview.

] The funny thing is that Alan Moore hates to talk about
] film and television, because, as he explains later in our
] interview, both "have a lot to answer for." He's not
] talking about how they've distilled his densely
] researched, intricate tales of socio-historical
] interrogation, like "From Hell" and "The League of
] Extraordinary Gentlemen," into narrowcasted popcorn
] movies. Instead, he means the way they've had such an
] impact on human consciousness that many people were only
] able to articulate the horrific reality of 9/11 by
] comparing it to a disaster film.
]
] Moore clearly believes that the same mechanism has
] foisted a deadly, unwanted and unnecessary war upon the
] world. "Television and movies have short-circuited
] reality," he asserts. "I don't think a lot of people are
] entirely clear on what is real and what is on the
] screen."
]
] Moore, now 50, has a peculiar perspective on this problem
] of "misrecognition" between fiction and reality --
] because so many of his works have seemingly anticipated
] or prefigured so much of what has come to pass. "V for
] Vendetta," Moore's dystopian early-1980s narrative about
] a future fascist Britain under siege by a notorious
] terrorist who was subjected to unbearable torture, echoes
] much of our current dilemma in the so-called war on
] terrorism, all the way down to the criminalization of
] homosexuality, the panoptic PATRIOT Act-like surveillance
] state and a homogeneous media that glosses over real news
] in favor of sensationalism.

] The funny thing is that Alan Moore hates to talk about
] film and television, because, as he explains later in our
] interview, both "have a lot to answer for." He's not
] talking about how they've distilled his densely
] researched, intricate tales of socio-historical
] interrogation, like "From Hell" and "The League of
] Extraordinary Gentlemen," into narrowcasted popcorn
] movies. Instead, he means the way they've had such an
] impact on human consciousness that many people were only
] able to articulate the horrific reality of 9/11 by
] comparing it to a disaster film.
]
] Moore clearly believes that the same mechanism has
] foisted a deadly, unwanted and unnecessary war upon the
] world. "Television and movies have short-circuited
] reality," he asserts. "I don't think a lot of people are
] entirely clear on what is real and what is on the
] screen."

[ This is a very good read... Alan Moore is an important artist of our time. -k]