'Fahrenheit 9/11' Sets Documentary Record...but i dont think you should call it one.

[mental invalid]

its an opinion piece, and because there is a lack of lexicon to describe such a movie, because no creative critics, and i dont mean fat ass ebert have coined a new school of thought, nor have linguists or ethicists called for a paradign shift in terminolgy.

so we are forced to ram this circular word, documentary into this square hole, 'Fahrenheit 9/11'.

im afraid for the state of news, and vociferous maddening commentary and opinion being cloaked in the supposed nuetrality of a documentary...

blah...i used to love mike moore, but i can see me penning my first book, "how michael moore made me republican"....i still love the guy, he is just irking me these days...

since im feeling anti mr. moore right now...here are some opinion pieces that i feel bring up good points.

the first by david brooks, and the next by christopher hitchens.

roedigital

[mental invalid]

All Hail Moore
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: June 26, 2004


E-mail: [email protected]


In years past, American liberals have had to settle for intellectual and moral leadership from the likes of John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr. But now, a grander beacon has appeared on the mountaintop, and from sea to shining sea, tens of thousands have joined in the adulation.

So it is worth taking a moment to study the metaphysics of Michael Moore. For Moore is not only a filmmaker; he is a man of ideas, and his work is based on an actual worldview.

Like Hemingway, Moore does his boldest thinking while abroad. For example, it was during an interview with the British paper The Mirror that Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

It transpires that Europeans are quite excited to hear this supple description of the American mind. And Moore has been kind enough to crisscross the continent, speaking to packed lecture halls, explicating the general vapidity and crassness of his countrymen. "That's why we're smiling all the time," he told a rapturous throng in Munich. "You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down."

Naturally, the people from the continent that brought us Descartes, Kant and Goethe are fascinated by these insights. Moore's books have sold faster there than at home. No American intellectual is taken so seriously in Europe, save perhaps the great Chomsky.

Before a delighted Cambridge crowd, Moore reflected on the tragedy of human existence: "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: "It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton."

In the days after Sept. 11, while others were disoriented, Moore was able to see clearly: "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants."

This leads to Michael Moore's global plan of action. "Don't be like us," he told a crowd in Berlin. "You've got to stand up, right? You've got to be brave."

In an open letter to the German people in Die Zeit, Moore asked, "Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" Then he began to reflect on things economic. His central insight here is that the American economy, like its people, is pretty crappy, too: "Don't go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way."

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Moore helped citizens of that country understand why the United States went to war in Iraq: "The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

But venality doesn't come up when he writes about those who are killing Americans in Iraq: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win." Until then, few social observers had made the connection between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Paul Revere.

So we have our Sartre. And the liberal grandees Arthur Schlesinger, Ted Sorenson, Tom Harkin and Barbara Boxer flock to his openings. In Washington, a Senate vote was delayed because so many Democrats wanted to see his movie.

The standards of socially acceptable liberal opinion have shifted. We're a long way from John Dewey.

[mental invalid]

Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT



Moore: Trying to have it three ways

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.


Recruiters in Michigan

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.


Trying to talk congressmen into sending their sons to war

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the corrected sentence.)


Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.

[i11igul]

boo fucking hoo, bush is still a fucking criminal

[mental invalid]

all post in poops thread...sorry

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by i11igul
boo fucking hoo, bush is still a fucking criminal

yeah you fucking highschool fucking drop out, as if you even fucking bothered...you fucking shallow moron, kill yourself..

[i11igul]

well i got what i was looking for....moron:lol:

[freeze]

michael moore is a bitch. go bush.

[i11igul]

now there is well spoken advocate for the michael moore opposition now isn't it:rolleyes:

[freeze]

that's the thing, i don't feel like i need to be well-spoken to get my point across. everybody who is anti-war will try to talk my (and every other pro-war) ass into the ground with all sorts of pious bullshit. the fact of the matter is i feel safe and confident that i'm not going to have to deal with suicidal terrorist activity every day going to, at, and coming home from work. they got us once, bush handled it, end of story. furthermore, if there wasn't so much damned anti-war sentiment, we could've blown the living fuck out of these assholes and have been in and out of the middle east in 11 days like we were when bush original was in power. fuck michael moore.

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by i11igul
well i got what i was looking for....moron:lol:

what, a reaffirmation that you are fucking dumbass?

...kudos einstein....youre late for your LD english class

[<KEY3>]

Originally posted by mental invalid

im afraid for the state of news, and vociferous maddening commentary and opinion being cloaked in the supposed nuetrality of a documentary...

okay mr.roedigital.... we usually see eye-to-eye on most things,
but your above statement is wrong. Not 'opinion', just plain wrong.

docs are NOT supposed to be neutral.
docs are always painted with a slant.
Their primary aim to to persuade.
that's what they do, that's what they've always done.
No doc has ever been produced without a bias,
that is the inherrant flaw of storytelling.

and keep in mind... I work in documentary film.

[<KEY3>]

just FYI....

link (http://www.nfb.ca/thelastround/)
link (http://www.nfb.ca/almostreal/html_example.html)
link (http://jfilm.org/rtk/)
link (http://breakthroughfilms.com/production_showlistings_show_microsite_default.asp ?sid=37)

just a few of the docs I've worked on.

[i11igul]

Originally posted by mental invalid
what, a reaffirmation that you are fucking dumbass?

...kudos einstein....youre late for your LD english class

no that gun-jumping, immature, assinine response proving the you are of much less intelligence than I, now don't you have a movie theater to picket or something asswipe

[i11igul]

Originally posted by freeze
that's the thing, i don't feel like i need to be well-spoken to get my point across. everybody who is anti-war will try to talk my (and every other pro-war) ass into the ground with all sorts of pious bullshit. the fact of the matter is i feel safe and confident that i'm not going to have to deal with suicidal terrorist activity every day going to, at, and coming home from work. they got us once, bush handled it, end of story. furthermore, if there wasn't so much damned anti-war sentiment, we could've blown the living fuck out of these assholes and have been in and out of the middle east in 11 days like we were when bush original was in power. fuck michael moore.

you say you wouldn't have to worry about suicidal terrorists and all that bullshit, well thats all produced by the bush administration, all this terror alert elevated bullshit and "we've recieved very vague threats of attack somewhere on the eastern coast", hmmm how many times have we heard that and not shit has happened, was it because we had simultaniosly killed a terrorist, hell no, its just to keep us in feer of the "evil doers" a term used by the president at will to describe anyone who doesn't see EYE TO EYE WITH HIM

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by mental invalid
yeah you fucking highschool fucking drop out, as if you even fucking bothered...you fucking shallow moron, kill yourself..
now i dont know 11gul personally, he could be a douche for all i know. but mental invalid is displaying some typical right wing behavior....instead of attacking a persons ideas and opinions, or say their own points of view in contrast to someone elses, they attack them personally. much like how every pro bush commercial ive seen was about how evil kerry is, and how every arguement for bush is how we will a die ect if kerry takes over. i think it hs something to do with how flawed their opinions are, and they know it so they attack everyone else(ie "you loser you didnt finish high school, and i did so therefore i am vastly more intelligent then you.")

[i11igul]

i salute you, GeraloRivera:king:

[mental invalid]

please die fucker....im begging ya corky, just die

[<KEY3>]

you know might shit isnt personal right,
I'm more concerned with the medium than the message.

all canucks have a bit of Marshall McLuhan

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by mental invalid
please die fucker....im begging ya corky, just die
great job proving my point. keep up the good work buddy.
11gul- im here to help.

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by GeraloRivera
now i dont know 11gul personally, he could be a douche for all i know. but mental invalid is displaying some typical right wing behavior....instead of attacking a persons ideas and opinions, or say their own points of view in contrast to someone elses, they attack them personally.


yeah, wow you got me pegged dipshit...

and as far as your comment about attacking a persons ideas, reread what he fucking said again:

"boo fucking hoo, bush is still a fucking criminal"


wow...thats a brilliant observation is on par with chomsky...such deep and analytical thoughts...for the love of fucking god he didnt even read the articles...


careful what morons you back up.....

[mental invalid]

and did either attempt to read the articles????

did you???!


im guessing not, so shove it...until you can offer me something better then "bush is a criminal" youre about as worthless as rush limbuagh and all the other sound byte critics who foster partisan bullshit banter...


why do i even bother....

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by <KEY3>
okay mr.roedigital.... we usually see eye-to-eye on most things,
but your above statement is wrong. Not 'opinion', just plain wrong.

docs are NOT supposed to be neutral.
docs are always painted with a slant.
Their primary aim to to persuade.
that's what they do, that's what they've always done.
No doc has ever been produced without a bias,
that is the inherrant flaw of storytelling.

and keep in mind... I work in documentary film.


oh no not the POV defense!! please zesto anything but that....

[mental invalid]

and i work in marketing, so when you say documentary, you use it because of the air it carries, and the conotation that comes with it...it carries with it a sense of truth and unbiased story of events...


why dont we call what mikey does "non-fiction"???

and lets leave the docs, to the ken burns of the world?

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by <KEY3>
you know might shit isnt personal right,
I'm more concerned with the medium than the message.

all canucks have a bit of Marshall McLuhan


thats what im saying!!

[i11igul]

Originally posted by mental invalid



careful what morons you back up.....

oh i offer the same token of advice to you my friend

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by <KEY3>
okay mr.roedigital.... we usually see eye-to-eye on most things


but im a right wing radical according to dumbasses who pop off without reading the whole thread??! will you be able to sleep at night knowing this??!

what im radical against are fucking morons, so come with something intelligent other then mikey moore is fat liar, or bush a criminal...

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by i11igul
oh i offer the same token of advice to you my friend


yeah, good one...

please enlighten me with another, bush is the antichrist theory

[<KEY3>]

umm.... wow.... people are going off in here.

Ken Burns makes really boring Docs.
Why are they boring? He doesnt have a slant.
Sure... baseball is america's game and jazz if america's music,
but where's the opinion? Where's the convincing.

however.... too much convincing is indeed 'propaganda'
which I'm sure is what a lot of people are acusing Moore of making.


--------- that's the last point I'm going to try to make in here.

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by mental invalid
yeah, wow you got me pegged dipshit...

and as far as your comment about attacking a persons ideas, reread what he fucking said again:

"boo fucking hoo, bush is still a fucking criminal"


wow...thats a brilliant observation is on par with chomsky...such deep and analytical thoughts...for the love of fucking god he didnt even read the articles...


careful what morons you back up.....
"you got me pegged dipshit"
see this is exactly what i am talking about. i dont think ive seen a post from you in this thread where you havent called someone a name or some form of personal attack. like a little kid when they disagree "mommy you stink face!"

