Category: Business

If you haven’t made up your mind about just how vile Michael Moore really is, go read Jonathon Foreman’s review:

But you certainly don’t have to be a fan of Bush or his policies to be offended by “Fahrenheit 9/11” lies, half-lies and distortions, or by Moore’s shockingly low expectations of his audience:

Moore’s favorite anti-administration interviewee is former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke. Yet the film never mentions that it was Clarke who gave the order to spirit the bin Laden family out of America immediately after 9/11. Moore makes much of this mystery; why didn’t he ask Clarke about it ?

At one point of the film, he portrays GIs as moronic savages who work themselves up with music before setting out to kill. Later, he depicts them as proletarian victims of a cynical ruling class, who deserve sympathy and honor for their sacrifice.

The film’s amusing (if bordering on racist) Saudi-bashing sequences rely for their effect on the audience having forgotten that President Bill Clinton was every bit as friendly with Prince Bandar (or “Bandar Bush,” as Moore calls him) and the Saudi monarchy as his successor. In general, the movie is packed with points that Moore assumes his audience will never check, or are either lies or cleverly hedged half-lies:

Moore says that the Saudis have paid the Bush family $1.4 billion. But wait ?the Bushes aren’t billionaires. If you watch the film a second time you’ll note Moore saying that they paid $1.4 billion to the Bush family and (added very quietly and quickly) its friends and associates.

Moore asserts that the Afghan war was fought only to enable the Unocal company to build a pipeline. In fact, Unocal dropped that idea back in August 1998. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are looking at the idea now, but nothing has come of it so far, and in any case Unocal has nothing to do with it.

In a “congressmen with no kids at war” stunt, Moore claims that no one in Congress has a son or daughter fighting in America’s armed services, then approaches several congressmen in the street and asks them to sign up and send their kids to Iraq. His claim would certainly surprise Sgt. Brooks Johnson of the 101st Airborne, the son of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). And for that matter the active-duty sons of Sen. Joseph Biden and Attorney General John Ashcroft, among others.

The most offensive sequence in “Fahrenheit 9/11″‘s long two hours lasts only a few minutes. It’s Moore’s file-footage depiction of happy Iraq before the Americans began their supposedly pointless invasion. You see men sitting in cafes, kids flying kites, women shopping. Cut to bombs exploding at night.

What Moore presumably doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t care about, is that the building you see being blown up is the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. Not many children flew kites there. It was in a part of the city that ordinary Iraqis weren’t allowed to visit ? on pain of death.

The most offensive — and most blatantly false — part of the movie is the depiction of life under Saddam. Had Saddam been a Republican, Moore would have painted a very different picture.

Lefties never tire of telling us of the depth of their compassion for the poor and downtrodden; it’s probably their favorite mantra. But so often, when the tire hits the road we find that this pretension is bullshit and they’re really the party of hate:

Think about the Seattle area — Bainbridge Island to be exact — and you think scenic views and liberal-minded tolerance.

At least the killer views are still there.

The bucolic island’s deep reputation for civility got a gut check this week during the annual Grand Old Fourth of July celebration.

That’s when Jason Gilson, a 23-year-old military veteran who served in Iraq, marched in the local event. He wore his medals with pride and carried a sign that said “Veterans for Bush.”
Walking the parade route with his mom, younger siblings and politically conservative friends, Jason heard words from the crowd that felt like a thousand daggers to the heart.

“Baby killer!”

“Murderer!”

“Boooo!”

To understand why the reaction of strangers hurt so much, you must read what the young man had written in a letter from Iraq before he was disabled in an ambush:

“I really miss being in the states. Some of the American public have no idea how much freedom costs and who the people are that pay that awful price. I think sometimes people just see us as nameless and faceless and not really as humans. … A good portion of us are actually scared that when we come home, for those of us who make it back, that there will be protesters waiting for us and that is scary.”

This much of the Liberation of Iraq is just like Vietnam.

Is it just me, or is it deja vu all over again? When Bill Clinton, carefully parsing his sentences, denied having an affair with Gennifer Flowers for 60 Minutes during the 1992 campaign, his supporters gave him a pass. When he lied about Monica Lewinsky in a much more blunt manner, they gave him a pass again, and when he was busted they said it simply didn’t matter.

With Michael Moore’s movie, we have a variety of lying techniques ranging from bald-faced lies (The bin Laden’s weren’t interviewed before the Bush Adminstration whisked them out of the country) to lies of association (all Bushes and bin Ladens have the same interest) to lies of speculation (George Bush probably wakes up wondering what he can do for Saudi Arabia each day).

The basic enterprise is intended to reiterate every Urban Legend that’s gone around about 9/11 with just enough information to keep it going and not enough to get Moore busted for straight-up lying (in most cases.)

