Posted on 07/31/2004 11:53:04 PM PDT by SEA
Leftists have been yearning for an answer to Rush Limbaugh for some time, and they may have found him, not in radio, but in movies: the odious Michael Moore. Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is smashing box-office records for a documentary film, outgrossing the competition in the first weekend of its release.
The film has even become a news story. The Disney studios backed out of distributing it — too controversial — but it won the first prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, where its anti-war, anti-Bush message got a warm welcome. Moore, capitalizing on the publicity, found another distributor.
Moore hopes the film will help tip the November election against Bush. He plans to release it on video before the election. The question is whether it will reach undecided voters, since it preaches blatantly to the leftist choir. It has the further disadvantage of featuring Moore himself, a singularly unprepossessing man — obese, unkempt, and insufferably smug even when he’s right.
The first hour of the film is largely an indignant recital of how the Bush family “stole” the 2000 election and a review of its apparently real ties to Saudi oil magnates and the bin Laden family. I don’t know how much of this is true or whether it’s as sinister as Moore makes it sound, but the Bush tribe, including Vice President Dick Cheney, certainly has a knack for combining its own business interests with public service. The 9/11 horrors do seem to have come at a remarkably convenient time for those interests; all that was needed, as Moore tells it, was to forge a propaganda link between the terrorists and oil-rich Iraq. But Moore ignores another key interest: the Israeli-neocon eagerness for “regime change” in Iraq.
The climactic part of the film is undeniably powerful: footage of the assault on Baghdad. The horror is beyond description; the sound of the bombs alone is sickening. You wonder how anyone could survive it, or for that matter how anyone could justify it. Close-ups of screaming women and mangled children make it even worse.
A good propagandist would let such things speak for themselves; but Moore insists on obtruding his own bloated ego, not only by appearing in his own person to taunt politicians, but by cutting to Bush committing verbal gaffes. This cheap satire undermines the whole effect: Not only is Bush a war criminal, but he also mispronounces “nuclear”! Moore can’t choose between moral indignation and petty snobbery.
The final part of the film dribbles off into blaming Bush for economic hardship back in Moore’s hometown, Flint, Michigan. That’s the ultimate message of the film: George W. Bush is to blame for everything. It would have been more effective to blame him just for those poor children in Baghdad. The world will little note, nor long remember, Michael Moore’s wiseacre remarks; but no viewer will forget the sight of a toddler’s face, crudely stitched back together.
If Moore’s purpose was to make Bush look like a jerk, he has succeeded, albeit at the cost of making himself look like one too. I suppose some sort of congratulations are in order. Fahrenheit 9/11 will surely damage Bush, who is, after all, the one seeking re-election. It may not convert Bush supporters, who will avoid seeing it; but it will certainly rally and intensify his opposition. And beyond its target audience, it will help reinforce the growing feeling that he has waged war for false and frivolous reasons.
Above all, it reminds us graphically what war really means, and how terrible it is to wage war for any but the most serious causes. The nature of war first began to come home to me during my first trip to Germany in 1981; as I strolled through the ruins of Berlin and Cologne left from Allied bombing in World War II, I asked myself incredulously: We did this? The same awed, appalled feeling came back to me as I watched the destruction of Baghdad in this film. Neither Bush’s gaffes nor Moore’s wisecracks added anything to it.
It is wrong to compare a person (RUSH) who is 98.5 %
correct to a leftwing pile of dung who is at least
98.5 % wrong.
Not only a very bad comparison, moore does not have even the slightest portion of an ounce of Character that Rush has. moore comes across as an utter classless *ssh*le!!!!
Quick, hide the cooking sherry, Joseph Sobran
To equate fatso to anyone with a brain is just ludicrous.
Comparing Moore to Limbaugh is ridiculous.
How convenient to blame President Bush for the toddler's killed not only in Iraq but also in Germany 60 years ago. America must be a bad place to elect such terrible leaders. How convenient Uncle Joe forgets to mention Hussein and Hitler. Two terrible tyrants who killed millions to feed their own egos.
For Sobran it's much better to condemn Bush then the terrible two.
What a twit.
TS
Yes indeed. Joe Sobran's obligatory anti-semitic remark. Why am I not surprised.
OTOH. I think Sobran is not so secretly enjoying Bush`s difficulties.
The difference between Moore and Rush is, you will never see Limbaugh sitting at a place of honor next to a former President at the GOP convention. Rush has his place in politics and he is a fantastic supporter of the President, but he is an entertainer first. This is why seeing that fat lump sitting next to one of the worst presidents in US history, was a little off setting to say the least. It was however a very telling moment. No matter how tough the Dems screamed, they embraced a vile socialist who hates America and is willing to sell his vitriol to the highest bidder.
Some conservatives in Hollywood or elsewhere should make a film exposing the Democrats and the Left. The media sure won't!
How about this, get Moore in a debate with Limbaugh, or Coulter, or Steyn, or Macomber, or heck, any big name conservative pundit. We will see how well Moore compares. Except, of course, Moore is too chicken to do so.
They should stay away from Hollywood.
Are you a Macomber fan too? Not bad for a young guy, huh?.
If Klein had said this about Larry Nichols (of Clinton Death List infamy), I might have agreed. But Rush doesn't weave conspiracy theories on the air except with his tongue in cheek.
feel free to do so.
Yeah, started reading him when he started writing for TAS. Now I'm his primary poster here. :)
The guy has a knack for political writing.
His uncle, btw, is a FReeper.
He put two of my scribblings on his old website. That was pretty cool. His new website is slicker but since he got famous he never writes.. lol..ahem.
lol, he obviously writes a great deal.
A very talented guy named Michael Wilson is already on it: www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com. There's a trailer for the movie there, too.
Thanks...I'll take a look.
bttt
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