"Bush is a criminal" is a valid opinion....not an attack at your education, apperance, ect (notice he didnt call you an asshole or stupid). Bush is infact a criminal, he is resposible for sending our troops to iraq, unprovoked, and many of our troops not to mention iraqis are dead as a direct result of this, for his personal gain. if youd like to argue that please respond with something backing up how you think bush isnt a criminal, not how im an asshole or how i am not as educated as your knowledgable, godlike, self.

yes i did read the aricles. but i was commenting about the right wing mudslinging, not the article.
i may respond a few more times beause i dont know how to quote a few posts in one quote.


the point was in my original post was that many right wingers use mudlslinging instead of their own opinions. if you want a recap scroll up the page. and i also find it funny that in the same post you pointed out 11gul didnt finish highschool so therefore his opinion isnt a important as yours, you called him shallow. irony. yes i know what irony is. and i didnt sit through countless hours of calculus. incredible.

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by mental invalid
and did either attempt to read the articles????

did you???!


im guessing not, so shove it...until you can offer me something better then "bush is a criminal" youre about as worthless as rush limbuagh and all the other sound byte critics who foster partisan bullshit banter...


why do i even bother....
Again, yes, i did read the article. hmmm something better. ok how about this.
(ill put it simply since we are all so fucking stupid here. )
AMOUNT OF WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND, ON WHICH OUR WAR WAS STARTED? no, seriosly, im asking you.
NUMBER OF BILLION BUSH MADE OF PRIVATE CONTRACTING DEALS, OIL REVENUE?again, this is for you pal.
NUMBER OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS WHO WERE KILLED?
NUMBER OF IRAQIS WHO WERE KILLED?
WHAT WAS THE REASON THEY DIED?
and finally, if your not in the army right now, why dont you go over? or do you just reap the benefits of living here and let other people die for your ideals?

now, what is the comparison of the amount of money bush made off dead kids in iraq from contracting, haliburton, and oil, to the amount moore made in a documentary which may bring about a regime change for which less of our boys might die?

yea, one last request. can you give me a arguement for reelecing bush that doesnt include kerry mudslinging? as a matter of fact you think you can refrain from mudslinging and answer with your own opinions?

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by mental invalid
yeah, good one...

please enlighten me with another, bush is the antichrist theory
lstone for now -I think him asking if he could offer you some advice was a retorical question.

[BROWNer]

yipes.
i'd prefer to hear your own thoughts on the movie
instead of the fancy elitist shit hitchens yaps on about.
by the way, hitchens was all for this invasion and still
is. i think he had a hemorroidal flare up while writing that piece.

[mental invalid]

i know browner, im having one of my days where i just want a gun...it seems i have a short fuse today..

but my blistering nonsense aside...

i like hitchens, dont always agree with him, but i like him, as well as david brooks...i thought both of them brought up intelligent points, and were not being blabbering boobs in the dumb way that hannity and limbaugh and oreilly are...

i thought they would be good platforms to jump from...

i dont think im going to see the movie, maybe i will, which i cant believe, cause about 2 months ago i couldnt wait to see it...but now all my intellectual friends who i thought were above the babble, are now foaming at the mouth in ways that remind me of people and the Passion...

what moore says is propaganda, and not a documentary....non fiction

its funny, i always wished that the left could get their rush limbaugh, not that we have em, i feel as if we are no better off...

the problem is, is that mike is a neccessary evil...in the media consuming society that we live in, we need mike moore to be our common denominator...if for no other reason, then for the people that assume cause if you call something a documentary it must be fact or if you see it on TV it must be true....

i fear we are heading for an arms race of talking heads....where the mushroom cloud will vaporize decency, debate, and truth.


and let me just tell the fucktards in here that im about as right wing as i am a right angle...i just like to push myself through the cognitive dissonance instead of just gulping the shit down like chocolate milk...

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by GeraloRivera


yea, one last request. can you give me a arguement for reelecing bush that doesnt include kerry mudslinging? as a matter of fact you think you can refrain from mudslinging and answer with your own opinions?


dickhead, for the last fucking time, im not a republican, its just i can chew gum and walk at the same time...

try it sometime...


ill be voting for kerry, out of lesser of two evils....hooray for inspiring leaders of democracy...

[Nic Thamaire]

ive just ran into a documentary about bush,and i hear some ill fact


first:

Bush" 41st father and W' grand father was doing bizness with Hitler during the secondworld war


second: the all BEN LADEN Familly was in nyc by 9/11 for a carlyne assembly,the next day they left for saudi arabia via a charter,it made of it the only plane allow to flight by 9/12

damn why let dem go at that time?

illllllll!

[BROWNer]

*edited for my own faulty thinking. blah.

[HESHIANDET]

im voting for bush

[BROWNer]

vote for bush cuz you believe in him, not
becuz you're all pissy about left wing commentary.

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by mental invalid
dickhead, for the last fucking time, im not a republican, its just i can chew gum and walk at the same time...


[img]http://www.chipsbooks.com/havecake.jpg'>
YOU GO GIRL
[img]http://images-partners.google.com/images?q=tbn:m7b3EdQQgf0J:www.stanford.edu/~fsweeney/oprah.jpg (http://www.stanford.edu/~fsweeney/oprah.jpg)'>

[<KEY3>]

page2

let's turn a new page in this topic m'kay?

[seeking]

holy fucking ignorance!!!

roe, seriously dude, get your head out of your fucking ass! i honestly almost dont even believe it's you typing that shit, or if it is, that you're trying to play some ridiculous joke on us all. what dude said is completely right, you're attacking the person simply because their oppinion differs from yours. fucking ignorance, end of story.

i watched farenheit 911 on the plane today (canal street bootlegs represent). i also read the NETIRE hutchinson article last week, and i have to say that again, dude is doing what every single person that tries to criticise moore does; they attack him instead of the work. instead of questioning why the bin ladens were let out of the country, against the wishes of the FBI, he disses more for not criticising dick clark for giving the OK. who fucking cares? completely irrelivent. then he spends half the thing criticising moore for at one point questioning if al qaida is even involved in 911, then in the movie, just accepts that they were guilty...again, big fucking deal?!?! all he does is attack moore, and slander him personally, and the way he chose to present the film. not the points moore brings up, not the questions he asks, but moore himself. chris hutchinson, eat a dick. this isnt a documentary, but its a god damn incredible look at what is going on in america and behind the scenes. you can dislike moore all day long, but it doesnt change the fact that we're playing russian roulet iwth the world. you can hate moore 17 ways till sunday and it doesnt change that fact.

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by seeking
holy fucking ignorance!!!

roe, seriously dude, get your head out of your fucking ass! i honestly almost dont even believe it's you typing that shit, or if it is, that you're trying to play some ridiculous joke on us all. what dude said is completely right, you're attacking the person simply because their oppinion differs from yours. fucking ignorance, end of story.

i watched farenheit 911 on the plane today (canal street bootlegs represent). i also read the NETIRE hutchinson article last week, and i have to say that again, dude is doing what every single person that tries to criticise moore does; they attack him instead of the work. instead of questioning why the bin ladens were let out of the country, against the wishes of the FBI, he disses more for not criticising dick clark for giving the OK. who fucking cares? completely irrelivent. then he spends half the thing criticising moore for at one point questioning if al qaida is even involved in 911, then in the movie, just accepts that they were guilty...again, big fucking deal?!?! all he does is attack moore, and slander him personally, and the way he chose to present the film. not the points moore brings up, not the questions he asks, but moore himself. chris hutchinson, eat a dick. this isnt a documentary, but its a god damn incredible look at what is going on in america and behind the scenes. you can dislike moore all day long, but it doesnt change the fact that we're playing russian roulet iwth the world. you can hate moore 17 ways till sunday and it doesnt change that fact.
I said this 4 times and he is fucking talkin about bubble gum and hes not a republican. I think he understands what i wrote, since i clarified it 4 fucking times, but went out of his way to misconstrue what i said so he doesnt have to defend his views.
not worth the effort or time

GO OPRAH! SHOT DEM SAND NAGARS!!! U S A! U S A!!

[imported_Tesseract]

Originally posted by BROWNer
vote for bush cuz you believe in him, not
becuz you're all pissy about left wing commentary.

I DARE YOU!


best reply ever.

[imported_El Mamerro]

Originally posted by BROWNer

vote for kerry cuz you believe in him, not
becuz you're all pissy about right wing management.

[BROWNer]

touche biatch.

[imported_Tesseract]

seriously, i'd be feeling really good if americans actually took the huge effort to vote...i dont really care what but i'd like to see you guys take part in whats running your lifes.

[villain]

There's not one side, not two sides, but as many sides as there are people on this earth to any story. There are many facts that would seem to negate other facts. I must admit that Moore seems to have somewhat disappointed me because I know off the top of my head from what I've read here that there are holes in this documentary and it is inflammatory. (I haven't seen the movie yet. Haven't been able to do much of anything really.) We can have opinion wars and fire factoids at each other all day.... the only way we could effectively do this however is if we had somehow linked together all relevant information (which I'm not against doing in the slightest) into some sort of chronological timeline detailing all states of events, conditions and all contributing factors to the given situation. There are already great resources out there but you cannot find the complete story anywhere. The work is already done. It's simply a matter of hyperlinking the pieces together.

All else aside however, and this may seem to be an opinion but, I still believe that our corporate profiteering is a greater crime than harboring abu nidal or brokering deals with nk. ONLY because we claim to have the moral high ground, we claim to be the worlds police force, and because we set the example being the bigger man. Because our crimes overshadow others. So much so, that perhaps if we were to wipe away all the opinions and relegated facts, we may see this boogeyman we are fighting is one fighting against imperialism for self preservation.

There are only (17?) independent nations left in the world, we are the only superpower, our enemy is our own frankensteins monster. Who else could be responsible? Are the Taliban so cruel because that's what islam teaches? Or is it because we have created a power vacuum there where only the strongest and meanest survive and civilization dies? And to this day, our/afghanistans power barely reaches outside of kabul. Instead we chose to fight in Iraq... on false intelligence. Because they were a major threat to us? If that were the case we would have invaded North Korea instead. Or Iran. But Iraq has oil.... Bush loves oil... Halliburton gets bonuses through FEMA... they are making out like fat rats there is no doubt about that. Regardless of however they try and justify this it is plain to see that they have benefitted greatly and there are greater and growing threats at large.

So you can continue firing salvos from the deep resevoirs of history at each other, certainly it makes for interesting conversation, but we shouldn't idle away our lives on minutae.... there is a bottom line, and we shouldn't be beating around the bush.

[BROWNer]

you know in australia it's law, you gotta vote.
that's the way it should be.

ps-check the inbox slut.

