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Posted on 06/22/2004 10:26:28 PM PDT by JustAmy
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I have to report to jury duty at 1:00.
See y'all later.
Take care.
I'm trying to despite having been basically told by CG to keep my grubby paws to myself. :^) And despite going crazy at the office lately.
*sigh*
I'm afraid I'm just weird.
Not good at taking care of people or keeping them sane.
Thank you for the daily scripture posts.
Hi Amy - I hope you are having a good Wednesday!
I'm not ignoring y'all, just having to referee disputes at work while developing a presentation I'm giving Friday. CG is SO ready to come home. He's in class all day, has no internet access in his hotel room, and doesn't even have FNC! On top of that, the only talk radio station he can find is NPR. We hope to never have to move to Atlanta!
She IS liberal. Both of my co-workers in this little room that we work in, are liberal. The one who wants to see the movie has said she hates Bush because he cut funds to her school (she lived in Johnson county, KS). OESY sent me a link to the NY Post that shows the facts blow by blow. The only thing I know to do is give them a copy of the NY Post review. I don't want to cause problems because we work together in such small quarters.
What do you think?
!!!!!
Referee...
Yikes!
NPR only?
*Cue 'Psycho' shower scene music*
Good luck!
Dear "What do you think?",
I'd probably take a pass. It's unlikely you'll change their minds while running the risk of inflaming those with whom you must work. They represent only two (potential) votes.
However, if you believe they are openminded (doubtful) and searching for answers, you might ask them if they would like to see a film review that cited some factual problems in order to get their opinions after they see the movie.
* * *
Here's the full review by the Post's movie critic:
MOORE'S THE PITY, New York Post, 6/23/04
For all its clever slickness, Michael Moore's "Fahren heit 9/11" does not stack up to such brilliant but evil art as Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films for Hitler. But it is art in the sense that any piece of effective political propaganda — Julius Streicher's "Der Sturmer" magazine, the famous Che poster from Alberto Korda's photo, even the anti-Goldwater mushroom-cloud TV ad put out by LBJ — can be taken as art.
Alert critics will doubtless point out its artistic flaws. For example, its most moving sequence — which features audio from the World Trade Center attacks played over a black screen — is a direct ripoff of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 11-minute segment in the 2003 film "9/11/01"
What makes "Fahrenheit 9/11" notable is that feature-length movie-house agitprop is a relatively rare and new thing, and that so far it has been treated (for instance by the Cannes Film Festival jury) as something more than the clever (if breathtakingly sleazy) political propaganda that it is.
And the film does offer some valuable lessons for everyone — though not in its topics: 9/11, Osama bin Laden, Iraq, the "stolen" 2000 election, the Bush administration's fondness for the Saudis, the U.S. armed forces' supposed recruiting from the "starving" unemployed masses or any of the mutually exclusive conspiracy theories the movie puts forward.
No, the lessons of "Fahrenheit 9/11" have to do with the general degradation of our political discourse, the gross dishonesty of our most feted "documentary" filmmaker and with what Michael Moore's super-popularity in Hollywood and France adds to what we already know about the ignorance and intellectual poverty of the movie industry and the pathetic, spiteful hostility of our French "allies."
That said, the Bush administration might want to consider how the Department of Homeland Security's silly color-coded terror alerts play neatly into the hands of its most paranoid or devious opponents (especially when those alerts coincide with adverse poll results).
And the "forgotten" soldiers who have lost arms and legs in the Iraq and Afghan wars (there's some moving footage of amputees) should neither be forgotten nor remembered only by people like Moore, who would use that suffering for their own ends.
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.
And if Moore weren't a (left-wing) version of the fat, bigoted, ignorant Americans his European friends love to mock, he'd know that prewar Iraq was ruled by a regime that had forced a sixth of its population into fearful exile, that hanged dissidents (real dissidents, not people like Susan Sontag and Tim Robbins) from meathooks and tortured them with blowtorches, and filled thousands of mass graves with the bodies of its massacred citizens.
Yes, children played, women shopped and men sat in cafes while that stuff went on — just as people did all those normal things in Somoza's Nicaragua, Duvalier's Haiti and for that matter Nazi Germany, and as they do just about everywhere, including in Iraq today.
Moore has defended deliberate inaccuracies in his prior films by claiming that satirists don't have to tell the exact truth. Fair enough. But if you take the lies, half-lies and distortions out "Fahrenheit 9/11," there isn't much of anything left.
ABBY
LOL Thank you for the warm greeting, JustFRiend! Sent you your rainbow graphics in FR mail - now, I know you still have a whole bunch of graphics in reserve! But not to worry, we won't let you run out. :)
sounds grim doesn't it?
Evening all.
Hi Amy. Your post about Fresno reminds me of New York City driving rules…
1) Turn signals will give away your next move. A real Long Island driver never uses them. Use of them in Massapequa may be illegal.
2) Under no circumstances should you leave a safe distance between you and the car in front of you, or the space will be filled in by somebody else putting you in an even more dangerous situation.
3) Crossing two or more lanes in a single lane-change is considered "going with the flow."
4) The faster you drive through a red light, the smaller the chance you have of getting hit.
5) Never get in the way of an older car that needs extensive bodywork.
6) Braking is to be done as hard and late as possible to ensure that your ABS kicks in, giving a nice, relaxing foot massage as the brake pedal pulsates. For those of you without ABS, it's a chance to stretch your legs.
7) Electronic traffic warning signs are not there to provide useful information. They are only there to make Long Island look high-tech, and to distract you from seeing the state police radar car parked on the median.
8) Never pass on the left when you can pass on the right.
9) Speed limits are arbitrary figures, given only as suggestions, and are apparently not enforceable during rush hour.
10) Always slow down and rubberneck when you see an accident, or even if someone is just changing a tire.
11) Throwing litter on the roads adds color to the landscape and gives Adopt-a-Highway crews something to clean up.
12) It is assumed that state police cars passing at high speed may be followed in the event you need to make up a few minutes on your way to work, or the beach.
13) Heavy snow, ice, fog, and rain are no reasons to change any of the previously listed rules. These weather conditions are God's way of ensuring a natural selection process for body shops, junkyards, and new vehicle sales.
I find that is the best vehicle to drive in NYC, Boston, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson.
You're right, Mayor.
Good evening all. Thought I'd pop in to say 'Hey' before reading the news. Have a great night.
Good evening all. Thought I'd pop in to say 'Hey' before reading the news. Have a great night.
Good evening all. Thought I'd pop in to say 'Hey' before reading the news. Have a great night.
Sorry for the triple post but I kept getting a DNS error when I hit post so I backpaged and kept trying. I didn't know the first ones went through.
Hi Kudsman!
Hi Kudsman!
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