How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about "Bowling for Columbine"(BARF)

MichaelMoore.Com ^ | Not Given | Michael Moore

[EsclavoDeCristo]

With the unexpected and overwhelming success of "Bowling for Columbine" and "Stupid White Men," the fiction that has been written or spoken about me and my work has reached a whole new level of storytelling. It's no longer about making some simple errors or calling me "Roger" Moore. It is now about organized groups going full blast trying to discredit me by knowingly making up lies and repeating them over and over in the hopes that people will believe them – and, then, stop listening to me.

Oh, that it would be so easy!

Fortunately, they are so wound up in their anger and hatred that they have ended up discrediting themselves.

Look, I accept the fact that, if I go after the Thief-in-Chief – and more people buy my book than any other nonfiction book last year – then that is naturally going to send a few of his henchmen after me. Fine. That's okay. I knew that before I got into this and I ain't whining about it now.

I also realize that you just don't go after the NRA and its supporters and then not expect them to come back at you with both barrels (so to speak). These are not nice people and they don't play nice – that's how they got to be so powerful.

So, a whole host of gun lobby groups and individual gun nuts have put up websites where the smears on me range from the pre-adolescent (I'm a "crapweasel," and a "fat fucking piece of shit") to Orwellian-style venom ("Michael Moore hates America!").

I have mostly ignored this silliness. But a few weeks ago, this lunatic crap hit the mainstream fan. CNN actually put some guy on a show saying that my film contains "so many falsehoods, one after the other, after the other, after the other." They introduced him as a "critic" and "research director" of the "Independence Institute." He seemed mighty impressive.

Except they failed to tell their viewers who he really was: a contributing editor of Gun Week Magazine.

CNN saw no need to inform the viewers that their "expert"-- who has made a career out of opposing any form of gun control–has a vested interest in convincing the public that "Bowling for Columbine" is a horribly rotten movie.

So, what do you do when the nutcases succeed in getting on CNN? Do you just keep ignoring them? How do you handle people who say the Holocaust never happened or that monkeys fly? Ignore them and they'll go away? If you give them any attention, all the nuts will come out of the woodwork.

And that's what happened. I saw another one of these lunatics, this time on MSNBC. A guy named John Lofton. He went on and on about how my movie is all made up. The anchor on MSNBC never challenged him on his lies and never told the viewers who he really was – a right wing crazy who believes Bush is too liberal. He was once an advisor to Pat Buchanan's Presidential campaign, and was a direct-mail writer for Jesse Helms. Writing in opposition to Hate Crime bills in the conservative Washington Times (where he was a columnist from '83 to '89), Lofton explained:

[inquest]

I don't think he was going to show the whole 10 minutes waiting taking up his movie time. He does make available the outtakes showing the rest of the procedure.

Regardless, it was still designed to mislead. As Moore himself admitted in his little rant, the bank was a licensed firearm dealer. What he did was absolutely no different from going into a gun shop and buying a weapon. But of course if he had filmed that, it wouldn't have raised any eyebrows. He was simply trying to distract people into believing that the bank was engaging in reckless policies, by playing up the fact that he was in an unusual location. So in that sense, it was staged.

[antiRepublicrat]

Regardless, it was still designed to mislead.

I know the bank piece had a slant, but I can't bring it up to the level of outright lies and misrepresentations elsewhere in the film.