[BROWNer]

good shit villy.

[villain]

Originally posted by BROWNer
good shit villy.

Thanks my good man. I try. I really do.

[imported_Tesseract]

Originally posted by BROWNer
you know in australia it's law, you gotta vote.
that's the way it should be.


Aswell here

[****10]

"and finally, if your not in the army right now, why dont you go over? or do you just reap the benefits of living here and let other people die for your ideals?"
- GeraloRivera
I just found this thread so I apologize for the delayed response to this and I would like to say I am most certainly not attacking anyone's beliefs, but I have a problem with this statement. Isn't it basically the lifestyle of liberals that follow this (not going to war but reaping the benfits of them) Liberals for years have reaped the benefits of wars fought by brave Americans while liberals sat at home and ranted about how they are too "intellectual" to fight in them.

Again, I am not attacking anyone's beliefs, but I would really like to hear what everyone thinks of this.

[seeking]

first of all, hesh wont take the time to actually go and vote, if he is even registered, which i highly, [i]highly[i/] doubt.
secondly, this movie doesnt really point out too many facts that havent already been proven. and the 'facts' it does include; bush's connections with the saudis, saudi involvement in us economics, can very easily be proven, and would not be included if they were false. it talks alot about bush's incompetence, which of course is oppinion. the things he uses to supprt that, are fact and i would love to be proven otherwise. the rest of the movie is just commentary and interviews with people on the war. they dont even pretend to be fact, because there is no fact to be had, its just emotion. if you dont agree with it it, fine, but you also cant argue against it.
if someone has a link to someone that refutes moores facts, and has credible backing, i'd love to read it. long winded oppinions pieces slamming moore are of absolutely no interest to me though.
all in all, again, i think it's a very good movie, and a very important movie because if nothing else, it demands that a whole lot of questions get answered. if it turns out that moore is completely wrong about everything, then the world will be a better place after it's proven. if it turns out he's right, then again, hopefully the world will be a better place.

asking questions is never bad.

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by i11igul
boo fucking hoo, bush is still a fucking criminal


a couple of things...

this was meant to be a discussion of the term documentary, its meaning, and how it is applied...not a complaint on the liberal media or a defense of bush...i posted the the two articles because they were meant to be confrontational to what i considered was the favored view that the movie is a documentary and the articles could be used as a platform to discuss the merits of something being called such...i thought the articles atleast brought up good points of debate...

the comment of boo-hoo bush is still a fucking criminal, is so far off the fucking mark its like missing the proverbial side of the barn. i felt it reeked of banter and onesidedness and perhaps it irked me a bit...unfortunately i deep sixed my thread by going off with foul spewed rant instead of just asking politely to stay on subject...however my rant was not against his opinion, it was the way it was presented and the fact that it was not relevant...he didnt even bother to read what was said...

clearly the article had not been read when the comment was issued, his use of boo-hoo shows that he, rivera and maybe most, presumed incorrectly that i was complaining and whining at "unfair" treatment of bush...when my agitation was based in the use of documentary... seeking misinterpreted my rant as ignorance...

the debate is not is bush a criminal...besides i lean more towards yes, but i can also lean no...by now i hope i have made clear what the debate was on...

so the short of this midnight rant is really still, a big fuck him and his bush is a criminal observation...its still not the fucking point of the thread, comments like that i find trite and unappealing regardless if it sums up what i think...and really, fucking save it for some other thread...right now im bored with the talk...

by the way i admit a major faux pas on my part, i have not seen the movie yet, though i did mention that, which is sort of the point of this thread...this confusion that i find myself in...my media consumption and the discussion of film vernacular...

rock out with your cocks out with the bush bashing, but i was hoping for a film class and to maybe broaden what little i know of film, and understand maybe why i should call it a documentary, contrary to what i think...

from,

me

[seeking]

Originally posted by ****10
Liberals for years have reaped the benefits of wars fought by brave Americans while liberals sat at home and ranted about how they are too "intellectual" to fight in them.

the majority of the people in the armed forces are democrats. there has also not been a war in 60 years that was worth fighting, or that gained us (or anyone for that matter) anything. if you're gonna come with some sweeping generalizations like this and you expect any kind of discussion, you should bring some kind of even half-formulated backing, because as it stands, you just sound ignorant.

[fermentor666]

I showed this movie today, all day, to crowded to full houses. On a Monday night we sold out 3 shows. And I watched this movie tonight and got paid to do it. And this thread doesn't deserve any more typing from me on the subject.


:(

[Poop Man Bob]

I heart you, roe.

[seeking]

roe,
a word of advice, if you dont want bush bashing, dont begin your thread with moore bashing. it sets the stage for that sort of discussion. if you wanted to discuss the idea that this is not really a documentary, which moore emphatically admits, then do so, but you set this whole thing up to fail, then acted like a fucking baby when it did.

your chronic is no better than the film canister of g-13 seeds you planted, naw'mean.

(and yes, you were being ignorant. two wrongs dont make a right).

[mental invalid]

i guess youre right seeks. i thought the thread title and my introduction would be clear enough for most, apparently not for those foaming at the mouth...

i wanted a confrontational idea on the subject matter...lets all plays devil advocate! why feed on what we already agree with? (please see my previous post of frank richs article).

how about some mind wrestling..and why the fuck does a discussion of film jargon get twisted into moore "bashing",you words not mine. and how does it lead to a discussion of bush? is that not the same thing you fault hitchens for?

and if moore admits that its not a documentary, i would think that this makes for an even more interesting debate, since for example zesto brings up fair arguments that are in conflict to what even the director said...

i understand what you are saying though, i aimed to high...

oh well....i still say fuck em...i had about an hour conversation with a friend over this(both of us mikey moore fans) and was hoping for the added wisdom of twelve ounce...instead i get two yutzs preaching to a choir who wants to be singing a different song right now....heres a middle finger from me to both of you...i could have averted thread disaster but my pissed of id got the best of me...

shit happens...

[mental invalid]

by the way even though you dont like reading the long winded opinions, kudos to your retort of the article...


gold star for staying on target...

pass me the g13

[Yorick]

Originally posted by BROWNer
you know in australia it's law, you gotta vote.
that's the way it should be.

ps-check the inbox slut.

Heh, never mind that a lot of the voting-age people in this country (especially those just turning 18) have the political awareness of pond scum. Perhaps they may vote more liberal than the plague of old people we have here (especially in my state), but seriously, a lot of them don't want to vote, and can't afford not to. (the rich can just pay the fine) What benefit does a bunch of Year-10 dropouts donkey-voting on the ballot do, really?

As far as the movie goes, Australia shall not be graced with it's presence for another few weeks... So I shall wait and see.

As far as Michael Moore goes (I own all of his books, and have seen The Awful Truth and Bowling for Columbine), he's biased, he's propagandist, he's left, and he's got a camera. Shit, there's no such thing as pure equality. Take a look at your news and media there (I have). It's biased heavily to the right wing, and frankly a lot of it is pure bullshit. Many of the large networks have connections to politicos, and frankly, it's in their interests (the execs at least) for a conservative government to remain in power, because they reap all of the insane tax benefits the Bush government piles upon them. (trickle down theory my ass. What is it with Americans and tax anyway? You have one of the lowest taxation rates in the world, yet the country is renowned for bitching about it.)

Yeah, Mr Moore is biased, but given the political climate at the moment (hell even our PM is in the sack with Bush, and is currently giving us all kinds of benefits-but-not-really-VOTEME!!! at the moment) I think he's having a good impact. He's ripping away the facade that the Bush administration has erected, and it's probably going to benefit the country.

Oh, and vote Kerry, for the rest of our benefit. I'm not sure Americans realise just how much their elections affect the rest of us.

I'd never expect this kind of political discussion from graffiti artists... :

[seeking]

fox devotes its entire news organization to right-wing-slanted, extrmely biased views of every topic it covers, often including flat out lies, and it's just considered 'news'. moore makes a movie from his perspective, includes proven facts, and because it also includes personal oppinion, somehow its tantamount to artistic and national treason?! never mind the fact that every single day rush and oreiley spit out absolute BLATENT lies, and no one says shit. they just accept it. you want to have a discussion about media and fairness, thats your topic to discuss. why it's become acceptible for right wing media to completely fabricate facts with no regard for reality. that's a hell of a lot larger of an issue than whether or not this is actually a 'documentary'.
no documentary is ever completely unbiased. have you ever seen a history channel piece on aushewitz(sp?) that gave the perspective of the guards, or tried to get you to understand what they were feeling? fuck no you havent. is that fair? not at all. does anyone care? nope. why? because the nazi's killed a lot of people. oh, so if you follow your governments wishes in america its patriotic, but in germany its something else? enter topic two: the hipocrisy of HIS-story.

this movie should be argued on facts and facts alone. if the things he says are not true, then disprove them. if they are true, then shut up. if you disagree with his oppinions on bush, then write your own story about how awesome bush is and present it to the world. do not go off on some long winded tirade about how terrible moore is because it's completely fucking irrelivent. moore is not running against bush and this is not a 2 hour campain ad. it's a movie made from the perspective of it's director. moore could be a 3 foot, wart covered troll, but it does not change who bush is and the fact that roughly 80-90% of the worlds population views him largely the same way moore does. if someone came out with a documentary slamming the practice of 'stoning' women for infidelity, or female circumcision, would there be discussion about how it is biased and 'unfair'?! fuck no they wouldnt. well id be willing to wager that world wide, the percentage of bush supporters is roughly equal to the percentage of pro female-oppression supporters, so i hope you're taking a stand for those guys as well. and actually, there are probably some people in a jungle someplace in south america that are afraid to wander too far, for fear they might fall off the edge of the earth. you wight want to stick up for their right to believe in a flat planet.

i honestly dont know why i even bothered to reply to this shit again. i seem to be the only person trying to keep it on track. even you roe, for all your bluster, are doing nothing to shape the discussion. you throw out a half finished idea, then act like a child when people dont follow along with what you were hoping to have us discuss. lead by example, not by doctrin. if you want to talk about fairness in media, then present your own oppinions. when people chime in with their usual dumb stuff, IGNORE IT. dont insult the person for not caring to read hutchinsons 3000 word tirade against moore. you and i are probably the only people who have read that in its entirety, so wheres your oppinion on it? wheres your oppinion on anything other than the mental capacity of those that did not adhere to your wishes?
as i said man, lead by example.

[imported_El Mamerro]

Haven't seen the film yet (doesn't arrive till July 8th here), but Hitchens seems to present plenty of good points not just against Moore the person, but the work and the presentation of facts. If you don't see them, it's because you're refusing to.

A principal good point, which relates to Roe's concern:

So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft.