And the people who believed Clinton believe Michael Moore and say only the stooges of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy would dare question his royal ass.

Moore has a hidden agenda, and it has nothing to do with electing Kerry: it’s all about the money. A Kerry presidency will cost Moore money.

Gabler is also wrong when he assumes the Moore attack dog stance against the media. Moore goes on the offensive when people point out that his movie is more propaganda than documentary; Gabler simply apes him.

Being balanced is not a bias, it’s journalism’s job.

See Ben Domenech for NBC’s nice summary of three big lies Michael Moore tells in Fahrenheit 9/11 and details of Moore’s censorship of Congressman Mark Kennedy.

While I can understand Dems wanting to win an election for a change, standing up for Michael Moore is nearly as reprehensible as standing up for Saddam.

Spider-Man 2 is doing some amazing box office:

Unofficial estimates Sunday put the gross for Spider-Man 2 in the $150 million to $155 million range since the film opened Wednesday, which would shatter the record for best Wednesday-Sunday opening set in May by Shrek 2 with $129 million.

Meanwhile, the evil Fahrenheit 9/11 is down to $17M, while showing on twice as many screens as it had on its opening weekend. The political message of Spider-Man 2 is obviously more sophisticated and insightful than that of its blustery competitor.

Spinsanity does the heavy lifting on the lies, half-truths, and deceptions in Fahrenheit 9/11, reaching this conclusion:

During a recent interview on “Late Night with David Letterman,” the host identified the problems with the circumstantial argument of the film in a series of probing questions to Moore:

When you look at the film in total, are there things there – if I were smarter, could I refute some of these points? Shall I believe you that everything means exactly what it looks like? I mean, the presentation is overwhelming, but could a smarter man than me come in and say, “Yes, this happened, but it means nothing,” “Yes, that happened but it means nothing”? But put together in a puzzle it creates one inarguable, compelling circumstance.

Moore’s response to Letterman (after a joking aside) sums up the problem with his work. Despite proclamations that the film is satirical and represents his opinion, Moore still makes strong claims about its veracity:

You can’t refute what’s said in the film. It’s all there, the facts are all there, the footage is all there.

Sadly, as with most of Moore’s work, this is simply not true.

It’s a pretty devastating litany, and those who find themselves arguing the film’s merits with Moore-bots would do well to read it.

Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive magazine is a lefty with a brain. He wasn’t impressed with Michael Moore’s movie, especially with the scene John admires in the next post. Here’s why:

Even the lingering of the film on Bush’s face at the school in Florida after the planes have hit the towers was borderline low to a lay audience, I imagine. Here he has just been given the worst possible news a President can ever get, and some people watching may sympathize with the worry written all over his face (just as many people sympathized with Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine).

And as though Bush’s frozen reaction wasn’t enough, Moore piles on by telling us what Bush might have been thinking at that moment. Moore says maybe Bush was thinking that he’s been hanging around with the wrong group of guys, the Saudis. Somehow, I doubt that was the thought racing through Bush’s head.

Moore delivers the same sucker punch when he says of both George W. and his dad that they may wake up in the morning thinking: Should I do what’s best for America or for the Saudis, who give us more money? “Who’s your daddy?” Moore says.

Again, this got laughs in Madison, but I doubt it would in Rockford.

Masturbation, preaching to the converted, cheap shots, and nastiness – all in one blockbuster of a top-grossing documentary. But enough about Jackass – the Movie.

See this side-by-side comparison of liberal critiques of Passion and Fahrenheit for a fine lesson in the Double Standard.

Andrew Sullivan fleshes out a theme we wrote on yesterday, comparing Passion of the Christ to Fahrenheit 9/11, and since he’s seen both he has the gory details:

One was designed for the unthinking hordes of the far right; the other for the unthinking hordes of the far left. Both were deeply depressing indicators of how far our culture has curdled into unthought and emotional extremism. Neither sought to convert or explain or persuade. Both were designed to bludgeon the viewer into ideological conformity. And if you resist? You are a heretic or a dupe.

Seeing the intense emotional reactions to these movies – and especially Moore’s – I begin to understand what it must have been like to live in Germany or Japan in the 1930s. Angry mobs whipped up into an emotional frenzy by a manipulator who presses all the hot buttons, blaming their economic conditions on insidious cabals, and offering salvation and free stuff to all who will check their intellects at the door. Scary stuff, and where will it end?

I saw a movie last night that should be a double-bill with Fahrenheit, Shattered Glass. It’s the story of infamous journalistic con-man Stephen Glass who fooled some of the most prestigious organs of the elite liberal press a few years ago into publishing an increasingly bizarre series of fabricated articles.

Michael Moore is Stephen Glass with a camera.

(Sullivan link via Jeff Jarvis)