I'll reserve my opinion until I see it. But please believe I'll be wearing the skeptic goggles.

[seeking]

again, i say, refute the things moore says, not the things he does not say. IF, the things he does not say, completely refute the things he did say, then so be it, but prove it. don't just talk about how he's leaving out a side of things, explain exactly what he is leaving out, and HOW if effects the parts he's leaving in. back up your claims, dont just cast potential doubt. right or wrong, moore backs up every single argument he makes. he doesnt just say things with nothing behind it. there is always the chance that what he does present is not 100% of the story, but again, show me anything, ever produced by anyone, ever in the history of mankind, that told the entire story of any situation. it has never happend. if there is something more to the fact that saudi's control roughly 6% of our economy, or whatever moore claims, then refute that. do not talk about how moore spliced together this or that to get this imagry. at the end of the day, that shit does not matter, the facts do. if you can not refute the facts, then what is there to talk about? i agree that things are seldom as cut and dried as they can be made to appear, but that does not make them any less true. sometimes cutting out the other side, just means cutting out the lies. i'm sure haliburton has a very 'valid' reason for charging the US taxpayers $160 million dollars for meals it never served our soldiers, or for running hundreds of empty trucks across the dessert, to rack up profits (both of which are proven. they'll say it was an acounting mistake or blame it on some person that has very conveniently been fired, but it doesnt change the fact that we are only as stupid as we allow ourselves to be. this is not an 'unbiased' view of things. if anyone saw moore on john stewart, he admitteded it was not. but it is a reasonable response to a very biased presentation of the 'facts' by the powers that be. 'facts' that have caused the death or injury of hundreds of thousands of people.

the movie really only makes two points.
*bush has very close financial ties to the saudi's (including the bin ladens), who have a huge hand in our economy. this is pretty much irrefutible, and as far as i know, no one has even attempted to.
*this 'war' was has been incredibly profitable for a few companies, all of which happen to have DIRECT ties to the people who pushed for it. again, this hasen't even been contested, because its absolutely impossible to. cheney is making millions of dollars of halliburton.

the second half of it, is purely a look at some of the people fighting the war and affected by the war. it is doesnt give any facts, it just gives a view of things that we have specifically not been shown.


this was not an attack on you mams, it was just another 'open letter' response to moore's critics. apply whatever you feel applies.

[seeking]

mams, if you give me an address, and promise to return it soon, i'll mail you my bootleg copy.
if i had known it wasnt coming out for that long there, i'd have picked up a copy specifically for you.

[imported_El Mamerro]

Well, from what I can see in Hitchen's piece, he presents plenty of examples in which what Moore left out could cause problems for what he left in. They may not COMPLETELY 100% refute what Moore says, but they cast doubt on his point and may show that the fact is not a result of ONE course of action, but of many. You want an absolute refutation of facts, which you and I both know is not necessary to bring someone's case down.

If an event happens or a fact exists, and there's 7 reasons for it to have happened, and you only present 3 of those reasons in a way that makes it seems like those 3 were the ONLY reasons, you're being dishonest. There's 4 other reasons out there you're leaving out simply because they're either detrimental to your case, or because you don't personally care enough about them. Either way, you're making a faulty argument, which you an expect to be called out on, and with good reason, even if what you stand for is the correct stance.

Don't sweat it about the bootleg, it's gonna be here next week and I'm definitely copping premiere tickets. By the time your copy gets to me it'll just be a day or two away. Thanks for the offer though!

[<KEY3>]

that clip of michael moore on the daily show last night was brilliant!

wait... did he just ambush her on her own show?

[imported_El Mamerro]

You know what's funny though, I'm on another, more conservative-oriented board arguing on your side. I should start some sort of inter-board discussion... copy what someone over there says, paste it here, then do the same over there for the responses it gets here.

[LaCosaNostra]

Originally posted by seeking
holy fucking ignorance!!!

roe, seriously dude, get your head out of your fucking ass! i honestly almost dont even believe it's you typing that shit, or if it is, that you're trying to play some ridiculous joke on us all. what dude said is completely right, you're attacking the person simply because their oppinion differs from yours. fucking ignorance, end of story.

i watched farenheit 911 on the plane today (canal street bootlegs represent). i also read the NETIRE hutchinson article last week, and i have to say that again, dude is doing what every single person that tries to criticise moore does; they attack him instead of the work. instead of questioning why the bin ladens were let out of the country, against the wishes of the FBI, he disses more for not criticising dick clark for giving the OK. who fucking cares? completely irrelivent. then he spends half the thing criticising moore for at one point questioning if al qaida is even involved in 911, then in the movie, just accepts that they were guilty...again, big fucking deal?!?! all he does is attack moore, and slander him personally, and the way he chose to present the film. not the points moore brings up, not the questions he asks, but moore himself. chris hutchinson, eat a dick. this isnt a documentary, but its a god damn incredible look at what is going on in america and behind the scenes. you can dislike moore all day long, but it doesnt change the fact that we're playing russian roulet iwth the world. you can hate moore 17 ways till sunday and it doesnt change that fact. yes.

[seeking]

or just invite me over there. lord knows i need more agravation in my life.
;)

i agree that only showing 3 of a 7 sided argument is not necessarily the most thurough way to go about things, but i also think if the thee sides you do show are strong enough, and 2 of the remaining 4 are complete bullshit, and the other 2 are a slight of hand, then presenting them will just convolute things. if this administration has proven anything, it's that if fox news says something, it's 'true', no matter how fanciful it might be. before the 9/11 commission last week, 68% of ameircans still believed that there was a working relationship between al qaida and iraq. i'm not sure what the numbers are now, but i doubt they are much lower. even though it has been proven to the best of the worlds possible ability, that it is completely not true. but how do you prove something is wrong, when peoples reason for believing is not based on anything? if you were to try and refute every possible angle in every situation, you would never ever accomplish anything. what moore set out to do was to force bush, and america, to take a serious look at what is going on here, and how it is effecting our world. even if he just presents 3 sides, those 3 are serious enough to warrant a response. and maybe thats where i differ on things. i don't care if this is biased. i dont care if its a documentary, and i don't care if it's only telling half the story. i think the story it does tell is more than sufficent to get people more interested in finding out the truth, and taking a look at what is going on. i look at it as a hearing to determine if a 'new trial' is warranted. this movie is not going to prove that bush is 'guilty', but it does prove that shit is 'fucked the fuck up', and that we've been lied to constantly.

again, i would like to see an article refuting specific claims that moore makes regarding bush/saudi/bin laden connection. i would also like to see someone try and refute or rationalize the money halliburton has stolen. if someone can't argue those facts, or present another side that makes me think that somehow it is not as moore presents, then i really don't care what they say, because its semantics and opinion, and i dont care about other peoples opinions.

[JesusMachine]

Originally posted by Tesseract
seriously, i'd be feeling really good if americans actually took the huge effort to vote...i dont really care what but i'd like to see you guys take part in whats running your lifes.

voting does not matter... how did bush get in office?

[seeking]

50% of eligable voters, do not vote.
if they did vote, bush would not be in office.
voting does make a difference, but only if you do it.

[JesusMachine]

Seeking,
How was the bootleg. was it DVD quality or filmed in the movie theater style.

[seeking]

they're all filmed in the theater. china town steeze.
quality sucks, but whatever. i aint mad.

[JesusMachine]

i got columbine on canal and that shit was movie theater style, it was tolerable. but i got luck with lord of the rings... that shit was straight dvd quality.:)

[<KEY3>]

Originally posted by seeking
50% of eligable voters, do not vote.
if they did vote, bush would not be in office.
voting does make a difference, but only if you do it.


here's a point to consider.... low voter turnout generally means political apathy but that can be a good thing. Imagine if there was a public vote on a tax raise of 300%. Every single voter would turn out to vote against that tax raise. If there's no polarizing issue then it isnt always bad to have low voter turnout. It can be a reflection that times are okay and people are generally satisfied.

Look at France durring their last elections.
They had a huge voter turnout mainly because people were so scraed that Le Pen would come in from the far, far right and take control. They all went to the polls to stop him. By contrast look at the shit turnout for the bush/gore election. People were feeling good and most voters didnt show because they couldnt really get behind either of the candidates.

rambling now...

[seeking]

that doesnt exactly apply to america, because there is always voter apathy here. more than in any other democratic country in the world. people don't vote because they dont think it matters, not because they dont care. they feel that no matter what they want, the rich will get their way, and they [the average person] will wind up getting screwed. which, historically speaking does tend to be the case. they don't realize that voting is the ONLY way it will change. that they need to vote out politicians that are dishonest, and vote in ones that aren't.

[JesusMachine]

it's just different masks homie... they are all dishonest.

[seeking]

thanks 'homie', i'm familiar with politics and how they work. they are dishonest because we do not hold them accountable. because we dont even know what the fuck they vote for, so they can do whatever they want. half the people dont even understand how senators and congressmen affect politics, and how voting in local political races does greatly effect the larger pictures. there are a ton of things that have achieved by small groups, at local levels, that had a huge effect on stuff. the only reason we even had a 911 commission, was because a group of survivors and widows, bitched and complained until the govt. finally caved in and granted one. if a couple hundred people had not been adamant about finding out what happend, none of that would have taken place.
as soon as people hold their officials accountable, and are not deceived by shiny appliances and even shinier lies, things will change. there actually are a lot of decent politicians, they just never get things accomplished because the shitty ones are allowed to have all the power.

[<KEY3>]

Originally posted by seeking
people don't vote because they dont think it matters, not because they dont care.

I think it's because they dont care.

One rich dude from the south or another rich dude from the north?
Who cares? Neither of them represent my interests.


*P3

[WREK]

what would happen if the inner city youth was educated properly??

crackers would shit their pants, thats what.



stay in school.....

[seeking]

Originally posted by <KEY3>
I think it's because they dont care.

One rich dude from the south or another rich dude from the north?
Who cares? Neither of them represent my interests.
[/COLOR]

what is it with people i usually respect completely assing out lately? kerry is not a 'rich dude', and if you can't see how he will be different than bush, you are completely blind, and lying to yourself just so you can wallow in nihilism. it makes a WORLD of difference. we would not be in iraq right now if gore had been (allowed to be) elected. i think that is pretty unarguable.

if people do not care, it's because they think it doesn't matter what they say. if people felt their voices made a difference, they would care (and they would vote).

[<KEY3>]

actually I was thinking more about the bush-or-gore vote.

and my comment was probably what most americans were thinking in November 2000.
There was no 9/11 at that point, no concern in Afghanistan and Sadam was a bad guy from the past. There was nothing to polarize them into voting like their life depended on it. Clearly this year... it just might depend on it.

dont worry seeks.... even as a canuck, I can see just how important this election will be.
Did you see just how important our election was yesterday?

[seeking]

you had an election yesterday?
sorry, i was in NYC buying shoes. somehow i must have missed it.
:(


seeks/social commentary through unfortunate honesty


oh, and i think we're arguing opposit sides of the same coin. i agree that people dont care, but i think its because they dont think caring will make a difference. if they felt their vote did matter, they would cast it. think about bar room politics; just about everyone has an oppinion on just about every matter, but that doesnt mean most will ever make it into a ballot box. ask any drunk guy on the street what he thinks about bush, or the war, and they will have an oppinion.

[<KEY3>]

yeah... same coin.

There was an election in Canada that was one-of-a-kind. I saw Michael Moore on US tv talking abouthow Canadians cant vote for Harper. Luckily we didn't... mostly.


a thread I made about it (http://www.12ozprophet.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55474)

[seeking]

moore said 'most americans'...i am willing to bet that 95% of americans could not tell you who the PM of canada and the president of mexico are.
i know mexico is vicente fox, but i have no clue on canada. which is hillarious, considering i'm 10 minutes from it, and had dinner there last night.



so who won?

[<KEY3>]

our old PM is our new PM.

long story short....
Crazy Old Jean Chretien retires and leaves Paul Martin in charge.
Turns out Jean had some scandals that hurt his party.
Paul Martin is attacked by every other party.
Out on the West, there's a bunch of crazed creationists.
They somehow managed to infiltrate a respected party (the PC's)
Their leader accused the PM of being soft on child porn.

It's like voting for a knight at medevil times.

Here's the 4 main parties:
Liberals - who everyone thinks are dishonest
Conservative - who would rather be americans
NDP - who are the leftist hippies
Bloc Quebecois - by Quebec, for Quebec

yeah... our situation is really interesting compared to yours.

[seeking]

you guys still have a slant towards socialism?
it's interesting that the liberals would be seen as dishonest.
why is that?
and which party is martin in?

[<KEY3>]

Paul Martin was appointed head of the liberal party by Jean Chretien. Paul Martin just won the last election and gets to keep his position as Prime Minister (even though it's over a minority govt this time) In Canada there are 301 seats and the 'prime minister' is the leader of the party with the most seats. We dont vote specifically for someone to be PM, just for the person in our local riding and the party they represent.

the scand had something to do with old guys under Chretien giving big advertising contracts to their buddies companies in montreal. Something like $100mil was spent 'without any benefit to canadians'. So Paul Martin got left that nasty bit of scandal to fight.

[Weapon X]

Martin is the Liberal party. That's the bomb party. Bring booze, don't worry about the womeh, we gots. Bono will be performing, so don't be too late.

Yo, a lot of young people don't vote for stupid reasons.

Key3, remember that guy I told you about who was spouting off about the sponsorship scandal, yet knew nothing about it? Well, he calls me yesterday, and asks if there is a spot on the ballot for "I would like to not vote". From this, I gather that he knows it's his goddamn civic duty to vote, but he honestly thinks that all these politicians are no good snakes, and that if people don't vote, it will solve our problems. Geez, what a moron.

I talked to a bunch of people who didn't vote yesterday. Some of them are the type to start a family one day...the type that make a lot more money than me, hence pay a lot more taxes than me. It makes absolutely no sense.

Not to sound like some weed smoking, used clothing wearing, poliscience drop out, but the consumerism and the whole idea that reading is for nerds is ruining society. auurggghhhh! Shit, last week, my buddy's ex actually made fun of me because I said that I enjoy reading National Geographic. This isn't the first time someone has laughed at me for it. I need to make new friends.

Funny thing is, my old crackhead neighbour calls me yesterday, frantic, saying how he needs to catch the bus back to his old riding to vote. He has absolutely no idea what's going on at all, but he seemed desperate to vote. I'm sure he ended up picking Green after realizing that the Marijuana Party wasn't on the ballot.

[Weapon X]

Originally posted by <KEY3>
the scand had something to do with old guys under Chretien giving big advertising contracts to their buddies companies in montreal. Something like $100mil was spent 'without any benefit to canadians'. So Paul Martin got left that nasty bit of scandal to fight.

Yet no one ever mentions the 3 billion or so dollars that went missing under Harris' nose a few years ago. Or the privatization of the 407, or hell, Harris building a condo over spawning grounds of an endangered fish species in his hometown.

I'm telling you, I think someone from the Liberal party fucked all the daughters of the newspaper editors. It makes no sense why this shit was front page news *for so long, right before election time, and actually swayed voters to vote Conservative when their attitudes were Liberal.

[<KEY3>]

yeah... I dont even want to get started on the 'common sence revolution'.

[seeking]

your election was swayed by 100 million dollars?! ha. how nice it must be to live such a simple life. haliburton stole almost $200million from us in one sitting, and we could care less. we got important shit to argue about, like blow jobs and whether or not max cleveland, a vietnam vet who lost 3 limbs in the war, actually 'cares' about the troops.

[Fugazi]

Originally posted by seeking
moore said 'most americans'...i am willing to bet that 95% of americans could not tell you who the PM of canada and the president of mexico are.
i know mexico is vicente fox, but i have no clue on canada. which is hillarious, considering i'm 10 minutes from it, and had dinner there last night.



so who won?

I'm guessing at least 95% of Americans don't care enough to remember who the Prime Minister of Canada and President of Mexico are. Or maybe that's just me...

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by ****10
"and finally, if your not in the army right now, why dont you go over? or do you just reap the benefits of living here and let other people die for your ideals?"
- GeraloRivera
I just found this thread so I apologize for the delayed response to this and I would like to say I am most certainly not attacking anyone's beliefs, but I have a problem with this statement. Isn't it basically the lifestyle of liberals that follow this (not going to war but reaping the benfits of them) Liberals for years have reaped the benefits of wars fought by brave Americans while liberals sat at home and ranted about how they are too "intellectual" to fight in them.

Again, I am not attacking anyone's beliefs, but I would really like to hear what everyone thinks of this.
I was talking about this war(not wars in the past)...i do not support this war so i would not fight in it. If it was an actual threat, like the nazis, i would have no problem fighting in it. In my statement i was asking if a person supported the war why wouldnt he go over there and prove his devotion to his country and its current administration?

and about attacking peoples personal beliefs...if your getting that from one of my posts, i was saying not to attack a person because your ideas differ but argue the ideas.

[KING BLING]

Originally posted by seeking
kerry is not a 'rich dude'


actually he is...

Sen. Kerry, like the last JFK from Massachusetts to serve as commander in chief, is also extremely wealthy. We estimate his family fortune at $525 million, which would make him, if elected, the third-richest president ever. But the key word is "family." The Kerry money comes from his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited it from her late husband, Sen. John Heinz III of the Heinz food family.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest...xtra/P74989.asp (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P74989.asp)


I

[Weapon X]

Originally posted by seeking
your election was swayed by 100 million dollars?! ha. how nice it must be to live such a simple life. haliburton stole almost $200million from us in one sitting, and we could care less. we got important shit to argue about, like blow jobs and whether or not max cleveland, a vietnam vet who lost 3 limbs in the war, actually 'cares' about the troops.

damn, way to put things in perspective.

[seeking]

kingbling,
yeah, i know all about his wife's money, but marrying into riches and growing up as a privledged rich kid are completely different things.

[GeraloRivera]

Anybody see the crankyankers that was just on? They had this guy call a party store in a middle eastern accent and this hick lady went off on him.
"america is bessed by god! god doesnt bless islam! go back to your own country!" i can understand why we come off as ignorant. the guy doing the prank said "hey, i from syria,we the good guys" funny yet sad.

[Poop Man Bob]

Another journalist's take on Hitchens' (http://nypress.com/17/26/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm) complaints about F9/11:
SHOVELING COAL FOR SATAN
Christopher Hitchens collects check from Microsoft, calls Moore a coward.

By Matt Taibbi

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental... Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
—Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com, on Michael Moore

Well, that's rich, isn't it? Christopher Hitchens crawling out of a bottle long enough to denounce Michael Moore as a coward. I can't imagine anything more uplifting, except maybe a zoo baboon humping the foot of a medical school cadaver.


All journalists are cowards. Hitchens knows it, I know it, everybody in this business knows it. If there were any justice at all, every last goddamn one of us would be lowered, head-first, into a wood-chipper. Over Arizona. Shoot a nice red mist over the whole state, make it arable for a year or two. A year's worth of fava beans and endive for the children of Bangladesh: I dare anyone in our business to say that that wouldn't represent a better use of our rotting bodies than the actual fruits of our labor.


No one among us is going to throw that first stone, though. Not even Chris Hitchens, a man who makes a neat living completing advanced Highlights for Children exercises like the following: "Denounce a like-minded colleague, using the words 'Lugubrious' and 'Semienvious.'" Such is the pretense of modern journalism, that we are to be lectured on courage by a man who has had his intellectual face lifted so many times, he can't close his eyes without opening his mouth. By a man who, if the Soviets had won the Cold War, would be writing breathless features on Eduard Shevardnadze for three bucks a word in Komsomolskaya Vanity Fair ("Georgia on His Mind: Edik Speaks Out." Photos by Annie Liebowitz...).


Which is fine, good luck to him, mazel tov. Everybody's got to make a living. But let's not leave people confused out there. The idea that anyone in today's media is either courageous or cowardly on the basis of what they write or broadcast is ridiculous.


Hitchens, like me and everyone else out there publishing, lives in a professional world where the idea of courage is submitting nice words about George Bush to the Nation, or maybe a "Rethinking Welfare Reform" piece to the Wall Street Journal. What Hitchens calls courage is really a willingness to offend one's intellectual constituency, and what he really means by that is honesty—something very different from courage. It's a nice quality, honesty, and the pundit out there who has it and still manages to make a living is, I guess, to be applauded. But again, let's not confuse that with courage.


Courage is a willingness to face real risks—your neck, or at the very least, your job. The journalist with courage would have threatened to resign rather than repeat George Bush's justifications for invasion before it began. I don't remember anyone resigning last winter. The journalist with courage would threaten to quit rather than do a magazine piece about an advertiser's product, his fad diet book or his magic-bullet baldness cure. It happens every day, and nobody ever quits over it.


If journalists had courage, they would form unions and refuse to work for any company that made decisions about editorial content based on the bottom line, on profit. Are there individual instances of reporters who quit over this issue? Sure, there are a few. Lowell Bergman walked out on 60 Minutes over this one. And there were those Fox TV reporters in Tampa, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who famously (and expensively, as it turned out) fell on their swords rather than broadcast a bunch of cuddly bullshit about the Monsanto corporation.


Yes, there are a few isolated vertebrates out there in our business. But it wasn't like the whole staff of WTVT in Tampa walked out in support of Akre and Wilson. Janitors stick up for each other. Steelworkers stick up for each other. Even camera operators and soundmen stick up for each other. But journalists just sit still in their cubicles with their eyebrows raised, waiting for it all to blow over, in those very rare instances when a colleague walks the plank.


I've been around journalists my entire life, since I was a little kid, and I haven't met more than five in three-plus decades who wouldn't literally shit from shame before daring to say that their job had anything to do with truth or informing the public. Everyone in the commercial media, and that includes Hitchens, knows what his real job is: feeding the monkey. We are professional space-fillers, frivolously tossing content-pebbles in an ever-widening canyon of demand, cranking out one silly pack-mule after another for toothpaste and sneaker ads to ride on straight into the brains of the stupefied public.


One friend I know describes working in the media as shoveling coal for Satan. That's about right. A worker in a tampon factory has dignity: He just uses his sweat to make a product, a useful product at that, and doesn't lie to himself about what he does. In this business we make commodities for sale and, for the benefit of our consciences and our egos, we call them ideas and truth. And then we go on the lecture circuit. But in 99 cases out of 100, the public has more to learn about humanity from the guy who makes tampons.


I'm off on this tangent because I'm enraged by the numerous attempts at verbose, pseudoliterary, "nuanced" criticism of Moore this week by the learned priests of our business. (And no, I'm not overlooking this newspaper.) Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of us had any balls at all.


If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush press conference last year and shouted, "Bullshit!" it might have made a difference.


If even one network, instead of cheerily re-broadcasting Pentagon-generated aerial bomb footage, had risked its access to the government by saying to the Bush administration, "We're not covering the war unless we can shoot anything we want, without restrictions," that might have made a difference. It might have made this war look like what it is—pointless death and carnage that would have scared away every advertiser in the country—rather than a big fucking football game that you can sell Coke and Pepsi and Scott's Fertilizer to.


Where are the articles about the cowardice of those people? Hitchens in his piece accuses Moore of errors by omission: How come he isn't writing about the CNN producers who every day show us gung-ho Army desert rats instead of legless malcontents in the early stages of a lifelong morphine addiction?


Yeah, well, we don't write about those people, because they're just doing their jobs, whatever that means. For some reason, we in the media can forgive that. We just can't forgive it when someone does our jobs for us. Say what you want about Moore, but he picked himself up and did something, something approximating the role journalism is supposed to play. The rest of us—let's face it—are just souped-up shoe salesmen with lit degrees. Who should shut their mouths in the presence of real people.

Once he gets past his anti-Hitchens-foaming-at-the-mouth, he makes some damn good points.

[Fallout]

Not that my opinion is ever worth much anyway, but if you're going to read on, you'll get it anyway.

I don't know about the rest of the United States, especially since I always feel outcast and as if I'm standing alone in an empty field when it comes to society and my opinions, but I don't vote. Probably won’t for quite some time. Why? Because (1) I don't care enough to pay attention to what's going on in politics when over half of it is just what "they" want me to hear. If one source was completely true, unbiased and worthy of my time, I’d listen, form a valid opinion and head to the ballots. (2) However, because I don't know what's true and what's not, who's standing for what and who isn't, my vote shouldn't be cast, much less counted. I take responsibility and logically accept the fact that I just don’t give enough of a damn to do the research in order to vote. For example, look what happened in the last election. Who really won? Gore did? How did Bush take office then? He bought it? He cheated his way into it? Okay, so what. I didn’t vote, and it didn’t matter. As a matter of fact, it took me almost 4 whole days to hear what was going on. The only reason I knew we didn’t have a president yet was because I phoned my mother and happened to ask, “Hey, who’s our new president?” She replied “They don’t know.” You can imagine my reaction. (That’s how much of a bubble I live in) Many people from our generation are too naïve and ignorant to make a valid vote. Sure, a lot of people our age (18-25) know what’s going on, follow the news and do the research to stay on top, but not enough of them do it to the magnitude that they should [myself included]. So, the way I look at it, I figure I’ll just let the people who know what’s going on try to vote correctly, efficiently and effectly based on the knowledge outside of the common public’s eye. Do I care? Kind of. Do I care enough? Nope. Will it change my opinions or how much research I do or if I make it down to vote this time? Nope. Does voting matter? Hell yes it does. Am I educated enough to make it worth my time? Nope.

Some people don’t think it matters, others just don’t care. You’re both correct.

Moore is also right, Americans are blissfully ignorant. Fortunately, I’m smart enough to realize that and enjoy every fucking minute of it. But not so fortunately, when we’re attacked, declared war on, ambushed and battered after trying to play savoir and push a religion no one really cares about anymore anyway, I won’t be shaking my head wondering what happened.



Not calling any names (as if it’s not quite evident), but I have a real problem with use of “crackers” in an above post. I’ve treated all races equally my whole life, even as a child [my parents actually raised me well, unbelievably, and in America at that] and when I see bullshit like that being said something inside of me seriously weeps. So what if I’m a white guy in my 20s, that is childish bullshit. I can’t speak for the rest of my race but racism won’t end until everyone gets with the program. That attitude seems to run amok in America even today and I’m tired of it. Get over it, get out there and change the world after you get over your current attitude. No one hands you anything, no matter what color skin you have, so pave your own road and shut up until you're standing on top with the realization that you actually made a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Disclaimer: The last paragraph was not an attempt at patting myself on the back.

[BROWNer]

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob


yowza!

[seeking]

ha, i had forgotten how completely out of hand hutchinsens article was till i just read that quote.

seeks/incredulous tone in place of facts or backing.

[BROWNer]

..i love how you keep calling him 'hutchinsen'.

[ModelCitizen]

There was some movie I watched (I think it was "all the presidents men" with robert redford and dustin hoffman?) where a reporter is talking about how the truth is too plain a picture for people to have any interest in, too tedious or too boring -- something like that.
I agree.
I think what "the left" really needs is someone who can put an entertaining spin on that "boring" truth, be able to play the media like moore, and have the historical/political knowledge -- and right presentation of that knowedge -- to legitimize it all in front of pissy critics.

[KillWhitey]

crackers are crackers man, so your not a white racist? guess what homie, your 1 in 1000.

[seeking]

brown,
haha, when i read that last quote by him, i realized i had been getting his name wrong, but i felt that if i was to change now, i would be admitting defeat. i felt i would just keep moving forward in my ignorance, and pretend like i was right all along.

it's a trick i learned from my government. sweet, huh?!

[imported_El Mamerro]

That's an awesome article by Taibbi, especially his takes on journalism. But it does absolutely zero to discredit the points Hitchens makes, other than personal lambasting (exactly what people complain is being done to Moore). Beyond the journalism observations, it's pretty much just a hissy fit against Hitchens' hissy fit, except Hitchens actually dealt with the work being criticized.

Seeks, it would be awesome if you joined over there... but there could be problems. They're really fucking prissy about arguments, there was this one time some lib guy started handing them all their asses in political discussions, and they got mad and went so far as to make a thread to force the guy to prove he was a cigar smoker (it's the cigaraficionado.com (http://forums.cigaraficionado.com/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=2346043451&f=9426054) board) and was therefore justified to be there. He, of course, shut their mouths, it was pathetic. So if you join, and you get accused of trolling and are forced to prove your love of cigars, holler at me. It's awesome though, the board is politically the exact opposite of this one (being that it's mostly older, wealthy men): a majority of righties and a few lefties. Some are gasbags, some offer good discussion with plenty of good points... the latter is what I use to balance out the good stuff I read on this site.

[seeking]

mams,
what exact issues does hitchens bring up? because as far as i can remember, there was really nothing but extreme character assasination, and self rightesous chest pounding. i remember a whole lot of so-slanderous-it-almost-negates-it's-claim-as-journalism, but i dont remember him really questioning any of the 'facts' moore claims. yes he said moore was only giving one side, but did he bother to give the other sides, or did he just point fingers and alude that another side 'existed'? telling someone they are 'so' wrong, that they do not even warrant a response, in the middle of a 3000 word response, is generally proof positive that you have nothing to stand on. if something is really that erronious, it should be incredibly easy to debunk, right? and since this film is getting so much publicity, and moores claims are so serious, if he is really just telling blatant lies, you'd think someone would step forth and prove that. but again, thus far i have not seen a single article to do that. if one exists, for the 4th time, i would love to see it.

maybe i'll check out the board, but i think someplace like that might just annoy the hell out of me.

[mental invalid]

im printing it out now poops for smoke break reading at work...


but the title fucking kills it...hahaha...shoveling coal for satan...


a comment not on hitchens, but rather his style (and in the good ole fun of tearing someone to shreads)

this sentence i feel is a fun linguistical wonder to flow through, which is one of the reasons why i like to read him. i have only recently started reading what he puts out...im intrigued by what he says, but also how he says it:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental...

hahaha...dem' fighting words!

[imported_El Mamerro]

Haha, dude, you're gonna make me go back to that article, quote stuff and list it out for you. Fuck.

I'll do it later tonight, there's work to be done now.

[seeking]

to me it sounded like nothing but literary masturbation. dude was throwing out all his 10 cent words to give off an air of superiority and to show how much more intelligent he was than moore, who prides himself on being just your 'average' guy. personally i took it as being pathetic and desperate, as if there was a need to rely on 'big' words to confuse you into just assuming that since he knows about thesaurus.com, he must know everything about everything. and before you accuse me of just taking this position because it's in defense of moore, let me remind you that i've said the exact same thing in every instance that a situation like this has arisen, regardless of alliances. peacocking gets no love from me, no matter which side it comes from. it's unecessary and even counter productive in my oppinion. if you want to have a war of words with another journalist to prove who has a better mastery of language, by all means, pull out your dicks. but bringing a pollysylabic sword to a game of cards just makes you look stupid, as if you know right from the get-go that you can't beat your opponent at his own game. it's like the bombers vs. piecers debate to decide who is more 'real'. give moore 3000 words, and he'll give you ten reasons why you shouldnt vote for bush, and backing (even if its just one sided) on why. give this guy 3000 words and he'll give you a hand full of cum.
no thanks.

[mental invalid]

"Not even Chris Hitchens, a man who makes a neat living completing advanced Highlights for Children exercises like the following: "Denounce a like-minded colleague, using the words 'Lugubrious' and 'Semienvious.'"



hahaha...totally...

and you know what seeks, masturbation is fun!

whether its to porn or its linguistical with words such as lugubrious (sad in an exaggerated way, i looked it up) or finding out what semienvious means. the way he posed it, i figured maybe i didnt understand what it means...i could not find it any dictionary, which leads me to believe that i was right and it means slightly envious...but my question is, is that grammatically correct? should it be hyphenated? i put the word into yahoo, and the first page was hitchens article which i found amusing...

anyways the point is, is that the exercise i just did, or using your sullied description, masturbation (as if its ever a bad thing) is fun, atleast for me.

i love language, and i love words...i love big words that are just overflowing with structure and movement...

he seemed a little too upset, when he wept openly over the loss of his favorite american idol star

he was lugubrious over the loss of his favorite american idol star


i like sentence B its shorter, less wordy, and lugubrious has a feel to it, that "little too upset" doesnt have...

and i think hitchens does it for twofold, he like to beat on his own chest and i think he enjoys language...


so lets all masturbate together...i used to banish and rally against what i assumed was, and im sure still is most times, intellectual snobbery, what about the common man! who is looking at for the common denominator!!

...but fuck it, pick up a dictionary if you dont know what the word means, you may just learn something and also be able to vocalize what you mean in a clearer fashion...

[mental invalid]

by the way on sundays, you can find me with a cup of coffee, a pack of smokes, william safires "on language" column and my dictionary...

[mental invalid]

but bringing a pollysylabic sword to a game of cards just makes you look stupid


maybe, but your use of pollysylabic crushes where using "big words" instead would not even be close...

thats sorta my point...

[seeking]

come on roe, you've read enough of my long winded diatribes to know that i too am a huge fan of words for the sake of words. i love being challanged with writing. i love reading books and finding words i'd never heard, or sentence structure that forces me to re-read something over and over because it doesnt initially make sense (joseph conrad has been fucking me up for weeks lately. salmon rushdie did the same). what i don't love though, is people using big words in an improper context or when it defeats the purpose. if moore prided himself on his literary prowess and presented himself as jesse jackson, or don king, then i would view hitchens response as perfectly fitting, but it is not the case. moore goes out of his way to simplify things (arguably sometimes to a fault), so hitchens reply just looks ridiculous in comparison. it's overkill x's 1000, which is what makes it masturbation. it's not 'real', it's a simulation of events. it's an overcompensation, to make up for an inability to use the proper words.

oh, and as far as pollysylabic, yes, in that context it was far more effective, but only because i was writing it to you, and i know you would understand it. if i was trying to explain the same context to tease, it would not have held the same weight.

[BROWNer]

yes, words are the shit.
this little gem thanks to mamerro(from tesser's
thread): "axonometric perspectives"..hahaha.

anyhow..watch this(go to recent programs, click the bush/blair press briefing) (http://c-span.org). unbelievable.

[seeking]

the woman from farenheit 911 was just on al franken show...

it fucking sucks to be sitting at your desk, with headphones on, trying not to cry while you listen to someone talking about losing their child.

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by seeking
come on roe, you've read enough of my long winded diatribes


no! you!? you must jest...haha..some may say that your are the hitchens of 12oz...;)

i dont know, i see it more of just who hitchens is...but i see your point, and i knew we see eye to eye, i was more speaking out into space, proclaiming my love for long laborious linguistics..



Originally posted by seeking oh, and as far as pollysylabic, yes, in that context it was far more effective, but only because i was writing it to you, and i know you would understand it. if i was trying to explain the same context to tease, it would not have held the same weight.

hahaha....true, but is tease reading vanity fair?

[BROWNer]

hitchens is fucking awesome, there should be no doubt.
i just don't think this is one of his better moments, but i'm glad
he's out there ruffling feathers.


oh....
dl and commence bombing(and make your own slogan if you wish):
http://img4.photobucket.com/albums/v29/Tes...ebagstencil.jpg (http://img4.photobucket.com/albums/v29/Tesseract/douchebagstencil.jpg)

[BROWNer]

ps-here's the original stencil, posted by theo: http://www.onetermpresident.org

[Fallout]

KillWhitey: Yeah I know, you're right. I guess there is nothing anyone can do about it. Long live racism along with the rest of our terrible humanity.

And with that, I'll dip out. Politics does nothing but make me sick.

[mental invalid]

Christopher Hitchens crawling out of a bottle long enough to denounce Michael Moore as a coward


that line cracked me the fuck up...


by the way bobbo, good article...though i dont quite feel the same way as he does of himself, he makes some great points though...

[BROWNer]

well since this has turned into a thread about
hitchens, here's a small clip of him arguing against
the claims that the press offensively stifled it's own after 9/11:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenag...ks_20040416.ram (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today5_hawks_20040416.ram)

[BROWNer]

another article by hitchens: second thinking: what i got wrong about iraq (http://slate.msn.com/id/2099142/)

[mental invalid]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101842/


the great reagan article......i think his body was still warm when hitchens wrote this...

The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn't like him all that much. He met his second wife—the one that you remember—because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon.

[seeking]

hitchens may be a fantastic guy, but his moore article was so overly venemous that it wound up poisoning itself. any actual points he was hoping to make were lost amidst his ego stroking and name calling.
he also seems to speak as if he can possibly do no wrong, or as if he has a secret hotline to god. i dont care who's side your on, if that's how you present yourself, you're an asshole too in love with yourself to do your constituency any good. look at the small snippet of reagen article for example. hitchens manages to boil down reagens whole life into half a paragraph. he implies that nancy only married him to get off the hollywood blacklist? reagan was an outspoken liberal prior to meeting nancy, and was nearly black listed himself. the idea they only married to get her carrer back on track is so completely ridiculous, that to even include it renders your whole perspective nearly irrelivent. reagan was alot of things but dumb and friendless were not one of them. the guy supposidly had a photographic memory for christ sake, and is easily one of the most loved presidents in the history of our country. i dont care for the man, or his politics, but to simplify him as hitchens did (and seems to do to everyone) is fucking pathetic. he's like the smart kid in school that no one likes, so to combat his lack of social skills, he holds them all in contempt and attempts to make them less than human. no thanks. i like my slander to have a little more of a sense of humor, and a little less personally attacking.

browner, i would love to hear your reasons for holding him in such high regard, because from what little i've seen, dude is a complete piece of shit.

[BigOatser]

Originally posted by i11igul
boo fucking hoo, bush is still a fucking criminal

there are probably a lot of criminals that post here.

[imported_Tesseract]

Originally posted by seeking


browner, i would love to hear your reasons for holding him in such high regard, because from what little i've seen, dude is a complete piece of shit.

Well, i'm not the brown and i have the luxury to not read lots of my fav journalists/analysists on their daily ego tripping but hitchens book about kissinger is fuckin awesome, but really good.

[BROWNer]

seeking..don't take this the wrong way, but calm down a bit:D.....you're really getting hot and bothered over this guy..eg) "dude is a complete piece of shit"..
hitchens isn't some punk who just waltzed into journalism from nowhere..
he's been around for years and has argued for and against numerous
issues worth pondering. for starters, go to google and read the whole article he wrote for harpers, called "the case against henry kissinger". it's deadly.
now just becuz i said he was 'fucking awesome', doesn't mean i agree with
everything he commits to publication. i still think the tone of the moore piece
is garbagey and i'll be the first to admit that i may be too emotionally attached to
hating bush to wrap my brain around his overall points. as i said earlier, it feels
misplaced considering the climate.
he's gone up against chomsky. he's dissed mother teresa. he stepped to
seymour hersh awhile ago. i like him cuz he's his own dude and isn't afraid to
challenge people. he doesn't care
if what he says pisses off the left. or the right. and if he thinks someone isn't
on the level with a certain perpective or issue, he sits back and does his thing and usually does it well. for me, if there is anyone out there worth reading that may have an opposing viewpoint, it's him. give him a try beyond the moore article seeks.
and if you think his piece on reagan is garbage, then i guess you'll have to
start getting on greg palast (http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=338&row=1) too.

[mental invalid]

i fucking love it when we all tussle....




*sits back and smiles*

[i11igul]

haha

[BROWNer]

my american hombres...
fuck moore's film altogether, you all know
what it's about anyhow. another important flick is now touring
across the US and deserves more attention on a global scale anyhow.
i urge you all to go see this documentary without
exception...it is truly a great piece of work...here is the link for where
it will be playing in USA: http://www.thecorporation.tv/usa/
trailers and all that @ www.thecorporation.com (http://www.thecorporation.com)

[mental invalid]

bumpski cause i heard about that film browns, good call....


im about 90% sure im gonna see 9/11 tonite...

[imported_El Mamerro]

Disclaimer: I actually loved the movie and thought it was excellent. However, I do agree with a lot of what the following negative review says (I also disagree with some points), and I believe it addresses some of the points I tried to make earlier. And yes, it definitely has a lot of Moore bashing, and in this case I feel it is perfectly warranted. Also, it is very long.




"Fahrenheit 9/11": Nay!

Moore's latest has some powerful images that are invariably overwhelmed by his jokey, faux-populist self-righteousness.

By Stephanie Zacharek




June 23, 2004

People who consider themselves basically in league with Michael Moore's politics but dislike his movies often feel compelled to defend him as a concept: "He's a much-needed liberal voice," goes one argument. "He raises issues that need to be raised, that no one else is raising," goes another. And now, with the release of "Fahrenheit: 9/11," Moore's examination of the presidency of George W. Bush in the wake of Sept. 11, another cogent defense is born: "Republicans have tried to suppress this movie -- it must be good!"

Those responses toward Moore have a robotic, "Manchurian Candidate" quality ("Michael Moore is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life"). Moore's supporters are quick to impugn the liberal credentials of anyone who criticizes his presentation of the information he digs up (or, in some cases, makes up). For them, Michael Moore is the issues he talks about, so his detractors must be enemies of democratic principles. It's an old trick, akin to the way Pauline Kael was accused of being insensitive about the Holocaust when she didn't like "Shoah."

In the Moore universe, noisy tub-thumping is deemed more valuable than stringent logic; presenting crucial information in a manner that's irrefutable (by naysayers of any political bent) is much less important than drawing a comfortable little circle in which we're encouraged to congratulate ourselves for being on the "correct" side, for having the good sense to recognize that our president is "bad" and the Iraq war is "wrong."


"Fahrenheit 9/11" is a blend of news footage and filmed commentary that's occasionally effective, particularly when Moore lets the gathered footage speak for itself. But that doesn't happen nearly enough: "Fahrenheit 9/11" has Moore's sloppy fingerprints all over it -- he's like the mugging moppet who insists on doing a tap-dancing routine during the Thanksgiving pageant, lest the Indians, our forefathers or even the bird itself steal the show from him.

Although he has stated that his aim is to force the election's outcome by calling attention to the Bush administration's web of duplicity and deceit, Moore, ever the self-promoter, is the real star of "Fahrenheit 9/11." I agree with probably 95 percent of Moore's politics. At the very least, I'm convinced that George W. Bush is the most dangerous president of my lifetime -- he long ago superseded even the spurious, deceitful Nixon. But even though I'm part of the choir Moore is preaching to, I can't help blanching at his approach: In this increasingly treacherous political climate -- particularly as we approach an election whose impact may resound more thunderously than any other in recent history -- preaching to the choir just isn't good enough. "Fahrenheit 9/11" shows evidence of being better researched than any of Moore's previous films. An article in last Sunday's New York Times made much of Moore's hiring former New Yorker fact checkers to vet it. But Moore's case is undermined by his jokey, faux-populist self-righteousness (a quality the left seems to despise only when it's exhibited by those on the right) and by the slapdash connections he makes between various facts and events. The issues at stake are too serious for a spotlight-hungry manipulator like Moore to be mucking around with.

If you boiled "Fahrenheit 9/11" down to a few basic assertions, you'd have to say Moore is on the right track: He states that Bush was never elected in the first place and that, at least partly because of Bush family ties with Saudi oil interests (connections that have been explored by Craig Unger and a few others, but not by most of the press), Saudi Arabia has gotten a free ride in terms of post-9/11 scrutiny. Before the attacks, Bush and his cabinet ignored warnings about the terrorist threat to this country; afterward, he attempted to squelch any independent investigation of the attacks. Furthermore, the Bush administration has exploited the tragedy of Sept. 11 to foster a culture of fear in the United States; our so-called president then roused us fearful Americans into support for, or at least a numb acceptance of, a war that he has justified only with false allegations.


Moore isn't wrong in considering Bush's actions grave sins against the American people. The problem is that instead of marshaling his strength to drive home his genuinely good zingers, he bunny-hops across the landscape of his movie, scoring cheap points wherever he can. He uses his smirky, aw-shucks filmmaking techniques to encourage complacency in his audience even when he thinks he's doing the opposite: To hammer home the point that Bush is a marauding cowboy, Moore gives us a mock-up of the opening credits to "Bonanza," with Bush's face superimposed where Lorne Greene's should be. (The faces of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair round out the fearsome foursome.) The screening audience I saw the movie with giggled appreciatively, delighted to see George W. made to look like a buffoon. Elsewhere, hokey hoedown music plays in the background against images of Bush, who's fond of stomping around in a cowboy hat on his endless Crawford retreats. (Bill Clinton's enemies often used similar "hick" music to paint him as a dumb rube from the South -- but then, the use of country music is the universal signal for "Looky here -- a stupid person!") Moore doesn't realize that in falling back on the cliché of painting the president as a cowboy, he's missing the real phoniness: Bush is a New Haven-born blueblood who affected a Texas demeanor.

Moore uses these and other yuk-yuk tactics to poke impish little holes in the Bush persona. But these minor deflations don't do much to emasculate George W. If anything, they suggest that Moore underestimates him, carelessly characterizing Bush's smug and reckless disregard for the American people as just a slightly rejiggered version of avuncular, Ronald Reagan-style cluelessness.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" opens with wordless, slow-motion, off-the-air footage of Bush preparing to go on-camera for his pre-Iraq War address to the American people. His piggy little eyes shift left and right; he looks creepy and untrustworthy -- not the type of person you'd want leading your country into war. But Moore rarely trusts in the power of images; he has to talk all over them, figuratively if not literally. He also takes inordinate pleasure in presenting us with facile, simplistic conclusions without having connected the dots. For instance, he stresses the strong connection between George H.W. Bush and the Saudi royal family: The senior Bush is an advisor to the Carlyle Group, a large Washington private equity firm with significant holdings in the defense sector, and with members of the bin Laden family among its investors.


At the very least, that's the conflict of interest Moore claims it is. But Moore never fits the info nibblets he comes up with on the Bush-Saudi connection into a coherent whole. Moore says that, in the days immediately following 9/11, when not even celebrities like Ricky Martin were allowed to fly, prominent Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, were secretly hustled out of the United States. He interviews an FBI agent who says that they should have been questioned before they were offered special protection. Here's the problem: As the New York Times reported last Sunday -- ironically, in the piece on the fact checking that Moore claims has gone into the movie -- the FBI did interview and clear members of the bin Laden family and, as the 9/11 commission has reported, the flights did not leave before U.S. airspace was reopened. In "Fahrenheit 9/11" Moore may have been more careful than usual with the facts, but you still can't help wondering how much he tinkered with them to suit his arguments.
Furthermore, by fixating on the Bush family's financial interests, Moore fails to take into account some of the subtler and perhaps more sinister reasons George W. pushed for the invasion of Iraq -- most significantly, his sense of quasi-religious righteousness (as well as Saddam Hussein's attempt to assassinate his father). How many times have you heard someone say that the Iraq War is "all about oil"? It would almost be a relief if oil -- that is to say, simple greed -- were all that the war was about. Whatever is really going on in George W.'s head, and in those of his advisors, is probably infinitely scarier. Not to discount the enormous profits that Cheney's buddies at Halliburton are reaping, but Bush is surrounded by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle, people who have long been ideologically fixated on Iraq.

When Moore isn't pounding away at Bush, he's busy playing the friend of the common man. But as he did in both "Roger & Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," Moore can't help acting superior to his on-camera subjects. We meet Lila Lipscomb, a hardworking American of modest means who encouraged her children to go into the military, knowing that it could provide educational opportunities that she wouldn't have been able to give them herself. Lipscomb is proud of her country and proud of the young men and women who fight for it. At one point, she shows Moore the cross she wears around her neck -- it's a multicolored cross that, she explains, stands for her multicultural beliefs. "I'm multicultural," she states plainly.

At this moment, the audience I saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" with snickered over what they must have perceived as Lipscomb's simplicity. But not long after, we see that Lipscomb's husband is African-American, and her large, extended family is multiracial. Yet Moore's audience has already been primed to laugh at the "simple folk" who make up the bulk of this great land o' ours. Moore's approach leaves Lipscomb open to ridicule (the same way he used the Rabbit Lady in "Roger & Me" -- the woman who sold live rabbits and their byproducts to bolster her meager government income checks -- to get laughs).

And then, we learn that Lipscomb's son has been killed in Iraq -- it's the clincher Moore has been saving. Lipscomb reads her son's last letter home aloud, and you'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by it. But there's still a sense that this woman's deep, raw grief is valuable to Moore primarily because it feeds his purpose: Look at how innocent, regular people suffer during wartime, he seems to be saying, as if the revelation had just occurred to him.

Elsewhere, Moore shows us footage of grievously injured Iraqi children or, more arresting yet, their corpses. Many of these images are graphic, and I don't believe audiences should necessarily be sheltered from such pictures. But there's something wily and disingenuously wide-eyed about the way Moore uses these images to make his points about the horrors of war. Similarly, he expresses surprise and dismay that the military recruits heavily among African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities, as opposed to trying to attract rich kids. Stop the presses! Innocent civilians are killed during wartime; our armed services are made up largely of young men and women to whom our society has offered limited opportunities. Moore unveils these revelations with a flourish, relishing his role as the great teller of truths. What planet, exactly, has he been living on?

There's plenty in "Fahrenheit 9/11" to provoke true outrage, including some shameless Halliburton promotional materials touting the service and support that company is providing our armed forces overseas. Most powerful of all is the footage of Bush on the morning of 9/11: After learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center and that the nation was under attack, he sat for nearly seven minutes reading "My Pet Goat" to a group of Florida schoolchildren. We scan his face as those endless minutes pass, searching for clues: What is he thinking? What does he suppose he should do? Even here, Moore can't help indulging in cheap psychological analysis, instead of letting the pictures speak for themselves. Still, there's no getting around the cloudy befuddlement in Bush's eyes. The sequence captures the shamefulness of Bush's ineffectuality.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" has been surrounded by a handy halo of buzz: First, Miramax's parent company, Disney, announced it wouldn't release the film, although it was embarrassed into handing it over to Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who subsequently found distributors for it (Lion's Gate and IFC Films). The movie's woes didn't stop there: Right-winger Howard Kaloogian, a former California state legislator who claims credit for squelching the CBS Ronald Reagan biopic, has spearheaded a campaign to harass and intimidate theaters into refusing to show the film. (MoveOn.org has countered by urging audiences to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" on its opening day to spur a groundswell of support.)

It's all terrifically lucky for Moore -- you can't buy publicity like that. But I'd also urge moviegoers to see "Control Room," Jehane Noujaim's documentary about Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq War, a piece of filmmaking that, like Moore's movie, is antiwar in the broadest sense. But it's also one that, unlike Moore's, is well aware of the dangers of self-certainty and easy answers.

I've heard even die-hard Moore detractors defend "Fahrenheit 9/11," claiming that its flaws don't matter because it speaks to a higher truth. The thinking goes, I suppose, that we need every anti-Bush voice we can get, and Moore, who won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine" and has several bestselling books under his belt, is likely to wield more influence than most other voices coming from the left. What's more, even though "Fahrenheit 9/11" isn't journalism, Moore presents his findings with an air of authority. Moore believes the press has let us down in calling Bush on his fraudulence and falseheartedness, and he's right. Still, the tradition, craft and standards of journalism have to count for something: Should we really be holding up cheap shots, inference and sloppy reporting as gateways to the truth?

Moore is a very specific and slippery kind of bully: He glides along on his underdog status as if it were a parade float. He professes to feel great compassion for the common man. Yet over and over again, in movie after movie, he invites the audience to chuckle over ordinary people. Why? In "Fahrenheit 9/11" he lists the countries that stepped forward as members of Bush's Coalition of the Willing (Palau, Costa Rica, Iceland, Romania, Morocco, and the Netherlands among them), accompanied by funny stock footage of people in costumes of many lands. If Moore is the left's great spokesman by default, shouldn't he be using his influence (not to mention his money) to raise the level of political discourse in this country instead of lowering it? Instead we have a filmmaker who manages the feat of getting liberal audiences to laugh at how funny those foreigners are.

Just after 9/11, Moore wrote a publicly circulated letter musing about the meaning and possible causes of the attacks. In the letter, Moore talked out of all 16 of sides of his mouth, first expressing sorrow over the tragedy, then attributing the attacks to Americans' desire for cheap sneakers, and later intoning wisely, "It's much easier to get us to hate when the object of our hatred doesn't look like us."

But somewhere in there, he also wrote, "Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?"

Well, gosh, Michael -- yeah. The lesson learned? Third-world tent dwellers do the darnedest things. It's a shocking and unpredictable world that we little people live in. At least we have Michael Moore to explain it all for us.

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/200..._nay/index.html (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/06/23/911_nay/index.html)